Why Choose Search.gov?
Search.gov is a by-government, for-government search engine provided to federal agencies by the General Services Administration. We understand the needs and challenges that government web teams face. We’ve designed our service to meet you where you are.
Highly configurable
No developers required - use our easy interface to design your search experience yourself, including what content to search, recommended content, and the look and feel of your search results page.
Built for government
Because we only engage with government clients, we orient ourselves around your needs, whether it is security, compliance, search results coverage, or the unique circumstances of government web publishing.
Hands-on customer service
Our team of experts is available to help you with your questions, ranging from technical support and troubleshooting to search engine optimization consultations. Your success is our mission.
No barriers to entry
Adopting a new tool or service is often difficult for federal agencies, but getting started with Search.gov is friction free. Our service is ready to use, and does not require interagency agreements, payments, or other common procedural challenges.
There are several key differences between our service and other options in the marketplace. We look forward to working with you!
| Feature Comparison |
Search.gov | Major Search Engine Custom Search |
Solr | Other Site Search Tools |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search your primary domain |
Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Search additional domains and servers |
Yes | Yes | No* | Yes |
| Search the full text of PDFs |
Yes | Yes | No* | Depends on the service |
| Search USAJOBS postings |
Yes | No | No | No |
| Search Federal Register documents |
Yes | No | No | No |
| Search RSS feed content |
Yes | No | No | No |
| Search social media content (Twitter, images, YouTube) |
Yes | No | No | No |
| Is developer assistance required? |
No+ | No | No* | Depends on the service |
| Faceted search and metadata driven search |
Planned | No | Yes | Depends on the service |
| Relevance Ranking Control |
Planned++ | No | No | Depends on the service |
| Customer service | Yes | No | No | Depends on the service |
| SEO consultations available |
Yes | No | No | Depends on the service |
| Authorized to Operate |
Yes | Ask your CISSO |
Ask your CISSO |
Ask your CISSO |
| Cost model | No cost | Query volume |
No cost** | Size of index plus query volume |
* Some features are only available with Solr if you buy a hosted Solr service or you manage a crawler stack in-house
** Solr search is available at no cost for uncustomized, single-website CMS search. Costs are associated with hosted Solr services or development effort.
+ Search.gov allows web teams to manage their search configurations without running changes through developer teams. If you would like to use our Results API to pull results and display them within your website’s template, this would require developer assistance to establish and maintain the API calls, and to design and build the search results page.
++ Our relevance ranking is already tuned to government needs, but we will be adding site-level controls.