Are WebAlliance Search and Google Search the Same Thing?

 

Though both the WebAlliance search engine and external search engines share the goal of getting users to your website content, they are two very different things.

External search engines include Google, Bing, and Yahoo among others.

An external search is a search that a user performs from outside your WebAlliance website.  Those search engines will scan the website from time to time and gather data about your content and items.  They use that data to direct users to pages on your site, based on the user's search term.

External search engines, like Google, have total control of the search results they provide to users and are totally separate from WebAlliance search.  There are WebAlliance tools available to help provide good data for external search engines when they scan your website, but the WebAlliance system does not have any control over those external search results.

A WebAlliance search is a search that a user performs within the WebAlliance website.  There are many factors that determine a WebAlliance search result, some of which do not have any effect on external search engines.

External search results have no relationship to WebAlliance search results. They're totally separate systems.  WebAlliance search is unique to the WebAlliance system.

You can see more details on how WebAlliance searches work in the Search Results article.

How Will External Search Engines Learn About Changes to My WebAlliance Website?

Your website is always changing and evolving.  New items are added to the site, and old ones are removed.  Content is always changing to let your users know about new and exciting events and products that are on the way.  In order for your changes to be reflected in an external search, you will need to let external search engines know what's different about your site.

External search engines scan, or "crawl", your website from time to time to gather information about the pages on the site.  This includes everything from the unique content pages you create to the Item Detail pages for each of your items.

The "Generate Product Sitemap" tool, available under "Site Manager" in the WebAlliance Admin panel, will make a fresh set of page data which external search engines will use to learn about your website.  If you check the "Notify Search Engines" checkbox, it will also alert Google and Bing that you would like your website to be crawled again. 

"Notify Search Engines" does not force the search engines to immediately crawl your site. It only alerts them that you would like them to crawl the website.  It could still be quite some time before they scan your site again.