Programmable Search Engine Blog
The latest news, updates and tips from the Programmable Search Engine team
Better branding part I
Monday, February 26, 2007
Posted by:
Jennifer Hyman, Product Marketing Manager
In our constant quest to simplify things, we've made a small, but important change to the language you see from Google on
Custom Search Engine search results pages
.
Now, instead of the long string of text that previously said "Google search results customized by [XYZ site] using Google Co-op," you'll see a small Google logo with the words Custom Search. We think this new branding is an improvement both in design and clarity -- not only do the search results look better, but it should be clearer to your users that they're benefiting from Google CSE.
Later this week, we plan to roll out some additional branding options for your search boxes, and hope you like our first attempt to improve the look and feel and of your CSE.
Site search gets supplemental
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Posted by: Patrick Riley, Software Engineer
One of the common uses of Custom Search Engines is to provide site search. A number of users have suggested that we can improve Custom Search for this application by also including
supplemental results
in Custom Search Engine's results. We put fewer constraints on what pages go into our supplemental index and therefore there are many pages which are available only there. This is our first step to give you more results. If your search engine operates as a filter and has three sites or less or your search engine includes the whole web, you'll get
supplemental results
as well. For example, take a look at the
Hanayama Puzzle Store
search engine I've created. Hanayama makes some great puzzles, but they aren't always so easy to find. The queries "
hanayama baroq
" (possibly my favorite puzzle of all time) and "
hanayama laby
" only return supplemental results in this search engine. Check out the
FAQ entry about supplemental results
for more information.
Here's some love for our Custom Search friends
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Posted by: Mike Cancel, Community Manager
Since it launched in October, we've been pleasantly surprised by the nice ecosystem that has built up around Custom Search Engines. Here are some of the more interesting resources we've found outside Google that you might find useful. Happy V-Day from us to you!
Tools
Add CSE to browser (firefox and IE)
Importing del.icio.us bookmarks for CSE (aka Vik's tool)
Lijit: Personal Network Search
Lists
Finding Google Custom Search Engines
List Your Custom Search Indexes
Directories
CSE Links Directory
CustomSearchEngine.com - the directory of Google Custom Search Engines
Guide to Custom Search Engines
Workarounds
Using ASP.NET site with CSE
Google Custom Search Results Page on Your Wordpress with Adsense Deluxe
How to save search queries on Google Custom Search Engine
Google Co-op - An Intro & Some Insider Hacks
New statistics page
Monday, January 22, 2007
Posted by: Matt Wytock, Software Engineer
We've added a new statistics page so you can see what people are searching for on your Custom Search Engine -- information such as overall traffic to your search engine and popular queries is now available. And you can view this info by day, week, month -- or even the entire lifetime of your search engine.
So check it out by going to the
My search engines
page and follow the "statistics" link next to the name of your search engine.
The top CSEs
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Posted by: Jennifer Hyman, Product Marketing Manager
You may have been wondering how your CSE is performing and how it compares to those other people are creating.
The first step in sharing Custom Search metrics with you is the
Most Popular list
of Custom Search Engines
, as defined by volume of queries. This list spans a variety of sites: large, small and across industries and topics. You'll see search engines built for techies, music lovers, sports fans, climate scientists, universities and more. Individual site owners and large organizations are seeing success with their CSEs.
We plan to update this list every couple of weeks so you can gauge the activity of the Custom Search community as well as how your CSE is performing. Stay tuned for more such metrics updates, too.
Happy collaborating!
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Posted by: Vrishali Wagle, Software Engineer
We've made several improvements to the Custom Search collaboration process. Starting today, you'll be able to communicate more easily with new volunteers for your Custom Search Engine -- you'll see the email addresses of new volunteers as well as approved contributors. It's important to note that this process works both ways -- i.e., if you volunteer to contribute to a search engine, your email address will also be visible to the creator of the search engine. To see the email addresses of contributors simply go to the "Collaboration"
section of the "Control Panel" of your search engine and you will see a list of contributors emails there. You will also get email notification when your invitee accepts your invitation to contribute to your Custom Search Engine. Last but certainly not least, you can now also see the sites your contributors have added to your search engine. Visit the "Sites" tab in the "Control Panel" to see what work your contributors are doing. If you have several contributors, you'll have a drop-down menu to select which contributor you'd like to view. We hope you find these features useful in building and maintaining your CSEs.
No more extra white space after search results
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Posted by: Matt Wytock, Software Engineer
Many of you have complained about the extra white space at the bottom of the Custom Search results hosted on your page. We've heard you, and have rolled out a fix for better integration between your search engine and the rest of your site.
Here are some examples of search results with extra white space:
sla
binary tree
And here they are with the fix:
sla
binary tree
This fix is now enabled by default on all Custom Search Engines. If you experience problems, you can revert to the old behavior by adding this line to your search results snippet:
var googleSearchResizeIframe = false;
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