Guide to Software Release 7.6.250

This document describes features that are new or changed since release 7.6.50.

Google Search Appliance release 7.6.250 updates are available for the G100 and G500. For a list of new, fixed, previous, and closed issues for software release 7.6.250, refer to the release notes. Both the software updates and the release notes are available at the Google Cloud Support site, https://google.secure.force.com (login required).

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New and changed features

The following sections describe new and changed features in software release 7.6.250:

Search crawl diagnostics by display URL

In release 7.6.250, you can find the crawl diagnostics for a document by entering its display URL. You can then click the internal URL that's shown to see the document's crawl status.

Search by display URL on the Index > Diagnostics > Index Diagnostics page, using the Search for URLs button.

Select exact ciphers used for serving

In release 7.6.250, you can set the exact set of ciphers you want the search appliance to use for TLS connections. The Admin Console lists all supported ciphers and you can edit the list as needed, or reset to the default.

Set ciphers on the Administration > SSL Settings page, using the Set Cipher Suite for HTTPS Serving text box.

Configure GSA serving with HSTS

In release 7.6.250, you can add a Strict-Transport-Security header (HSTS-Header) in HTTPS. This ensures browsers can communicate with the search appliance only through an encrypted connection.

Enable the header on the Administration > SSL Settings page, under Force secure connections when serving? Check the Use HTTPS when serving both public and secure results box. After saving the configuration, you can then check the Strict-Transport-Security header (HSTS-Header) box. You can also set the maximum age, in days.

Implement duplicate avoidance via canonical link

In release 7.6.250, you can use the "canonical" link tag to reduce the number of duplicate URLs the search appliance crawls. HTML files that use the canonical element (<link rel="canonical" />) are treated as duplicate pages and do not show up in search results.

If an HTML file contains other redirects, the canonical element needs to be the first tag inside the <head> tag. For information about adding the canonical <link> tag to HTML documents, see the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Canonical links detection is enabled by default. Change the setting on the Index > Index Settings page, using the Enable Canonical Links Detections option.

Configure Admin Console expiration

In release 7.6.250, you can set the idle timeout for Admin Console sessions. If an Admin Console session is inactive for more than the set limit, the user must log in again. Range is 5 to 60 minutes. Default is 30 minutes.

Set the idle timeout on the Administration > User Accounts page.

Configure maximum number of documents to count for dynamic navigation

In release 7.6.250, you can change the maximum number of documents the GSA searches when using dynamic navigation for public and secure queries. Previously, the limit was 10,000 documents for secure searches and 30,000 for public searches. You can set the value to any number larger than 0.

Set the number of documents on the Search > Search Features > Dynamic Navigation page, using the Parametric number of documents setting options.

Note: Increasing the number of documents also increases search response time and may impact performance.

Adjust frequency of "crawl Infrequently"

In release 7.6.250, you can set the crawl frequency for documents that are never, or only infrequently, modified. You can set the crawl interval to once a week, once a month, or not more than once every 3 months.

Set the crawl infrequently interval on the Content Sources > Web Crawl > Freshness Tuning page, using the Refresh Interval for Crawl Infrequently Patterns drop-down list.

Entity Diagnostics not restricted to HTML documents

Release 7.6.250 removes the restriction of using only HTML files for entity diagnostics. Entity diagnostics now supports any file type.

Configure entity diagnostics on the Index > Entity Recognition page.

Deprecated features

Features marked as “Deprecated” will be removed in a future release. In release 7.6.250, “Deprecated” features are still supported.

SSLv3

In GSA release 7.6.50, support for SSLv3 was deprecated. It continues to be deprecated in release 7.6.250 and will be removed in a future release.

GSA Unification

In GSA release 7.6, GSA Unification was deprecated. It continues to be deprecated in release 7.6.250 and will be removed in a future release.

Release 7.6.250 documentation

Google Search Appliance documentation is available from the GSA help center. Search appliance troubleshooting and deployment documentation, as well as copies of Admin Console help, are also available from the GSA help center.

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Supported browsers and third-party software

Google has certified the browsers and third-party products in the following table for use with software release 7.6.250.

Category Product Name and Version
Browsers Google Chrome (which automatically updates whenever it detects that a new version of the browser is available)
Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 8 and above in standard mode
Mozilla Firefox current and previous major releases
The Admin Console supports Safari 5.1 only; search supports Safari 5.1 and later
Network infrastructure HTTP 1.1
HTTPS
Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers 3.0 and higher
SSO
(Single sign-on)		 Computer Associates SiteMinder 6.0, Policy Server and Web Agent
Oracle Access Manager 7.0.4 (formerly Oblix)
Cams by Cafesoft, version 3.0
Web servers Apache
Netscape Enterprise
Microsoft Internet Information Server
XSLT EXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations: XSLT 2.0
XML Path Language: XPath 1.0

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