# Documentation Search

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This page describes some common alternatives for static site search.

- [Google search](#programmable-search-engine-by-google)
- [Docsearch by Algolia](#docsearch-by-algolia)
- [Lunr](#lunr)

## Programmable Search Engine by Google

[Google’s programmable search engine](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview)
is a search tool that crawls your **live site** and renders results on your
website.

### Pros

- Easy to configure and setup
- Multi-language support
- Support for image search
- Search across a specified collection of sites or pages
- No daily limits for queries or records.

### Cons

- Search index is completely managed and hosted on Google servers.

## Docsearch by Algolia

[DocSearch](https://docsearch.algolia.com/) is a search tool powered by the
Algolia search engine that crawls your docs and provides a dropdown search
experience on your website.

### Pros

- Provides Front-end widgets out of the box: search input, dynamic positioning
  of search results, etc.
- Integrations with popular frameworks
- Support for multi-language search.

### Cons

- Not entirely free- Limited to 10k records
- Limited access to features.

## Lunr

[Lunr.js](https://lunrjs.com/) is a small, full-text search library for use in
the browser. Lunr enables you to provide a great search experience without
needing external, server-side, search services.

### Pros

- Support for offline search
- No external package dependency
- Completely free and open source
- Full power for customization
- Support for multi-language search
- Search index is completely managed and hosted by the owner.

### Cons

- Can be complex to configure and setup (If a team is already using hugo/docsy,
  this should be _very_ easy to setup).
- Depending on site setup, may require javascript knowledge

## When Is It Best To Use One Over Another?

If you are looking to create a search capability for your open source project
without having to depend on a 3rd party service, then you should consider using
[Lunr](https://lunrjs.com/). You can take a look at
[this custom implementation](https://github.com/vitessio/website/pull/1119) or
[Hugo/Docsy implementation](https://github.com/etcd-io/website/pull/403) to see
the different ways we used Lunr to implement search.

If you are looking to create a search engine that not only focuses on the
contents of one website (site search), but on a particular topic from multiple
sites, then you should consider the
[Programmable Search Engine (Google search)](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview).