Google Custom Search Engine for Businesses – Custom search for your website without any ads for $100 a year

Posted on July 17, 2007 at 8:31 pm

Ok, I know that I am about to change my current search feature on my blog to Google’s Custom Search Engine for Businesses as I write this post because it’s cheap, can be customized to have no ads, and of course best of all, you get results that actually match what someone searches for! The cool thing is that it takes absolutely no time to setup because all you have to do is give your search a name, tell it what you want it to search, and paste four lines of HTML onto your home page.

You can also customize the look and feel of the search results, so if you don’t like the normal blue and white results that you know from Google, you can change it simply by modifying an XML file. Another interesting feature of the custom search is what is called refinements. These are basically labels that you can apply to web sites and it allows a user to narrow their searches. For example, if you search the word “cars” on a site about cars, you can have refinement queries such as Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc. You can even specify specific words that you want to show up when a user performs a specific query.

Google also provides basic reports (daily, weekly, monthly) to see how many times people perform searches and what they are searching for.

To get started with Google Custom Search Engine for Business, click the Sign Up button. Give your search engine a name, a description, choose your language from over 25, and type in the URL of the site(s) you want to be searched. Make sure before you jump ahead and click Next to read the Tips on formatting URLS guide. I had just typed in the main URL for my site, but if you want all pages on the site, you need to put a /* at the end of your URL.

Next you can actually test the custom search engine if you want live and you’ll get results displayed on the same page. For some odd reason, I kept getting zero results for my queries, so I’m not sure if that’s just a problem with me or what. I think it might be because I am blocking the Googlebot from indexing my site currently and that might be why, otherwise you should see some results.

If you’re happy with the results, click Next and fill out your personal information. The last step is to purchase your search engine, which is $100 for less than 5,000 pages, and $500 if you have between 5,000 and 50,000 web pages. You have to pay using Google checkout!

Now you’ll get the code and ability to login to monitor your new search engine. I’m not signing up for it just yet until I get some results in the preview, but after that, I’ll update this post with more info on what you can do after you’ve signed up!

[tags]google custon search engine, google custom search[/tags]

» Filed Under Google Software/Tips

Comments

4 Responses to “Google Custom Search Engine for Businesses – Custom search for your website without any ads for $100 a year”

ichank said on : July 17th, 2007 at 10:14 pm

Good Info. I search for this topic at Google and get details from you. Thank you

akishore said on : July 18th, 2007 at 9:49 am

No problem! Thanks for visiting and hope to see you again! Appreciate it!

kevin said on : August 1st, 2007 at 2:04 pm

Hi, very good website! , I like it anyway I found another website with good services in seo.
you can find more services in dynaSEO
(SEO Consulting and submition)