Search me
Fortunately, there are a few free options that let you add search functions to your site without a lot of hassle. These include Thunderstone's Webinator, PicoSearch, and ht://Dig. Also, some Web hosting companies offer individual site searching as part of a package.
To show you how easy it is, we'll walk you through adding a free PicoSearch to your site. While other options require you to install some software on your server, you can set up PicoSearch on any site, no matter who's hosting it. The only drawback is that users will see some advertising on the search results page.
Step 1
Go to PicoSearch's New Accounts
page and enter your registration information. When you hit the Submit button, the service
analyzes the pages of your site.
Step 2
After your site has been indexed, PicoSearch presents the opportunity to subscribe to the
service. Once you subscribe, you'll get an email with HTML code to paste into your pages.
This code creates a search-term entry box. When someone enters a search term in the box,
they are taken to a results page on the PicoSearch site.
Search "More stupid Web tricks":
Most other options for search require you to install the software on your server, indicate which directories you want to be searchable, then run an indexing utility that will scan your text. The results page will be served from your site, but you will have to build it yourself.