World of Content

Friday, October 27, 2006

Google Custom Search Turns Any Web Page Into a Portal

I've been playing around a bit with Google's new Custom Search Engine and I am really impressed by what this capability can do for any publisher, large or small. Google has provided an elegant solution here for the most frustrating problem of web searching; the fact that search results are usually 99% garbage and less than 1% even close to what the user was actually looking for. In effect, Google is enlisting the human intelligence of web authors and publishers to improve the relevance of search results, while still maintaining the ability to serve ads on all those pages. It's a classic example of "doing well by doing good," like the missionary families in Michener's Hawaii who spread the Christian gospel to the "heathens" and, incidentally, got very rich at the same time.

Seriously, though, Google's Co-op technology is truly a service that gives as well as gets, and the big winners here are bound to be the wonks and enthusiasts who now have an incredibly powerful tool for building community and readership. Without having to learn JavaScript or waiting for someone at Google or Yahoo! to return your call for tech support, you can harness the Google search engine to power your portal with search as you define it - pulling content for your readers from the sites that you have screened and that you endorse. It's no small amount of work to build and maintain such lists of sites, but other than that the only limit is your own imagination. One of my favorites: Real Climate, provides access to information on global warming without all the noise, political bull, and spam sites that grow like maggots around such popular topics. Bravo, Google!

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