Figure 1.--

HBC as you no doubt have found has become a rather large site. Thus a search engine has become essential. HBC has, however, had trouble finding a search engine that worked well. Hispeed, onne of our previous internet hosts provided an Excite search engine that functioned reasonably for a few years, but was diabaled in December 2002 for some reason. We are now experimenting with other alternatives. Use the HBC search engine which will find pertinent pages for you automatically. We have experimented with Freefind which is an advertising based service. It does do a search, but we are not real pleased with the results. We now have found what we believe is a good search system using Google.

Internal Search Engines

Here are the internal search engines we have experimented with. We have not found any of them very effective.

FreeFind Search Engine

We are currently using Freefind which is an advertising based service. Sorry about the advertising. We hope you will not find it too distracting. Let us know how this system works for you. This system does work, but there are problems, not the least of which is the searches reach less than a third of the site.

Excite Search Engine

Use the HBC search engine which will find pertinent pages for you automatically. Unfortunately the link facility is not now opperational, but it will bring up various pages that you can reach by entering the URL into the address box. Unfortunately this search engine has been diabled

Pico Search Engine

This search engine is suitable for only very basic searches. It only has 250 pages and HBC has over 15,000 pages. It may, however, help you find some basic catehories. I am installing it as an experiment to see if it is at all useful.

External Search Engine

Here I think is an answer to the need for a search engine that effectives searches the entire site. Some of you have briwses with a "Search Site" button. That works well. If you do not, than all you have to do is bring up Google (and probably other search engines as well). Then in the search box type "site:histclo.com" (without the quotation marks of course) then put in one space followed by the subject you want to search such as "skeleton suits". Thus the Google search box would read, "site:histclo.com skeleton suits". Or beter put "sketon suits" or "skeleton suit" in quotation marks.