untangling_the_web

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Custom Search Engines
This topic is new this year and expands upon the entries on Rollyo and Gigablast's
Custom Topic Search from last year's edition. During 2006 there was an explosion in
the number of custom search engines, including entries from Google, Yahoo, and
Live Search, so you know the powerhouses think this is worth a try. Whether this
trend catches on remains to be seen.
The phrase "custom search engine" is very misleading. None of these sites permits
users to create a new search engine. What each site does in its own way is to let
users customize an existing search engine to search specific sites in specific ways
and return results in a personalized fashion. Thus, a better name for these services
would be customizable searching, but that moniker is clearly unappealing. Just
remember that you are not creating a new search engine any more than customizing
a car is building a new automobile from the tires up.
Most of the custom search sites operate on a simple principle: they automate a long
"site" search, e.g., the search is equivalent to [keyword(s) AND (site 1 OR site 2 OR
site 3...0R site n)], where n stands for the maximum number of sites you are allowed
to search.
In short, the proliferation of customizable search means that companies, educational
institutions, government agencies, and individuals can easily put the power of the big
search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Live Search with its search Macros to
work creating tailored and specialized search services in a way that has never
before been possible. Customizable search may be "the next big thing," and I
believe it is one of the most positive examples of that vague but ubiquitous concept
called Web 2.0.
Gigablast's Custom Topic Search
http://www.gigablast.com/cts.html
Gigablast's Custom Topic Search was one of the first "create your own search
engines" to appear, although Gigablast's creator Matt Wells never claimed it was
anything other than a way to customize Gigablast. The beauty of the Gigablast CTS
is that it requires no software installation but is very, very simple HTML code, so
simple anyone can edit and understand it. No registration is required.
Many of Gigablast's features were primarily designed for webmasters instead of
users, but this one is potentially valuable to both: "Build Your Own Topic Search
Engine." Gigablast "allows you to create a list of up to 200 web sites (or subsites)
and a search box that searches just those sites." Custom Topic Search even lets
you decide if you want Gigablast to cluster the results for you. The concept behind
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