categories from separate indexes

[mkrob]

I have 2 different sites that each have their own search. I would like to combine them into one search result page with the option of searching one site or the other, or both. Basically what I want to do is what you can do with categories, but I need each site to have its own index because they have different spider options, exclusions, etc. Is there a way to do this?

[wrensoft]

The way to do this is via having a single larger index and use multiple start points and the categories feature.

As an example, we have done exactly this on our passmark.com site,
http://www.passmark.com/search/zoomsearch.php

[mkrob]

I tried that and it works, to a point. Here's my problem, one of the indexes (indexA) is for all pages on our website, I can define this category through subdirectories. The other index (indexB) is a subdirectory of our main website, again can be defined by inputting the subdirectory in the category, but it also contains external links, which I want indexed, and some articles from our main website.

I defined the subdirectories for IndexA as a category and put everything else in a catch-all category defined as IndexB. This put all of the external pages in IndexB category, but not the articles from the main website. Is there anyway to define external pages in a category other than making them part of the catch-all category? Alternatively, is there any way to define a category as anything coming from a particular starting point?

[Ray]

Yes you can use a ZOOMCATEGORY meta tag to specify pages to include in the category.

See chapter 2.5, "Specifying category per file" in the Users Guide for more details.