ZOOMSTOP & ZOOMRESTART usage

[Brentwz]

Zoom Search V5.1 (Build 1016)
Our Indexing Method: Offline Only

In preparation to buying Zoom Search Professional, we're trialling Zoom with our 34-page website HMASBrisbane.com.au. However I've had some frustrating results. Initially I've followed a Zoom tutorial for Netobjects Fusion, our website development program, on Lansrad.com & although out of date, it has been quite helpful.

I've used the Zoom forums extensively to find out about excluding footer menus etc from indexing results & have done ALL the recommended things from applying <!--ZOOMSTOP--> & <!--ZOOMRESTART--> to "Reload all files (do not use cache)" in the General Options of the Configure dialog.

But I'm unable to get the expected result when searching the site because words from the footer menu are still included in the search results! For an example, please check the Accommodation page link >>
http://hmasbrisbane.com.au/html/sunshine_coast_accommodation.html
& examine the code to see what's wrong, in particular, the <!--ZOOMSTOP--> <!--ZOOMRESTART--> section at the bottom of the page. Test the search for "accommodation" & see what I mean.

The webpage is positively loaded with the word (40 instances) yet the only way I could get it to come up near the top was to use <meta name="ZOOMPAGEBOOST" content="5">. Is it placed in the wrong spot on the page? I also used the +5 Boost on the Page title: option in Weightings tab of the Configure dialog but it didn't do anything by itself, even on this Accommodation page.

Searches for other words/phrases regularly return the footer menus as part of the results, annoying so, as these cloud the choices for website visitors.

Something that may be connected to Zoom's operation here that I've noticed: On the Search Results page, certain characters eg. "&" & "|" are shown on the page's index results confusingly. Zoom appears to remove the space before the special character such that it becomes part of the previous word. Example taken from Passmark.com: "International¦" after searching for the term "software" or our site: "sharks&" or "lot,&". We've used " | " as our menu item separator, like 50% of the Internet. And our use of " & " instead of "and" is a design standard for us for over 10 years now, including our websites.

One final thing: on certain pages such as our successcontact.html I've added <meta name="robots" content="noindex">, as per Zoom forums, to exclude them from indexing but they're still being indexed.

When we get this working properly we'll apply it consistently to all our business websites & our client websites too. But we need to know the specifics of Zoom as applied to our site methods & standards.

Having found Zoom Search, we're DESPERATE to add it to our websites. I'd appreciate assistance to sort this out.

[David]

As far as I can see ZOOMSTOP is working correctly on your site.

But you have 2 problems with the use of ZOOMSTOP,

Problem 1
=======
You are excluding the footer from indexing. But you are not excluding the top navigation bar. And it is the top navigation bar that contains the word, Accommodation, and appears on every page.

Here is your code for the top navigation bar.

 
<a href="../html/free_visitor_s_guide.html">Free Visitor's Guide</a>
<a href="../html/4-day_weather_forecast.html">Weather Forecast</a>
...
<a href="../html/sunshine_coast_accommodation.html">Accommodation</a>

Problem 2
=======
On some pages you didn't exclude even the footer. Like this page.
http://hmasbrisbane.com.au/html/successmarmoolguide.html


For the robots tag. It worked OK for me on the page in question. Make sure you have the "Enable robots.txt" check box checked in the Zoom configuration window (on the scon options tab).

[Brentwz]

Zoom Stop &amp; Zoomrestart

Thank you for your time. Firstly, Problem 2.
Yes, I did have “Enable robots.txt” switched on (& still is) in the Scan Options dialog of Zoom.
The following pages, including the one you mentioned, have <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> applied. I haven’t got ZOOMSTOP/ZOOMRESTART on these because I thought the “noindex” excluded the whole page.
successmarmoolguide.html
successcontact.html
errormarmoolguide.html
errorcontact.html
search_template.html
These pages come up as Results 2—5. What am I missing here?

Problem 1.
Yes, you’re right. What threw me was the ¦ character being added to the search result keywords by Zoom. When searching for “Accommodation”, the following words suddenly have the special character ¦ tacked on to each word & are at the start of each search result:
Sunny Beaches¦ Rent A Car Online¦ Convert$ Currencies¦ Contact Us¦
How does this happen? It confuses the search results. Bear with me here. The only area where these special characters were used in the page text of our site is in the footer menu items, & there is a SPACE between each word & character. What happened to the SPACE? The special characters are NOT used in the head menus. Why is Zoom is adding these ¦ & removing the space? How can I exclude this from happening?

I’m using an external menu component in Fusion to generate the TOP menus, & it doesn’t appear to accept the ZOOMSTOP/ZOOMRESTART code before & after the menu position in the code—within Fusion. I’ll manually add the ZOOM code to the html pages, after Fusion generates them. I’ll let you know how I go in case other Fusion users logon. Thanks.

[Ray]

Thank you for your time. Firstly, Problem 2.
Yes, I did have “Enable robots.txt” switched on (& still is) in the Scan Options dialog of Zoom.
The following pages, including the one you mentioned, have <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> applied. I haven’t got ZOOMSTOP/ZOOMRESTART on these because I thought the “noindex” excluded the whole page.
successmarmoolguide.html
successcontact.html
errormarmoolguide.html
errorcontact.html
search_template.html
These pages come up as Results 2—5. What am I missing here?

I've tested indexing the page in question (successcontact.html) with the robots support enabled, and it excluded the page as expected.

Did you re-index the site entirely? Or are you using incremental? You said you've already enabled the "Reload all files" option, but maybe it's worth double-checking to see if you might have forgotten to save your configuration changes. Also, make sure you are using the latest version and build available here.

Problem 1.
Yes, you’re right. What threw me was the ¦ character being added to the search result keywords by Zoom. When searching for “Accommodation”, the following words suddenly have the special character ¦ tacked on to each word & are at the start of each search result:
Sunny Beaches¦ Rent A Car Online¦ Convert$ Currencies¦ Contact Us¦
How does this happen? It confuses the search results. Bear with me here. The only area where these special characters were used in the page text of our site is in the footer menu items, & there is a SPACE between each word & character. What happened to the SPACE? The special characters are NOT used in the head menus. Why is Zoom is adding these ¦ & removing the space? How can I exclude this from happening?

What you are seeing, is in fact not a result of the footer. It is actually the HTML "noscript" code on your page which is as follows:

<noscript><a href="../index.html">HMASBrisbane.com.au</a> | 
<a href="../html/free_visitor_s_guide.html">Free Visitor's Guide</a> | 
<a href="../html/4-day_weather_forecast.html">Weather Forecast</a> | 
<a href="../html/sunny_beaches.html">Sunny Beaches</a> | 
<a href="../html/rent_a_car_online.html">Rent A Car Online</a> | 
<a href="../html/convert___currencies.html">Convert $ Currencies</a> | 
<a href="../html/contact_us.html">Contact Us</a> | 
<a href="../html/sunshine_coast_accommodation.html">Accommodation</a>
</noscript>

To exclude this from appearing in your index, you would need to enclose them in ZOOMSTOP and ZOOMRESTART tags as well.

Spacing accuracy is not guaranteed in the context description for punctuation characters. This does not reflect the way the words are indexed. But some information is lost in the compression scheme for storing the indexed data. Since you'd want the above excluded anyway, they would not appear in the context at all once that is done.

[Andy]

Doesn't seem to work with PHP

Hi, I have just upgraded from the Free version to the Professional version, and have been attempting to tweak the results. I have a PHP-based site, and have wrapped the menus with ZOOMSTOP and ZOOMRESTART tags, but it doesn't seem to work. I notice the User's Guide specifically mentions usage in an HTML document. Shouldn't it also work with PHP?

For example, if you search for "Careers" (www.tannerdewitt.com), every single page is returned. However View Source shows the relevant menus are wrapped in ZOOMSTOP/ZOOMRESTART.

[Ray]

You're most likely indexing from cached copies of the web pages. Make sure to check the option "Reload all files (do not use cache)" on the General tab of the Configuration window in Zoom. And of course, re-index and re-upload your search files.

[Andy]

Great. That works. There isn't much mention of the cache in the Users Guide. How is it refreshed? Wouldn't it be better switched off by default?

Thanks for the quick response, Ray.

[Ray]

It is the cache used by Windows and all applications which use the WinInet API. This means that it is the same cache as what Internet Explorer uses (remember Microsoft trying to convince everyone that IE was a crucial part of Windows several years ago). So if you clear the cache in IE, you will also clear the cache that Zoom uses.

[Brentwz]

Further to ZOOMSTOP &amp; ZOOMRESTART

Ray, I followed your advice (most of which I had already done as suggested). I've since worked out a way of applying the zoomstop/restart code to appropriate areas of each webpage on 2 of our 5 destination websites so far—through Netobjects Fusion too.
We've purchased Zoom Professional, thank you for your pre-sales help.
I'm still getting a couple of strange results, but mostly, it's all really good, & where we want to be with an easy-to-use Site Search function.
Now I can add Zoom to our main website www.BuderimVillage.com.au (130-odd pages) & the final 2 (40-odd pages apiece).
I may need a bit of further assistance as we go to fine-tune my results, however I'll try to go as far as I can myself first.
Then we can add it to new client websites as we do them.
Go, Zoom Search Pro!