posted on July 24, 2003
In an effort to improve the current Penn State search engine, Ultraseek, Academic Services and Emerging Technologies (ASET), a unit of Information Technology Services (ITS), will transition to the Google Search Appliance on August 11. The change to the Google Search Appliance is based on responses to a search engine evaluation survey, which was sent to the Penn State community for feedback in May. The survey was created and conducted by the University's Search engine Evaluation Team, which was comprised of individuals from University Relations, University Libraries and several ITS units.
How it Affects the Penn State Community
On August 11, ASET will make available the new search engine via http://search.aset.psu.edu/. On August 25, http://search.psu.edu/ will be changed to point to the new Google search engine and will no longer point to the Ultraseek search engine. On September 25, the Ultraseek search engine will be permanently removed.
Specifically, the change to the new search engine will affect people who currently invoke the current search engine or explicitly allow the current search engine to index their respective Web servers. Documentation about how pages are indexed by the new search engine, how to invoke the Google Search Appliance from Web pages and new features and functionality are available via the "Information for Webmasters/Web content providers" section of the new Search Engine Documentation Web site.
Faculty members who use the search engine as part of lesson planning are encouraged to update any course materials as appropriate.
Getting Help
Questions, problem reports or requests for assistance may be directed to the ITS Help Desk at helpdesk@psu.edu.
