Google Makes the Social Scene with Custom Search

In a nod to the rising significance of social search, Google will offer Web publishers and bloggers a customizable, brand-able version of its search engine to deploy on their sites, complete with Google pay-per-click sponsored listings.

Google Customizable Search Engine, launched yesterday, will let Web site operators offer their visitors the ability to search both their sites and a subset of the entire Google index, reportedly up to about 500,000 sites. The narrower search may have strong appeal for vertical Web sites, affinity groups, online social communities and special interests.

Since operators will have the power to let authorized or trusted members add sites to their custom search indexes, the search functions will have the opportunity to grow more personal over time to reflect the communities they serve. Site operators will also have some control over the look and feel of the search and results pages and can add “refinement labels” to the sites in their custom search index to produce more highly targeted results for their sites.

The custom search function is free to Web publishers and bloggers; Google will make its money by serving up relevant pay-per-click ads on results pages and will share that revenue with site operators, just as it does with participants in its third-party AdSense network. Non-profits, educational institutions and government sites will be exempted from serving up Google ads alongside their custom search results.

The customization initiative builds on Google Co-op, a platform the company announced earlier this year to enable just such sharing of search and results among Web sites. The custom search results pages are hosted in Google’s network by default but can be hosted on the operator’s site if desired.

Google Custom Search is “a simple and straightforward product to use and understand,” Google Co-op team members Shashi Seth and R.V. Guha blogged on the official Google Blog. “In a matter of minutes you can create a search engine that reflects your knowledge and interests; looks and feels like your own; and, if you choose, you can make money from the traffic you receive through Google’s AdSense program.” Seth, who also operates a wine blog called Grapejooz, claims on that site that he created a wine-oriented search for his blog in 30 minutes.

The blog post said that the customized search is already up and running at environmental research site RealClimate.org. Software maker Intuit has also created a custom search targeting small business owners on its JumpUp.com site.

Other search engines large and small have afforded users the chance to create custom search functions using social tagging. These include Eurekster and Rollyo (slogan: “Roll Your Own Search”), an independent engine which lets users tag “searchrolls” of trusted Web sites to be indexed and searched before all others. In August Yahoo! launched Search Builder to let publishers give priority to searching certain sites. It has also used social tagging to enhance search results in its searches on Flickr, the photo-sharing site.

Google’s new custom search product brings the biggest name in search into the same social arena that those other products compete in. But it’s notable that the results users tag as valuable in Google Customized Search won’t be folded into the Web index that Google maintains for general search. Those general search pages will still be scanned by machines and ranked by algorithms, and custom search will be kept separate from Google’s main search product.