Eric Enge is quick out of the gate with Custom Search Guide, which is a directory of Google Custom Search Engines.
And the AJAX search API folks whipped up a quick example of blending the Google AJAX Search API and a CSE. It’s got four CSEs on one page (product reviews, price comparisons, forums/message boards, and shopping). Then from the AJAX side, there’s blog, web, and news search, plus a strip of related videos at the bottom. If you haven’t seen the latest examples of the AJAX search API, it’s worth a looksee. My favorite is the mash-up of search + a spreadsheet + mapping on this page. You could also use that page to generate phone leads, for example.
Reading through this discussion, Obli went from “bah, it didn’t work…” to a search engine over US and UK universities in less than an hour. 🙂
Haha! I’m the first to post a comment on this entry. Quick pickup on the search guide, Matt. Did you have inside info?
One minor nitpick with Google Custom Search so far: Unless I’m missing something obvious, I cannot use Google Docs & Spreadsheets to manage my annotations file for a custom search engine because Google Spreadsheets doesn’t export the spreadsheet as a tab-delimited file, the format that Google Custom Search expects!
So if I want to upload my annotations file in the TSV format, I’ll have to – gasp – export the Google Spreadsheets spreadsheet to Microsoft Excel and then export again to TSV format for Google Custom Search. Google wouldn’t want me doing that, would it? 🙂
Also, now I sit and patiently await Google Custom Blog Search on top of Google Blog Search. 🙂
Okay, I’ll stop spamming you now.
Regards,
-Nas
Michael, I had been talking to Eric by email about this. 🙂
A fair point, Nas. 🙂 I’ll pass the feedback on.
Is there documentation online already about api calls for the CSEs?
Based on http://www.google.com/uds/samples/cse/index.html
Does this mean we can create an engine and have it completely on our site with no frame? With no ads like the samples? Maybe I am missing it, but I admit I’ve never used the API before but I guess it’s time.
An actual tutorial about how that mashup was made would be amazing for us just starting out.
I received emails in multiple mailboxes from this Eric Enge fellah today, he surely wants to be seen for this CSG thinger.
Is “attention getter” in Aaron Wall’s New World Internet Marketing Glossary? 🙂
Shame sites have to “qualify” for deep crawling before you include them in a CSE …
graywolf, what do you mean by “‘qualify’ for deep crawling before you can include them in a CSE”? I just created a science fiction search engine for Xenite.Org and I didn’t see any restriction on sites, other than those I chose to filter out.
Works great! Took me a couple hours to put together one for social netowrk and online dating search
Hi Matt,
Just wondering, if you visit the above site, it looks very much like google, but in Hungarian. Are they using the Custom search??
Regards
Michael – My understanding is that the CSE program is a human edited filter on top of Google’s search index. As such, pages that Google cannot crawl do note get include. I am just guessing that this is what Graywolf means above.
Aaron – my apologies if you got more than 1 email. I thought I had sent you 1.
Eric
Ok, so am I the only weirdo who thinks it is really funny that when I went to the “blending the Google AJAX Search API and a CSE” link and searched for monkey (my warped mind’s standard test search) that there was the video of Steve Ballmer of Microsoft dancing around the stage like an idiot?
Just checking.
Eric Enge is the real deal, sorry for implying that you are some kind of email spammer, it was late and I didn’t have time to look into what you had to offer. 🙂
I wonder if CSG gets the adsense clicks, or if they still leave it linked to the originator’s adsense account… ?
Here’s another one like CSG already. I imagine we’ll see a bunch of them soon.
http://www.lurpo.com/
It doesn’t seem quite as polished as CSG, but maybe a bit easier for newbies to use.
J
Also, regarding the adsense clicks on CSG. Lurpo spells out the fact that the owner of the CSE gets to keep their own AdSense revenue and I imagine the same is true at CSG. In fact, I don’t know how they could change that even if they wanted to, since it’s built into the CSE itself and not as part of the code that fires it.
Hi Matt, do you think there’ll be any AdWords upgrades related to CSEs? I’m thinking a CSE-targeted campaign option, somewhat akin to the existing site-targeting for the content network, but keyword and CPC based. I’d imagine this would be particularly useful for B2B advertisers. IOW, a keyword-targeted campaign where you could pick and choose individual CSEs to run ads on. If it happens, let me know. Thanks.
Hi Matt,
I think there is some bug in Google CSE : I have set up a CSE about theravada buddhism available here : http://s.billard.free.fr/dhamma/
There is one website that is specially pertinent for me, that is dhammastudygroup.org. I included this domain in my CSE, using the option ” Include all pages that start with this URL”. But in the result pages of my CSE, only the root domain appear, not all pages of this domain, whereas the regular Google has many pages indexed under this domain : http://www.google.fr/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-16,GGLG:fr&q=site%3Adhammastudygroup%2Eorg
i really like the custom search, but one small gripe..
it doesnt change links colour when a result has been visited so i find myself going back into things i have already seen
maybe just me being a bit thick though………
That may just be a browser issue.. What browser are you using, you may want to try the new Firefox 2.0 but I heard that some SEO extensions don’t work with it yet which is why I haven’t gotten it yet..
Thanks,
Brad
I started another compilation of cse’s
http://www.grimmthething.com/other/cse.htm
and a google gadget of them.
http://www.google.com/ig/add?moduleurl=http://www.grimmthething.com/googmods/customsearch.xml
Matt,
Quick question. Using the CSE control panel you can change the link colors. Using the XML Context (Advanced tab), you seem to be able to do the same thing.
I wondered if there was a way to change other things? Making links bold or italic, removing the table and using pure CSS for the layout instead?
Thanks.
Leo
Well, while I like having a science fiction search engine (and I added over 100 large content sites that should be favored), it does seem to get stuck on some sites for very specific queries. I think the weighting is a little TOO favorable for the included sites.
Matt,
According to Seth Godin, generally search results provide clues to the user. So his Squidoo is an attempt to provide meaning to the users on various topics. I find CSE to be in the same line, ie, provide meaning to the users on various topics. Though both seems to be different (as of now) by their own merits, don’t you feel that both be heading towards the same destination (ie providing meaning) eventually? Or I’m I missing something?
D Sarathy.
RankQuest
Made a search engine for finding CSE’s. It searches the entire google directory and any other CSE’s submitted to me.You can use it from
http://cse.search.googlepages.com
or
http://coopsearch.blogspot.com/
feel free to add your CSE too.
very interesting stuff. is it possible to make the page show only the results without the ads above them?