Google to End "Google Site Search" for Publishers

[engine]

Google hasn't officially announced it yet, but it's emailed publishers and enterprise customers to clarify that after April 1 there will be no new licences for the Site Search service, but it will honour existing licences during 2017. After then, Google Site Search will switch to Google's ad-supported Custom Search Engine.

Existing customers can keep using GSS for the life of their current license, but Google will stop selling new licenses and renewals as of April 1, according the email viewed by Fortune. Once a customer's allocation of search queries is exhausted, the account will "automatically convert" to the company's Custom Search Engine, or CSE for short. Google to End "Google Site Search" [fortune.com]

FYI, here's Google Site Search [enterprise.google.com...]

[keyplyr]

After then, Google Site Search will switch to Google's ad-supported Custom Search Engine.

And that, IMO, is an awful fate :)

I used ad-driven Google Custom Search for a few weeks while I was rolling my own. My experience was 4 ugly context ads at the top, then the search results displayed.

Besides a few basic layout templates, settings were limited. There was no way to fine-tune the results (meta description or page content, etc)

I suspect those Google Site Search publishers that ride it to the end will be greatly disappointed with Google Custom Search

[engine]

Agreed, and this is not a good option for the bigger publishers, and I wonder if the decision was made purely on financial grounds.

[graeme_p]

Bigger publishers have a lot of options for running their own search.

[phranque]

(re:Google Custom Search)
My experience was 4 ugly context ads at the top

and from what i've heard as likely as not to be competitor(s) ads for some sites.

a couple of people i trust in the site search area put Apache Solr at or near the top of their lists of recommended alternate solutions.
from the Lucene Project:
https://lucene.apache.org/solr/ [lucene.apache.org]

[keyplyr]

Thanks phranque, good to know.