Google unveiled a new feature for Google Co-Op called Custom Search Engine.
CSE lets you create a tailored search experience, specifying a list of sites that the Google-powered search engine will be customized from, as well as control the look and feel, and even make money off it.
To start off, you name and describe your search engine, add keywords, then provide a list of sites. You select whether to entirely restrict search results to those sites, or to just have Google prefer them for higher rankings. Then your search engine is created, and you can go into the options and be more specific, like excluding certain sites, creating Co-op refinements, adding logos, changing the page and text colors, and include your AdSense code to make money off displayed ads.
CSE also allows you to specify collaborators to contribute sites for the include and exclude lists, and create refinements (but not touch any of the other options), and lets people volunteer their services for your search engine. Furthermore, you can drag the Google Marker bookmarklet to your browser toolbar (IE or Firefox specified, but it works fine in Opera) to add or exclude sites while you are visiting them.
You can just put the search box on your website, or go full out and integrate it into one of your own pages, hosted on your site and sharing your site’s looks.
All in all, it sounds very powerful, and a good alternative to site search (or a great way to do sitesearch for all of your owned sites at once). I’m willing to bet there will be a ton of useless, crap search engines, as well as a few souls who create really useful implementations. If you see any great ones, be sure to let me know; I’ll link to them.
Here’s the search engine I created, featuring only sites I read and trust (plus Google Video and YouTube, for the hell of it). Feel free to suggest any sites for addition.
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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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