ReSEARCHing

The Frommer's site continues to grow at a rapid pace and it reached a point where a dedicated search engine needed to be added, replacing the built-in ColdFusion/Verity functionality. The obvious solution was to go with the new Google CSE Business Edition, which was perfect based on the information that had on their website. But we realized we couldn't go with it because their pricing model didn't favor a site of Frommer's size. I did intensive research over a 2 week period, signing up for just about every major and minor hosted search solution. In each of those accounts, I built a version of their search with the Frommer's design to make sure we could have as much freedom as possible with the customization. The list was narrowed down to 7 companies. After contacting all of them, some were eliminated because they either ended up costing more than Google or didn't have the resources to handle our size/traffic. 2 of the companies gave us reasonable pricing models, and Omniture was the most helpful and persistent. The demo given to us by their representative, Jim McTiernan was very impressive. The admin interface was far better than what Google had. Omniture also had a reputable client list that included Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Microsoft, Oracle, HP, CNN, Forbes, AOL, Sports Illustrated & NBA. So we signed the contract last month and started building the new site search immediately.

More to come soon...