Our Site's New Search Engine

When we ask CyberCadets (Gurudeva's affectionate name for all of you who use our sites) what the most important improvement would be for them, we get one answer: "Better search engine." Our team has been working for months (not on this one project, of course) to address this need, and today we are delighted to announce that it's here: a Google Custom Search Engine with extra refinements by our team.

At the top-right of every page you will now find a search field that says "search this site." You can use the same strategies for your search as you would on Google, using several keywords or putting an exact string into quotes for a precise target. One we like is to ask: books "fear of death" and you will get back all references to "fear of death" in the books. Or you can ask: TAKA "Kumar Gurukkal" to go to pages showing when he was here at the monastery in the last few years. Or type: art rajam ganesha to find one of 134 works of art S. Rajam created depicting Lord Ganesha. Or type: Gurudeva Sivaratri.

There is more. Once you click search, the engine will give you the returns on a new page. In the case of that last query, we get 286 references in Google's style to which we are all accustomed. Here on the results page you will now see a series of tabs between the search field and results. They are named AUDIO, TAKA, ART, BOOKS, PHOTOS, VIDEO, HINDUISM TODAY, etc.

If you now click on the AUDIO tab after searching Gurudeva Sivaratri, you will be instantly presented with 55 results only of Gurudeva's talks. You can get the most recent talks (or TAKA posts) by choosing "Date" instead of "Relevance" from the "Sort by" selector at the top-right of the results.

We invite you to discover the vast resources on our sites, and also to send us a note sharing your experience and suggesting how we can make search even more serviceable on our site in the future.

Yes, himalayanacademy.com is both amazing and a-maze-ing, as in a tangled maze.

No one we know has not been there, by which we mean has not been able to get there.

This new Search Engine can cut through the maze

Because it\

s Google, it\'s really fast and thorough. It will get even better after we train those little creatures to index our sites better.'

Try it.

This is the new search field we are talking about. It may look the same as it has for the past two years, but there\

s something completely different under the hood now.'

It works. (The names of search results such as this one will be improved upon as we fine-tune it to understand our site even more.)

We tried searching for Manivelu art on Siva

On category pages (only) you will see a second search field at the bottom. This box will search our site only in that category, and it\

s not as fast as Google. Still, it can be useful. Further developments are planned here, too.'

Off now to the world of acronyms...

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