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diff --git a/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2006/10.23.05/Tue/google custom search.txt b/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2006/10.23.05/Tue/google custom search.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..75b94db --- /dev/null +++ b/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2006/10.23.05/Tue/google custom search.txt @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +As I mentioned in the morning reboot, [Google has announced a new feature][1], customized search engines, for their Google Co-op service (a service which, contrary to what some sites have implied, already existed).
A number of competing sites like [Rollyo][2] (which we have [covered in the past][3]) have offered similar services for some time, but the big difference in Google's offering is the ability to monotize your search engine. Which is of course jargon for "it connects to your AdSense account."
Setup is relatively simple. You create a search engine, give it a name, description and some keywords to indicate what it's targeting. Then you add the sites you want to search. According to Google's docs, "you can specify single web pages, entire web sites, and patterns that match certain pages or directories on a site." Which means that target only the content you want found. For instance, if you're including your blog in your search engine, you can tell Google to ignore the homepage (which may change frequently and therefore not be up-to-date in Google's index) and only search your permalinks or individual pages. You can also exclude whole domains using wildcard characters which allows you to build a search engine that can search the whole web, but ignore known link-spam sites (in fact someone has already [start such a search engine][9]).
Once your search engine is built you can collaborate with others by inviting them to contribute to your search engine. Contributors can add sites to include or exclude in your search engine and apply search refinements to them, but they can't change the look or feel of your search, nor can they make money from it. The contributors feature can be open to the world at large or limited to people you invite. This will likely be a popular feature with large organizations looking to build a customized search engine that serves a whole company.
Another useful feature is the "refinements" option which allows you "annotate the websites in your search engine with labels that help users narrow down their search." The labels appear as links at the top of your search results pages and when a user clicks the link that site is given priority in search results.
One nice feature of Rollyo that Google's offering thus far lacks is the [Rollbar][4]. True, Google has [a bookmarklet for easily adding sites to your search][10] as you find them, but the Rollyo Rollbar takes this a step further and let's you search whatever page you're on, whether you add it to your search engine or not. Hopefully Google will offer something similar soon.
You can customize the look and feel of your search engine, colors, logo, and more. And there's about half a dozen other [tweaks][6] and [customizations][5] you can apply that I don't have time to cover in detail.
####But what does it all mean?
Well there's really two possibilities here. One is for web users like you and me who want to be able to control which sites get searched and, perhaps more importantly, which sites *don't* get searched. There is also the potential to earn some revenue via AdSense, but let's be honest, for the average user that isn't going to be much.
And then there's the other side of it for those looking to build a custom search feature into a webpage. For instance, if you have a blog where you write posts but you also pull in photos from your Flickr page, you might want to make a search engine that will search both you blog posts and your Flickr pages for a given term. Most blogging software can do a fairly decent job of searching your posts, but it's useless for the Flickr content. By embedding your custom Google search page in an iframe, you've suddenly got a more powerful search with very little setup effort. To see a real world example of a customized Google search try using the search feature at [RealClimate][7].
All and all Google's new customized search is a very impressive offering, but there are some downsides. if you use the service on your site in an iframe you'll get Google's text ads in addition to your results (you can only get rid of adds if your site qualifies as a "501(c)(3) non-profit, university, or government agency website"). Then there's the whole iframe concept, which is annoying. Thankfully Google is offering what they call an [AJAX Search API][8] for advanced users.
Now if I could just figure out how to get Safari's toolbar Google search to automatically use my new customized search page....
[1]: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/eureka-your-own-search-engine-has.html "Google Announces new Customized Search"
[2]: http://www.rollyo.com/ "Rollyo.com"
[3]: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/08/rollyo_introduc.html "Monkeybites on Rollyo"
[4]: http://www.rollyo.com/bookmarklet.html "Rollbar Bookmarklet"
[5]: http://www.google.com/coop/docs/cse/cse_file.html "Custom Search Engine XML Specification"
[6]: http://google.com/coop/docs/cse/label_file.html "Annotations label file "
[7]: http://www.realclimate.org/ "Try Real Climate's implementation of Google's Customized search engine"
[8]: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/ "Google Custom Search AJAX API"
[9]: http://www.putch.com/
[10]: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/marker "Google marker bookmarklet"
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