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Build Your Own Google-Powered Search Engine
eastbayted writes "Google has unveiled a free program called Google Customized Search Engine that lets users tailor a search index to their content specifications, InfoWorld reports. You can select keywords for the index, as well as which Web sites will be included or excluded in the search. You also may customize the look and feel of the engine. The trade-off? When you implement the index on your Web site or blog, it will be populated with Google text ads via Google's lucrative AdSense Program. On the plus side, you do get paid for click-throughs."
Probably not many more than currently exist. Right now (before this new product), it's very easy to set up a nearly all-spam site with Google's AdSense. Google requires only a modicum of content before approving a site to show AdSense ads. This new search engine implementation will probably not drastically change the threshold for setting up an ad-only site.
Although in the minority I'm sure, I look at Google as the largest scraper of content there is. If you think about it, they give users snippets of your original content and then take that content and use it to deliver targeted advertisements before the user even clicks on your content.
Now, enter the same business model, add some revenue sharing and a whole bunch of smaller players with their own domains armed with CSS stylized IFRAMES and you will see the "authoritative portal/directory sites" grow pretty quickly. As someone who creates his own unique content (with no ads currently), moves like this do make me think twice about the future of search and creating content for other people to scrape and profit from. Sure, I understand the point of "without the search engine no one would ever find my site", but at some point content creators have to worry about others profiting off their efforts (/end violin playing).
Hagrin.com
Google will be able to harness people's specific expertise to fine tune google's domain specific search, without signing any contract with anybody. That means less administrative and financial commitment, less legal headache, and less legal fees. And because of the adsense program, Google only pay, when Google got payed.
Brilliant, fucking brilliant!
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
does site: let you search more than one site?