Insuma FAQ - general questions

• How many pages can be indexed?
• How often can I have my site reindexed?
• Is there a professional version?
• Do you index PDF files?
• What extended (non-search) features do you have?
• Do you have some demo sites using your search engine?
• Where do I go from here?
• Can you tell me about your company?
• Do you display advertising?
• How much does this cost?
• Why is your pricing so low?
• Can more than one site be combined into a single index?
• Can the look of the search results be customized?
• Can dynamic content be indexed (database, asp, jsp, php, cfm, shtml, etc)?
• Does it work with frames?
• Can my corporate intranet be indexed?
• Can password-protected pages be indexed?
• Can you index my database?
• Can you index my CD-ROM, my hard disk?
• What are your privacy policies?
• What are your other policies?
• What is the difference between site search and web search?

Free accounts (InsumaStarter) start with an initial limit of 500 KB of crawled pages. This limit can be increased, and large sites are welcome.

In the professional version InsumaStarter Pro this limit is raised to 100.000 KB. Larger amounts can be indexed in the connection with InsumaFocus contract. There is no standard price list for InsumaFocus, as it is highly customizable. Therefore, the price depends on your configuration. Please contact us and we return a quote the same day.

How often can I have my site reindexed?
All accounts get unlimited on-demand reindexing and automatic reindexing as often as weekly.

Is there a professional version?
Yes, our service is designed for professionals. We recommend the professional subscription version, InsumaStarter Pro, to all businesses and anyone else who wants extended features and support.

Do you index PDF files?
Yes, all subscriptions are able to index PDF and MS Word files (both .doc and .rtf). This option is not activated by default. You can activate it in the Control Center in the section Crawler settings > Allowed MIME-Types.

What extended (non-search) features do you have?
Other services that come free with your account are:

• Search statistics (top found keywords, top not found keywords)
• Detailed crawler statistics
• Category management (you can assign parts of your web site to categories and search in them separately).

Do you have some demo sites using your search engine?
Yes, the search at the top left of this web site is performed by InsumaStarter. You can see other examples in the Demo Center at this web site.

Where do I go from here?
Sign up for a free InsumaStarter account at the left side. Once you receive your free account, you will be able to change it to the professional InsumaStarter Pro account (if desired) with just a few clicks in the Control Center.

Can you tell me about your company?
Founded as a hi-tech spin-off of an information retrieval project at the University of Tuebingen, Insuma now provides its search technology to such internationally operating companies as Bayer AG or Deutsche Messe AG. It served as the official search engine of the biggest worldwide IT fair CeBIT in Hannover earlier this year.

Products of Insuma GmbH include intelligent web agents, search engines for portals (as an XML based Web-Service) and company Intranets, enabling heterogeneous document formats in a variety of languages.

Do you display advertising?
No. We do not display advertising banners or the likes in any version, not even in the free version. We also do not re-distribute your emails or other contact information to any third party. Offering free accounts is the way of promoting our services, in hope that you like it and some day wish to subscribe for the professional version.

How much does this cost?
There are two types of accounts. Free accounts (InsumaStarter) and subscription accounts (InsumaStarter Pro).

Free accounts are truly free. We provide a full-featured solution to you without the usual hidden free service limitations or "gotchas" designed to make you pay. The only limitation is in KBytes of indexed documents.

Subscription accounts (InsumaStarter Pro) come with priority email support for quick answers to your questions.

Why is your pricing so low?
We are a small company concentrating on the core competence in search engines, without a substential management overhead. Still, we enforce a secure long-term cost management which allows us to give the best quality/price ratio in this area.

Can more than one site be combined into a single index?
Yes. This is trivial to do with the easy-to-use Control Center. Go to the section Crawler settings > URL options and add more sites there.

Can the look of the search results be customized?
Yes. You can easily customize the look of the search results by using the Control Center. You can create or link your own CSS for every part of a search result (URL, summary, etc). You can replace header and footer of the page with your own design.

Can dynamic content be indexed (database, asp, jsp, php, cfm, shtml, etc)?
Yes. Insuma search engine does not care what happens "behind the scenes" at your server. It accesses your pages just like a visitor with a browser does. Because of this, it can index just about any site on the web.

Does it work with frames?
Yes, Insuma search engine works fine with frames.

Can my corporate intranet be indexed?
Typically no. Most corporate intranets are private, so they are shielded from our spider (indexer). We cannot index such sites with InsumaStarter or InsumaStarter Pro, but we can do it in frames with InsumaFocus contract. InsumaFocus will use the credentials to access the information stored in your intranet.

Can password-protected pages be indexed?
Not with the standard versions InsumaStarter or InsumaStarter Pro, though we can do it in InsumaFocus. Please contact us regarding the costs involved.

Can you index my database?
Only websites accessible over the Internet can be indexed by InsumaStarter or InsumaStarter Pro. It is OK if the web pages are dynamically generated from a database, but they must appear to an Internet browser as web pages. Databases cannot be indexed directly. We can index your database with InsumaFocus, please contact us for a quote.

Can you index my CD-ROM, my hard disk?
Only websites accessible over the Internet can be indexed. It is OK if the web pages are read off a CD-ROM or hard disk, but they must appear to an Internet browser as web pages. We can index your file server or even your hard drive directly, with InsumaFocus. Please contact us for a quote.

What are your privacy policies?
We have very strict privacy policies. We do not re-distribute your e-mail or other contact information to any third party. They are used only in connection with serving your search engine needs.

What are your other policies?
For other policies, please see our disclaimer.

What is the difference between site search and web search?
"Site search" is what a visitor to your site uses to locate pages on your site only.
"Web search" is used to locate pages anywhere on the entire Internet. Typically, web search results do not include pages from your site simply because your site is only one of millions.