Google gets serious about custom searches

While you may already know about the Google Co-op service, Google’s official blog has announced an awesome new use for the co-op engine and it’s named Google Custom Search.

While you may view Google’s regular search engine as somewhat generalist, the Mountain View search king is looking for help… from you, to build up your very custom search engine ideally pertaining to matters for which you’re knowledgable (or otherwise interested).

The results for your own “custom search engine” (or niche engine, whichever you like best) come directly from the huge “generalist” Google search feed.

In just a few minutes, anyone with basic web knowledge can establish their very own search engine catering to a vertical theme of their liking. Of course, users can still search for anything they like since they’re not limited to any given theme.

In a nutshell, any custom search engine “administrator / founder / maintainer” can:

• Add (apparently) countless URLs to their customized search engine;
• Exclude certain results or directories from different sites;
• Place a convenient search box to search results from their own website;
• Customize the appearance to match their website’s looks;
• Invite others to contribute to their custom search engine;
• Add “refinement labels” that help searchers narrow their query phrases to a particular sub-set of relevant topics.

Best of all, the more a custom search engine is visited, the better, mainly because the founder gets paid for every click on Google’s AdSense pay-per-click ads.

You might also want to take a look at the bookmarklet (Google Marker) feature that allows you to instantly add web destinations to your customized search engine while surfing online. Furthermore, you can allow volunteers (or not) to edit your search engine and add new web sites.

Overall, you could label this new Google initiative as another step towards “social search” where everybody can help everybody else find the best information possible.

Start your very own customized search engine right away!

Tags: google co-op beta, co-op, coop, social search, custom search engines, urls

One Response to “Google gets serious about custom searches”

1. Panagiotis says:

   December 6, 2006 at 8:06 am

   Hello,

   When you’re done creating your own CSE, you can submit it at CoopDir, for free.

   See you!