Google Launches Custom Search Business Edition
The new service is hosted by Google, and offers all of the same functionality of the free Google Custom Search product, with a few key differences: — Customized search results. You can change the look and feel of search results to match …
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Google had introduced customizable search tools in 2006, following Yahoo into the category, and expanded usability with on-the-fly Custom Search creation in June 2007. The Business Edition packages that capability for small-business websites rather than leaving it solely as a free configuration tool.
The move places Google-hosted site search alongside the company’s organic and paid-search businesses, extending its role from directing users to websites to powering navigation within them.
First-order effects
- Small-business site owners can deploy Google-hosted search with results styling and customization aligned to their own sites, without operating the search infrastructure themselves.
- Google gains a commercial route for Custom Search while retaining the underlying functionality of its free product.
Second-order effects
- Google Custom Search becomes a more direct alternative for website operators weighing a hosted search service against building and maintaining their own site-search stack.
- Customization of on-site results makes Google’s search presentation part of a business’s customer experience, increasing the value of Google’s relationship with those site operators.
Third-order effects
- If hosted, customizable site search gains adoption, web search providers can compete not only for queries on their own properties but also to supply the search layer inside business websites.
- The product signals a broader shift from general-purpose search as a destination toward search infrastructure that publishers and businesses can brand as their own.
The trend: Search providers are turning customizable search technology into hosted infrastructure for businesses that want branded discovery tools without running their own search systems.