Windows Live Search Behind a Firewall
- I'm looking into using Windows Live Search to search my 100 page website. I was all set to use Google's similar Custom Business Search product until our security team said I can't use it because Google doesn't supply the IP addresses for their service. The security team couldn't configure the firewall rules to allow access to Google because they didn't know the IP addresses.
So I'm wondering if Windows Live Search will be suitable for my use. Does Windows Search supply a range of IP addresses that the search service uses so that our firewall can be configured properly? I tried searching for this answer but I couldn't find anything.
All Replies
Due to technical requirements of search engines, it is typically not feasible to release an IP list for crawlers. Crawlers at the scale of modern search engines often span an ever-increasing number of machines that exist in many locations around the world. Because of this, the list of IPs will be very dynamic and as a result would make your firewall rules obsolete in a very sort period.
However, I don't think an IP list should be your primary concern. I assume your security team isn't interested in opening up your firewall to public traffic because these 100 web pages contain sensitive business data. Once you let a crawler access this data it is going to be accessible publically. Site search services typically only allow you to scope results to just a few sites that a user is interested in showing results for.
I believe what might more closely meet your needs is a product like SharePoint. SharePoint will crawl your web pages and allow search all within your intranet.
Eric Carter - SDET - Webmaster Tools Team- Proposed As Answer byEric Carter MSFT Friday, November 21, 2008 11:26 PM
