Until recently, Google provided a pretty straightforward “Sitesearch” service that any webmaster could use as a “local site search engine.” Pretty simple to configure and use – I did one for a private client of mine a month ago, and it took about half an hour to configure and then install on their web site. And SiteSearch provided a Search box that permitted your site visitors to search just your site or to search the entire web – their choice.
But it’s now gotten more complex. And it’s gotten much better.
What they’ve done is to roll the simple SiteSearch into Google Custom Search Engine(s). What you do is go to Google Co-op (why is everything at Google still in beta?), where you can create a log-in (or use your existing gmail login) and then create a custom search engine. This so-called search engine can be “programmed” to search the entire web (by default that would be a regular Google search), or its search can be limited to a list of specific web sites.
You can limit the search even further, selecting sub-sections (directories) within sites, if you wish.
For nonprofits, such as the Foundation, Google permits you to eliminate the advertising that would otherwise be displayed. (Though I could not make the selection using the Safari browser – I had to switch over to FireFox in order to be able to click the button and get my selection to stick!)
And Google writes the code for you. That is, as you make selections for type of logo, sites to be searched, ads and so forth, HTML code appears in a little box which you can copy/paste into your own web pages. This creates the “search box” that appears – I put ours on the bottom of each page at www.dalailamafoundation.org. If you’re putting this in a blog that’s driven by templates, you put it in your footer template and that’s all it takes.
Finally, and this is what I really like, they give you the option of either having the results displayed on a Google page (in other words they open a window that’s at google.com to show the results) or you can create your own results page on your own web site and embed the results of the search using some javascript. Yeah! That’s my choice for sure. (I’ve actually done this trick before, because in 1998 I wrote a private “search engine” or knowledgebase that supported embedding queries on one page and displaying the results on another page. The javascript is simple, but the server-side shenanigans are truly wicked!)
Google even supports a collaborative mode in which a group of people can maintain the URL list. I didn’t try it, but it looks like it might be useful. Using it, one could essentially create a small knowledgebase composed of sites that Google would spider, index and then search for you.
So go take a look at how it worked for me. Go to the bottom of any page on www.dalailamafoundation.org and type your search phrase, then click Search and you’ll see results from a half dozen or so sites that we support for our programs.
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