Your search engine service runs on a redundant fault-tolerant server farm and handles
many thousands of sites around the world.
The chances are excellent that if it does not appear to be working
the problem is at your end.
The search box is a simple HTML form.
Many HTML editors have problems manipulating forms and will create
pages with broken forms.
To diagnose this type of problem, you will need to look at the actual HTML source
of your page.
Check the following common issues to determine what the problem is.
This is because your pasted the search box into your page using an HTML editor,
and the HTML editor thought you were adding text, not HTML.
Remove the search box and try again.
This time, look for a "paste as HTML" function in your HTML editor, or,
as originally recommended, use a text editor (like Windows Notepad) to add the
search box to your page.
For more complete information on this, see the tutorial
Basic Page Search Setup.
This is typically because your search box is missing the form tags.
The search box is an HTML form and without its form tags clicking on the
button will do nothing.
At the start of the search box (or perhaps at the start of the page)
there should be an HTML tag which starts "<form action=...".
If it is not there then that is the problem.
It's usually easiest to fix this by just removing the old search box
from your page, and adding a new one.
You can also add the missing form tags
to your page's HTML source manually.
This typically happens for one of the following reasons:
The search box has an empty form tag.
Look at the "<form..." tag at the start of the search box HTML in your page
(or perhaps at the start of the page itself).
It should start "<form action=...".
If instead it is simply "<form>" then you need
to fix the search box HTML.
The form "action" address is not correct.
Look at the "<form action=..." tag at the start of the search box HTML in your page.
The action value should be
"http://search.freefind.com/find.html".
If it is not then you need to fix the search box.
Note that if your action is incorrect, then most likely the various text links
in the search box are also incorrect and will need to be fixed as well.
There is an empty <form> tag overriding the search box <form> tag.
Look to see if there is an empty form tag
(like this: "<form>")
before the form tag which is at the start of your search box.
If it is there, it should be removed.
It's usually easiest to fix the search box by just removing the old one
from your page, and adding a new one.
If your HTML editor does not handle forms well or if the page is too broken,
you may need to use a text editor (like Windows "notepad", not a word processor!)
to fix the page and add the new search box.
This typically happens for one of the following reasons:
The forms on your page are nested.
Forms do not "nest"; before you start another form
(with a "<form..." tag)
the previous form must be closed (with the tag: "</form>").
Even if you only have one form on the page your HTML editor may have added
additional form tags, breaking the one form you do have.
Look at the HTML source of your page and make sure that none of the
forms are nested.
The search box has an empty form tag.
Look at the "<form..." tag at the start of the search box HTML in your page
(or perhaps at the start of the page itself).
It should start "<form action=...".
If instead it is simply "<form>" then you need
to fix the search box HTML.
The form "action" address is not correct.
Look at the "<form action=..." tag at the start of the search box HTML in your page.
The action value should be
"http://search.freefind.com/find.html".
If it is not then you need to fix the search box.
Note that if your action is incorrect, then most likely the various text links
in the search box are also incorrect and will need to be fixed as well.
There is an empty <form> tag overriding the search box <form> tag.
Look to see if there is an empty form tag
(like this: "<form>")
before the form tag which is at the start of your search box.
If it is there, it should be removed.
It's usually easiest to fix the search box by just removing the old one
from your page, and adding a new one.
If your HTML editor does not handle forms well or if the page is too broken,
you may need to use a text editor (like Windows "notepad", not a word processor!)
to fix the page and add the new search box.
This can be one of two general problems, as indicated by the secondary
message which gets displayed:
"User id is missing from search request"
If you use Microsoft Word as an HTML editor and are using the Netscape browser then look
here.
Otherwise you are probably getting this error message because
your search box was modified to change the "id" field.
Look at HTML source of your page and locate the search box form.
In it should be a line similar to:
Some HTML editors will (without telling you) change the "name=" value to
something else, like "id2" instead of "id". The solution is to remove the search
search box and try adding it again, or to manually undo all the changes that your
HTML editor made. Note that other form names were changed as well, so it is not
just the line above that needs to be fixed.
This can also happen if the line above is simply missing, due to incorrect
editing of the search box, or not copying the entire search box into your page.
"Site map not found"
You have probably turned off the site map in the Control Center. You will need to either
turn it back on,
or remove the site map button from your search box.
This means that the account referred to in the search box
has not yet been spidered (indexed).
To index your site you first need to
go to the Control Center
and log in to your account.
The password you need was included in your signup email.
After you have logged in, go to the
page and use the Index now link.
When the next page appears, press the
button to start indexing your site.
If you are sure that you have indexed your site, then
perhaps one or more of the following apply:
You have more than one account...
...and you are indexing one, but your search box uses the other.
Each account uses its own unique search box.
When you use a search box, you can see which account it is for by looking for an "id" in
the address at the top of the browser, like:
"...id=123...".
In this case the account's site ID is 123.
Verify that this is the account that you are indexing by either looking for the site ID in the
email you receive or by logging in and looking for the site ID near the top of the page (above
the tabs).
Your search box has a bad "id" value.
Look at HTML source of your page and locate the search box form.
In it should be a line similar to:
Make sure that the value is the same as the site ID of your account.
There can be no extra characters (spaces/etc).
You have closed the account associated with the search box.
If you have used the permanently close account option in the
page of the Control Center, your account has been permanently closed.
This is not a "log out" function!
If you want to continue using the search engine, you will need to sign up again.
This is caused by getting the a search box from the "resources" section of
our site, but not replacing the
"YourSiteID" string with your actual site ID.
We recommend getting your search box from the
page of the Control Center. The panels on that page do not need to be modified to work.
There is a problem with your search box HTML resulting in a "garbage"
request being sent to our servers.
Remove your old search box and add a new one using your text editor.
This typically happens for one of the following reasons:
The forms on your page are nested.
Forms do not "nest"; before you start another form
(with a "<form..." tag)
the previous form must be closed (with the tag: "</form>").
Even if you only have one form on the page your HTML editor may have added
additional form tags, breaking the one form you do have.
Look at the HTML source of your page and make sure that none of the
forms are nested.
The search box has an empty form tag.
Look at the "<form..." tag at the start of the search box HTML in your page
(or perhaps at the start of the page itself).
It should start "<form action=...".
If instead it is simply "<form>" then you need
to fix the search box HTML.
The form "action" address is not correct.
Look at the "<form action=..." tag at the start of the search box HTML in your page.
The action value should be
"http://search.freefind.com/find.html".
If it is not then you need to fix the search box.
Note that if your action is incorrect, then most likely the various text links
in the search box are also incorrect and will need to be fixed as well.
There is an empty <form> tag overriding the search box <form> tag.
Look to see if there is an empty form tag
(like this: "<form>")
before the form tag which is at the start of your search box.
If it is there, it should be removed.
There is some other problem with your search box HTML.
Remove your old search box and add a new one using your text editor.
It's usually easiest to fix the search box by just removing the old one
from your page, and adding a new one.
If your HTML editor does not handle forms well or if the page is too broken,
you may need to use a text editor (like Windows "notepad", not a word processor!)
to fix the page and add the new search box.
You are using Microsoft Word as an "HTML editor".
Word consistently produces pages which will not work with Netscape.
This means that about 20% of your visitors will have problems with your Word-created site.
In order to guarantee maximum compatibility we recommend using a non-Microsoft HTML editor.
If you insist on using Word you will need to manually fix each page using a real text editor.
This will need to be done every time you save the page using Word. The most common problems
reported are "<span>" tags being placed in the
middle of forms and generating HTML with a backslash ("\")
in a link when the user clearly meant to use a forward slash ("/").
page and use the 
page of the Control Center, your account has been permanently closed.
This is not a "log out" function!
If you want to continue using the search engine, you will need to sign up again.
page of the Control Center. The panels on that page do not need to be modified to work.