Including non Kentico pages in search results

You should be able to write your own smart search index ... since you would be able to set how the content is consumed, you should be able to inject non-Kentico content through it. The biggest obstacle will be how to get that content to be crawled. Since Smart Search isn't really a page scraper, you would probably need to load up each page and parse it out to include into the index.

Here is info on customizing it: https://docs.kentico.com/display/K8/Creating+custom+smart+search+indexes

The other option could be do run your own search with an engine such as Azure Search. Bryan Soltis just wrote an article on that here: http://devnet.kentico.com/articles/integrating-azure-search-with-kentico

I am actually doing my own search through that for a client right now as well. With this you can set multiple indexes from multiple sources easier than having to code your own...but you will need to code your own search interface...so it just depends on where you want your work to go.

HI Virgil. Thanks for the advice and links. I looked up the Azure search and it looks like a payed service. Would this not be similar to using a google custom search which is free? Where I'm at there is no budget for purchasing luxuries such as search features ;-)

Claudette,

There are currently 2 tiers for Azure Search (free & paid). The free tier allows for up to 10,000 records and 3 indexes. The Paid version allows 15M records and 50 indexes.

You find out more about Azure Search pricing here.

The blog Virgil mentioned can be found here.

Note that if you decide to implement Azure Search, you will need to develop a process / method to keep the indexes updated with current data (most likely via a Scheduled task, etc.).

• Bryan

Thanks Bryan...Claudette, what he said!