Running an ecommerce site, I have always had a problem with Search. None of the modules I implemented before, did satisfy my search requirements. So just last week I implemented CSE Business edition. Here is what has happened so far:

The Good:

- The search results are the most relevant I have had. I am extremely happy as to the speed and the relevance

The Bad:

- I feel like, if you pay money for a service, you should get adequate support. the support link in the CSE main does not provide you with any means to contact google for support. I ended up emailing to the email address on my google checkout receipt and venting frustration until someone responded
- The Group where you post your question to is full of questions but no answers. It seems no one from google bothers to read the posts
- The documentation are extremely lacking

The Real Bad:

- The implementation is only for http protocol. There is no implementation for secured pages. Thus, your result pages always warns you about privacy issues and cookies being blocked. It seems to me that at least the “Business Edition” must be able to adhere to the https protocol so as not push custometrs away from a Business Site by elluding that there are some privacy concerns about the site they visit
- There is no documentation as to how to change the look and feel of the result pages. Nor as to how remove Google Branding, even though what documentation exists, tells you that you can remove the Branding. I spent 1 whole day searching through the Group to find an answer.
- The support team finally got back to me saying: “The issue will be prioritized by our Project Managers and Developers, but
I’m not able to give you an ETA for this.” Meanwhile, my customers are hesitant to purchase anything from an ecommerce site with a “Privacy Issue”

Enhancement Requests:

- It would be great if in addition to text search, the CSE could do an image search as well to list the image beside the text of the result. That would be extremely helpful for an ecommerce site
- It would be great if you could do other things than simple search. I know that you can do Boolean and other filtering but if you could change the look and feel to something akin to Google’s own advance search, it would make it a lot easier

Is there any way to have the custom search engine just search specific areas of google like Google Products (http://www.google.com/products). When you try to add http://www.google.com/products to selected sites it errors out with “Please enter a valid URL.” Tried wildcards as well. It does seem to allow subdomains for Google like maps.google.com but products.google.com is not a valid subdomain.

The process I follow under the new system is:
1. Set up AdSense for Search under one’s AdSense account.
2. Use the “Manage Ads” interface to edit the AdSense for Search you just set up.
3. Go over to the CSE side of things through the “View more advanced search features” link on the AdSense side.
4. Set up the search engine as if it were a CSE.

The new CSE settings will then be applied to the AdSense for Search engine you just set up.

AdSense for Search is DEAD, long live AdSense for Search! )

I do have to say though that setting things up under the old CSE for AdSense seemed more intuitive and straight forward than what currently exists for AdSense for Search.

The problem is though that I wouldn’t have a clue as to how to straighten it out without simply duplicating the CSE interface for the AdSense for Search interface, although that is already done to a certain extent anyway.

I know, use a 302 Temporary Redirect from AdSense for Search to CSE so people have everything in one place without becoming confused as to where they are.

Now let me nip one idea in the bud…

Nice try You should know by now that most only read what they want to hear.

Been using MANY CSE on my site for a while now. I have them search by category of each site on the same theme as mine. Great stuff.

However, I must say that the paid CSE VS the free CSE, doesn’t come close to justifying the cost.

Thanks for feedback.

“My Mom runs a charity that has a web site,”

I have deep respect for your privacy. However, don’t you think its time to grant your Mom charity site and charity blog few backlinks to support that charity cause