When it comes to searching the web your first and last stop (likely) is Google.  Now, with two new Google web services you too can harness the power of Google from within your own website.

In the past year Google created two new web services: Custom Search Engine ( http://www.google.com/coop/cse/) and Google Site Search ( http://www.google.com/sitesearch/). At their core, these tools allow you to add a Google search box to your website. Not just a plain old Google search box which searches the entire web universe. Rather, they allow you to have a Google search box which returns search results that you want your website visitors to see.

The most obvious application for these tools is to provide your site visitors with an easy and familiar way to search all of the content on your website. But Custom Search Engine (CSE) provides much more than that. Here is a non-comprehensive list of CSE features:

• Explicitly define a list of web pages, and/or websites which you want included in your CSE’s search results.
• Display search results within the context and design of your website.
• Easily control the colours displayed in your search result text.
• Include your organizations logo on the search results page.
• Choose specific web pages that you want to exclude from any search results.
• Fine tune your CSE by adding your own keywords and labels.

And the best feature of all is the price. It’s free! Well, it is free if you are willing to put up with Google Ads. If you are a non-profit, government or educational organization then you can use CSE for free and not have Google Ads show up in your search results.

For-profit organizations who don’t want Google Ads appearing on their website can use Google Site Search (GSS) instead. Starting at $100 per year, GSS provides all of CSE’s functionality with the following enhancements:

• Search reports inform you of how often people are using your search engine, and what the most common search queries are.
• Search biasing provides you with ways to increase the likelihood that your most recent and important content appears high up in search results.
• For more advanced users, search results can be retrieved in XML format which provides unlimited ways that search results can be displayed and used.
• No limit to the number of web pages and/or websites you can include (CSE has a limit of 5,000; the GSS pricing model is partially based on the number of websites that are included in your search engine).
• Specify the language that search results will be displayed.

Here are a few live examples of CSE and GSS at work:

• Disaster Relief Rotarian Action Group – created a CSE which allows users to search through a long list of Disaster Relief websites.
• United Way – using CSE, users can search the United Way’s website as well as all of United Way’s 1,300+ local chapters.
• Green Maven - the most comprehensive “green” search engine on the web.

The last, and perhaps the most important, thing that you should know about CSE and GSS is that they are really easy to setup and use. Google walks you through the process of creating a new CSE. Once it is created, it is very easy to tweak and update. Lastly, Google generated the JavaScript code that you need to paste into the appropriate pages on your site.

Easy to use, fast and familiar, Google Custom Search Engine is a powerful way to make your site shine!