Google recently launched an interesting new service that lets anyone define their own vertical search engine. Called Google Custom Search, the service is part of Google Co-Op, Goobe's new push to create API'd search features that users can install on their own sites.
Google Custom Search allows you to define a list of sites that you want it to search. It's quite easy to set up. It didn't take me long at all to define a vertical search engine for Web 2.0 and New Media sites (which you can try out on our sidebar to the right) and put it up on the site.
This is a smart move from Google's perspective in a lot of ways. Obviously, it gives Google inroads to a lot of new and fallow real estate. It also sets up a major challenge to the legions of VC-backed vertical search engine plays that have been popping up recently.
Comments