Google Co-op Launches "Create A Custom Search Engine"

[ideavirus]

Hi,

Just launched... take a look at here [techcrunch.com] and here [gigaom.com] and here [searchenginejournal.com]...

Google Co-op Launches [google.com]

This is the most significant product from google this year and will have a direct impact on its bottomline

Well... i have start with atleast 3 niche search engines already... working on them currently...

This is definetly disruptive idea...

Cheers

[edited by: tedster at 6:05 am (utc) on Oct. 24, 2006]

[bwnbwn]

PaulPA

Search only these sites. in the build

check this box and add your site only searches only your site add your subdoamin and it will search it as well

man this is better than the 3 letter word. Sex
Not

[PaulPA]

But I'm not sure how that is helping me. I already use Google search on my site. I still want people to search for results from my site. If I add CSE I'm doing this in addition to my site search not to replace it. In other words, I do not want to include my site in the list of sites contained in CSE.

Again, unless I misunderstand you, it does not seem like I can have a Google search box that gives users three ways to search: my site, CSE or the Web.

[danimal]

paul, i don't think that the google site search you have now will put up your adsense ads in the search results? so this is another opportunity to monitize your traffic, and keep it on your websites.

[Jeremy_H]

This is looking very interesting, especially with user hosted search results.

The big flaw I see with this is the inability to show search results to users with javascript disabled.

I'd be interested to see what pool of advertisers the ads are drawing from. Are they showing ads from the content network or the search engine pool?

The list of terms used could easily be captured and databased using PHP.

The one thing I'm not of a fan of is the javascript file in the search box code. I took that out but, I'm wondering how egregious of a sin that is.

[PaulPA]

i don't think that the google site search you have now will put up your adsense ads in the search results? so this is another opportunity to monitize your traffic, and keep it on your websites.

Sure it does and it displays the search results and ads right on my site.

[limbo]

I created a niche search engine yesterday to see how the tool could work.

Got listed on a couple of news sites and have recived 1000 uniques since yesterday afternoon. Not bad for a days work. It can can be set up quickly and easily and tailored to your customers or any niches you are interested in.

Maybe small adsense driven co-op engines searching only cherry picked websites might have a role?

[ideavirus]

There will be a flood of niche search engines.
Untill now, a launch a vertical search engine would get some press and say it wants to be another google killer.

Also the future lies in niche search engines if you look at the trend. Some serial entrepreneurs are getting into the age.

Also, how many niche SE's can google continue to launch themselves. This Co-op idea is so clever it beats the others in the game with big financial muscle. It's kind of an opportunity for individual webmaster launch niche SE's without much effort... as someone said hosted search results.

But this can be improved... more with more control to the webmaster.

Cheers

[mistah]

Anyone worked out how to get rid of the large gap at the bottom of the results yet?

[limbo]

CSS:

iframe {height:950px;}

[mistah]

Thanks limbo - that's done the trick.

[limbo]

no problem - you might want to set scrollbars to auto too - any user with text size above default will miss the lower SERPS at that iframe height.

[mistah]

you might want to set scrollbars to auto

How do I do that?

I've noticed that th 950px setting gives problems on some results pages with the "previous" and "next" links being covered up by the search box that I have at the bottom of the page. It seems that when Google adds a "similar pages" option on some of the search results it is pushing the size of the results above 950px.

[mistah]

On another note, now I've had a chance to play around with this I'm getting some funny results.

I've got approx 2000 sites in my "custom search engine." For some seaches "widgets" brings up no results, but "blue widgets" brings up several results. Anyone else finding this?

[inbound]

Mistah,

I think the CSE's are set to query with a variant of OR rather than AND if the result numbers are low. Try looking at the pages returned for 'blue widgets' and see if they just include blue. I've seen some odd results like this too.

[mistah]

Try looking at the pages returned for 'blue widgets' and see if they just include blue

I've tried several searches of the "blue widgets" variety and they all contain the words "blue" and "widgets" - if that makes sense.

[inbound]

Very odd that is does not return anything for 'widgets'. All of the searches we have tried have been 3 or 4 words due to the nature of the sites in the CSE.

I'm quite dissapointed by the lack of documentation, such as how to get an 'opt out' CSE to use UK results as standard.

Maybe someone from Google will fix the documentation issue by adding an advanced documentation section, I'm happy to get my hands dirty.

[peterdaly]

Have my first three contributors this morning....I'm not real happy. I don't know anything about them other than the day they registered and the last time they were active. This could make management a problem. I can't even contact them...it's basically three anonymous users that all look the same to me. I can understand that from a privacy perspective, but it's not implemented well.

Anyone know if I can have moderation authority over contributions? I supposed I may find out soon enough either way.

[Lovejoy]

Hi All,

Could we use this for a paid "Search Service"? Say for example setting up very specific search engines for collectors motorcycle widgets, Blue widgets with brown spots etc.... and charge a fee for access?

P.S. I haven't set one up or read the TOS yet, does any one know?

Lovejoy- Out

[annej]

Well I was dubious but had to play with it. I just set up a niche search and have only included reputable sites so the searcher will only get accurate information. I'm really pleased with the kind of results it brings up. I will use it myself when I am doing research.

I will put the search box on pages where students and researchers would be looking for information. It won't make a cent for me but it will be add quality to my site. That's what gets me the academic and government links. So in the long run it may help and it didn't take long to build.

I can't seem to get the results page working on my site. I'll try again when I have time. Meanwhile the results are on Google.

[PaulPA]

While I have not set this up as my main search since (as I noted in previous posts) it does not allow for limiting searches to your own site, I have installed as a value-added search option inside my site.

This custom search is perfect if your site contains highly selective links. In my case I run a business reference site and have many links that are selectively chosen. To add all these links to create a database I simply ran a MySQL query and then copied the urls. Easy. Setup is to load the results on the site and also tied it into AdSense.

[inbound]

Annej,

Your problem with getting the search results to work on your site may be due to using Firefox in the CSE interface, I've had to resort to IE to get it to function correctly. I got quite frustrated with it until switching over, must be a scripting issue.

[peterdaly]

annej,

Firefox Ad Blocking is causing problems. Whitelist your own site and it should work...at least that's what my users tell me works for them.

[MikeNoLastName]

Anyone figure out how to get JUST the sponsored results on the right (like on a google search results) without the BIG FAT Ads by Google right smack at the top or at least be able to reposition it to the sides or the bottom?. The look-and-feel setup section looks pretty darn stark (no size or shape options at all). Our visitors are primarily searching OUR site first, we don't want to send them packing before they even have a chance to find what they are looking for on our own site. Without this capability we'll need to just run it without any ads.
Tell G it would also be nice to be able to prioritize the sites which we include. (i.e. be able to assign an additional weight to be factored in to each site selected based on OUR OWN "authoratative criteria".)
Yeah, I see a WHOLE NEW BREED of MFAs popping up around this feature.

[MikeNoLastName]

Ooh, ooh I think I just found a bug!
If you restrict the search to a list of, say, your own domains, and then click on the "similar pages" link under the search results, it brings up pages OUTSIDE of the designated domain list! BAD G!

Also, the ads which come up with Adsense turned on do NOT take into account the search terms you associate with your site in the setup. i.e. if your site is all about widgets and you enter "widgets" in the keywords section. Yest when someone searches, they only search on "large" instead of "large widgets" then the ads which come up only refer to "large" (which can have many unintended implications) rather than "widgets".

I think they need to do a bit more work on it before we'll be switching to it. This should have been marked as 'beta test'.

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 8:58 pm (utc) on Oct. 25, 2006]

[annej]

I'm not getting anything in IE either so it's not the firefox problem.

I hae never used iframes before and my code may be wrong. Could someone post or sticky me the proper code for the iframe?

Thanks

[Marillion79]

I think it's really great idea for Googlet to make personal search engines. Anywhere, it's not only additional adSense money, they want to increase SERP quality with webmasters-experts in different areas. No spam, no trash, only usefull sites with quality content in search results.
It's really impressive product.

[limbo]

I totally agree Marillion79

I have had this running on a throw away domain for 48 hours now.

It's a great way to search your own site, but even better try setting up an entire site based on your 'human' knowledge of a niche. Take out the phony, scraped, directory, junk listings and leave squeaky clean, and very helpful SERPS + it has the ability to monetise via AdSense for eCPM.

[Marillion79]

limbo, there're social networks with best area experts also. They can do Google's work for ranking good web sites very quickly and for free, sure. Google don't need SERP moderators any more!
It makes Web Clean, yep.

[cwnet]

I would have thought that by now this thread would have hundreds of messages.

However, It seems that the majority of webmasters around here either "don't get it" or are just to busy implementing this.

Amazing how many "webmaster" do not know how to read...every single "how to?" in this thread is clearly explained on the google site (at least the version i am served here in Spain using ie7 - and I am not a native English speaker).

Every single question posted can be answered by "go back and READ!".

I have my niche vertical search engine up and running (close to 3000 sites) including weighted SERPs and the feedback from the first one thousand users (invited to test) is more than encouraging (including adsense money with an average of .65 $ per click).

Obviously this is not a service for e-commerce websites but for information providing sites - websites that exist to help users find the most accurate information available on the net.

If you are already known for your expertise within your industry people will use your custom search engine beacause the user trusts YOU to select the websites to be searched, ranked and returned by Google (my knowledge combined with Google's technology is a dream come true for me, my users and ultimatively Google.)

At the same time Google is providing the (in my case) very targeted ads and shares the revenue with me - this enables me to focus on the content (in this case usefull websites to add to MY index).

If anybody out there really believes that this is *evil* for anybody than I am happy to be evil too.

Of course, if successful, this makes DMOZ and its clones obsolete, which is not a bad thing in my book.

And, just to make it clear: I do understand that an institution like New York Times prefers its own search engine to avoid a branding conflict even though its clearly NOT state of the art. Not in every case *user experience* is the top priority - no matter what polished press releases say.

Oh, by the way, maybe webmasterworld could dump its search engine from the 90s and implement Google Custom Search - I would appreciate it!

[ideavirus]

I believe the following can also be customised according to the Google's documentation under branding;

# Search Results Title
# Search Results Background
# Search Results Text
# Search Results Links
# Search Results Visited Links
# Search Results Similar Pages Link

How can i possibly do the same, like font type, size and other aspects of the above options.

Also, i have seen some niche search engines using google cse have removed the text 'Google Custom Search' from the text box. how can i do that?

Thanks for any help.