Adding External Search Results to the Search Center

Another type of scope is the remote search service scope that uses external search engines.

1. Go to the Portal Administration > Portlet Management > Portlets page.
2. Search for the string External. The portlet that you want to modify is named External Search Results.
3. Edit the value of the searchEngineUrl parameter. This value represents the URL of the third-party search engine that you want to be queried. You must include the ${searchTerms} in the value. During a search query, ${searchTerms} is replaced by the actual query. Example search engine URLs:

   Google News:

   http://news.google.com/news?output=rss&q=${searchTerms}

   Yahoo News:

   http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=${searchTerms}&ei=UTF-8&eo=UTF-8

   Flickr:

   http://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=${searchTerms}&format=atom

4. Optional: You can also add a More link to the end of the External Search Results that links to the engine page. For example:
   1. Edit the searchEngineFullPageUrl parameter.
   2. In the Value field, paste the engine URL plus ${searchTerms}. For example: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/search/searchResults.jsp?searchSite=dW&searchScope=dW&query=${searchTerms}
5. To save your changes, click OK twice.
6. Adapt the proxy configuration file of the Search Center portlet. Proceed as follows:
   1. Export the proxy configuration file by running the read-outbound-http-connection-config task. For example, ConfigEngine.sh read-outbound-http-connection-config -DConfigFileName=your_path/config_file.xml -DApplicationScopeRef=PA_Search_Center where your_path/config_file.xml is the absolute path name of the proxy configuration file of the Search Center portlet. For more information about the read-outbound-http-connection-config task, go to Reading an outbound HTTP connection configuration profile.
   2. Add the xml to the file your_path/config_file.xml and specify the URL for the third-party search engine in the <policy> tag. For example, for Yahoo News, the policy tag looks as follows:

      <policy url="http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/*" acf="none">
          <actions>
              <method>GET</method>
              <method>HEAD</method>
          </actions>
          <mime-types>
              <mime-type>text/xml*</mime-type>
              <mime-type>application/xml*</mime-type>
              <mime-type>application/atom+xml*</mime-type>
              <mime-type>application/rss+xml*</mime-type>
          </mime-types>
      </policy>

   3. Update the proxy configuration file by running the update-outbound-http-connection-config task. For example, ConfigEngine.sh update-outbound-http-connection-config -DConfigFileName=your_path/config_file.xml -DApplicationScopeRef=PA_Search_Center where your_path/config_file.xml is the absolute path name of the proxy configuration file of the Search Center portlet. For more information about the update-outbound-http-connection-config task, go to Updating an outbound HTTP connection configuration profile.
7. Stop and restart the Search Center application. To do this, you access the WebSphere® Integrated Solutions Console and click Applications > WebSphere Enterprise Applications. Then, you can stop and restart the Search Center application.