Google site search: set to not search nav?

Question

I am using google site search which is an API I purchased where I can send it a query and it returns to me an XML with search results from my site.

It works well but I want to know if there is a way to limit it to NOT search within my global page navigation. For example if someone searches for a brand, and the brand name is within my global navigation, then the search results return every single page of my site.

My nav is withing a div element with an id of 'css_dropdown_menu' I was wondering if there was a way to possibly tell the engine to ignore anything in that element? Does anyone know?

Answer 1

Google doesn't offer a way of excluding certain sections from search indexing, to my knowledge. It is pretty good at figuring out what bits of content are repeated on many pages and deweighting those sections, though.

Answer 2

I don't know of any "really good" solution, but maybe (not sure if it's actually feasible) you could detect when you're being spidered for site-search purposes (as opposed to "regular google search spidering") and serve the page differently (omitting the part you don't want indexed) when the site-search spidering is going on (as opposed to normal visits and "regular search" spidering).