[thelist] Search alternatives

[Moe Rubenzahl]

I run a large-ish commercial B2B website and am looking for site
search capabilities.

For some years, I have used Atomz.com for the site search. (This is a
service provider model -- they crawl the site and index it, then the
search runs on their servers. Customers can't tell it is not on our
site). One advantage is that their search is very good. But it is
missing a few features that would  necessitate moving up to their
much-more-expensive Enterprise version. And I recently decided to add
a second account to search our Japanese site and though this second
one is small (under 1000 pages), they are asking a potload of money
for such a minor increment ($5000/yr, though they will give me a good
discount).

So while I am satisfied and would rather stay with Atomz, I need to
look around.

1. Can anyone recommend another service of Atomz's caliber?

2. How about hosting it myself with either Open Source or purchased
software? I have enought horsepower in both Linux and Solaris boxes.
The site is Cold Fusion powered, by the way.

3. Or maybe the Google Search Appliance box? I think it's $20K, but
with no recurring charges.

Whatcha think?

Moe