Search

The EERE site uses the Ultraseek search engine. To ensure a uniform search facility across EERE and to obtain high-quality search results, only the Ultraseek search feature is installed on EERE sites hosted at NREL.

Meta Tags

External search engines are disregarding meta tags, so optimizing efforts should focus on page content. If you want to meta tag your home page or a few other important pages for our internal search engine, the meta tags must meet the following EERE standards: (Note: Incorrect use of meta tags adversely affects searches and topics in EERE's search engine as well as in external search engines.) If you are unsure about how to write meta tags, contact the EERE Search Specialist.

Verify that the syntax is correct on meta descriptions and meta keywords.
Create unique meta descriptions and meta keywords for each page; i.e, do not use the same meta tags on different pages.
For meta descriptions, do not exceed 200 characters; include the most important content in the first 150 characters.
Limit meta keywords for home pages to the site name and a few general keywords that reflect the subject matter in the site. Meta keywords containing 200-300 characters are sufficient for most sites.
Limit meta keywords for non-home pages to keywords that appear in the content of that page. They should only contain a few major keywords or phrases that reflect the page content. Meta keywords containing 200-300 characters are sufficient for most sites.

"Stopindex" Tags

"Stopindex" tags are designed to "hide" (i.e., cause the search engine to ignore) some of the text on the page because it is not important to the content of the page. The "stopindex" tag will cause the search engine to stop indexing content from the page (i.e., start ignoring it), and the "startindex" tag will cause the search engine to start indexing content again (i.e., stop ignoring it).

For example, navigation is very similar on all pages and is not indicative of the content on the page. Thus a "stopindex" tag is placed before this text, and a "startindex" is placed after it, so that the search engine does not associate "contact" or "support" with every Web page that contains that text in its menu. "Stopindex" tags keep content such as navigation and 508 requirements from being indexed by the internal search engine.

All pages on your site must have these tags surrounding navigational elements and search boxes. For each "stopindex" tag, There must be an associated "startindex" tag somewhere following it on the page. They should appear only in the <BODY> element and they cannot be nested. This is regular HTML comment syntax, with "stopindex" or "startindex" as the only characters (i.e., no spaces).

Text based navigation or other text that's not pertinent to the content of the page.

Other elements that precede the main content—such as news, events, features, publications, and images—should also have stopindex tags placed around them.

Sizing the Search Box with JavaScript

Because all browsers do not display form fields the same way, EERE uses a JavaScript browser sniffer script to determine what browser is being used and then sizes the search box appropriately. See the template section for more information.