I'd like to escape paying for a sitewide search engine by using my wordpress blog's search function. I don't know of any wordpress plugin that will spider a whole site (pages not included in the blog); but is there one that will allow you to manually input urls to be included in the search?
Yeah, it's called the WordPress search function and it's already included in the installation. Has a sidebar widget and everything. If you are looking for other control features, there are plug ins. Plenty of them. I guess I need to know what you need that isn't already a part of WordPress.
That search function will only yield results for wordpress blog posts; I want one that will spider the entire site - not just blog posts, but static html pages not associated with the wordpress blog. If there isn't a plugin that will spider the entire site, I'd like to have one that will allow me to manually input static html pages; so they will be included in the search results. So, trying to clarify: website.com/static.html will not show up in search results; only website.com/blog/pages.html show up in search results, because the search function seems to base its results on the wordpress database, without spidering actual pages. I don't want search results limited to wordpress blog posts; I want them to include my non-blog static pages, as well. make sense?
Oh, I get it it. Everything on the root isn't WordPress. You can obviously create your own search function that will crawl just the URL's that you want, but I assume if you could do that, you wouldn't be posting here. I remember using this a while back. If I remember correctly, you can customize it to crawl specific sites: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-lijit-wijit/ It also has an ad program, although I don't think you have to use it: http://www.lijit.com/publishers
Why don't you use Google Search box instead. You can include the main domain as well as all the relevant subdomains while configuring the search box. And it will also give your some adsense revenue through it.