Create Your Own Search Engine

Want to create your own custom search engine? Now you can, with with a little help from Google Co-op. Create your own custom search engine that is unique to you and your users interests.

You can create a custom search engine in as little as five minutes, depending on how many options you set and sites you include in your search. Some of the options you have include specifying the sites that you want to include in the results, adding refinements to searches, customizing the look and feel of the results, have others collaborate with you to add sites and make refinements and perhaps the best feature, you can connect it to your Google Adsense account making it possible for you to make money off the ads that appear in the results pages.

Perhaps the best way to show off the Google Co-op is to show you a quick example. I created a Webmaster Forum Search that searches the most popular webmaster forums. Take a look at the results for Adsense Tips. Because the search is limited to just the six webmaster forums you get some of the best posts and tips from the forums in the results. Try searching on any one of the forums individually using the forums search feature and the results are not as useful.

There is great potential for webmasters to use Google Co-op to create specialized search engines for their own websites and niche. Educators could use it to narrow results to only the sites they want, health sites could provide custom search results that only come from trusted sources, the list is endless. If you need more ideas take a look at the featured examples list and you will get some great ideas how you can use Google Co-op.

If you have examples of some of Google Co-op’s custom search engines that you find useful please post them in a comment. I would be interested in seeing the ones that you find most useful.

In case you were wondering, I created the logo for the Webmaster Forum Search at Google Font.