Google Custom Search Engine

Would you like to search only a specific list of web sites? Do you have your own web site and would like to add a search feature? With the new service from Google, you can create a search engine tailored to your needs

I suspect the most common use of the Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) is to create search engines for your own web site. That search engine can search your own site or a list of other sites. For instance, if you publish a web site about Irish genealogy, you could publish an "Irish genealogy search engine" that searches a list of sites that you specify.

To see this kind of search in action, go to this newsletter's web site at http://www.eogn.com and scroll down the right side to the section labeled "Search This Site for Past Articles." The search box you see there was created with Google Custom Search Engine. It searches all of the www.eogn.com web site as well as the affiliated Encyclopedia of Genealogy web site at www.eogen.com.

Creating the HTML code for your web page is simple: Google does it for you. Simply specify a few parameters, such as height and width to the search box, web sites to be searched, etc. and Google will generate the code for you. Then all you do is copy-and-paste the code into the appropriate place on your web page(s).

The Google Custom Search Engine is available in two versions. One is free of charge but displays advertising in the results, very similar to searches on Google's own site at www.google.com. The second option eliminates the ads but charges money for the searches. Google also offers options in the paid version to place results from your own web site higher in the results than "hits" from other web sites. Prices start at $100 per year for low activity web site and can reach several thousand dollars a year for very active sites.

For more information about the Google Custom Search Engine, look at http://www.google.com/coop/cse/.

Comments

[Zadruga Guy]

If you just want to limit your search to one site, you don't need a custom search engine, you just need to use the site tag in a standard Google search. For example, if I want to search Dick Eastman's site to see if any comments I have made have themselves been the subject of comments by others, all I have to do is enter:
without the . This can be done whenever the mood strikes, unlike the Custom Search Engine, which takes a lot of effort to set up.

[Zadruga Guy]

Okay, I will try again. The characters I used in my previous post triggered some kind of filter that deleted the key part of my post. To search Eastman's site for comments that I have made, I enter:

|site:eogn.com "Zadruga Guy"| without typing the | character.

[Louis Kessler]

A few years ago, I tried making a custom search for all the GEDCOM files that Google has indexed. There were over 8,500 GEDCOMs that I was able to find on Google and include in this custom search. You can try it at: http://www.lkessler.com/gedcomcustom.shtml

I don't know why, but in my case it would never return all the results. For example, try entering "Smith" and you'll get only 32 results.

So instead I created a page that does a regular Google search for text in files of type GEDCOM. You can try this at: http://www.lkessler.com/gedcom.shtml

Entering "Smith" into this says it gives you about 4,350 results. But paging at the bottom (my search gives 100 results per page) gives 525 results. Googles "estimating" algorithm obviously doesn't work well all the time.

You can also see the difference in what you get. The custom search leaves out a lot of features that a regular Google search has. This includes the estimate of the number of results, the links to "cached" and "similar pages", and all the other useful links on the page such as "Advanced search", "Preferences", "Language Tools", etc.

Maybe the tool is not bad to index one's own site, but in my attempt to index GEDCOMs on the web, I found the Google Custom Search Tool to be less than adequate.

Louis

[Concetta]

Zadruga, I agree totally. That is the way I search many sites myself.

But, there are people that don't like doing that, don't have a Google toolbar (which, with its "search this site" button makes it really easy to do), or just prefer the search engine box on a site overall.

So, at my GenWeb site, for example, I now have a Google "ad supported" custom search engine box for people who prefer it to use (if I could afford the ad-free one I would totally do it).

You can read on the site about all the people that pleaded with me for it and how I put it in. However, after I put it in I was sent an email with this quote:

"The key to a good genealogy site is making it capable of being in searched in innumerable ways. You never know who's going to catch that one word that hooks you up with a new relative or new source or new volunteer."

That made me totally rethink my stance on searching. I removed PDFs from the site and made them text readable before reuploading. I labeled my links better. I decided I would remove my own bias (save a lecture about searching on the CSE page) on searching habits and try to support many different ways.

[Heather]

While Google custom search is adequate, I really prefer Rollyo for this type of specialized searching.