Improving Specialized Searching | Google Power Tools Bible

Two up-and-coming offerings from Google Labs are designed to enrich the material accessible to your site’s users by offering specialized types of search options. Related Links offers links to information related to your content. Google Co-op lets you configure and host your own search engine.

Customizing search engines with Google Co-op

One product recently released into the Google Labs is Google Co-op. With Google Co-op, you can create a custom search engine for your Web site. Unlike the Related Search tool, you can generate income for your site using the custom search in conjunction with AdSense for search.

Google Co-op offers three options for customizing searches, both from the user and the Webmaster perspectives:

Create your own search engine.
Use subscribed links to integrate your information into user’s search results.
Label sites with topics to improve the quality of Web searches in general. Contributors sign up to contribute to a topic area, and then search for sites to include as their favorites. Refer to www.google.com/coop/topics/ for information and a link to the current topic list.

Designing a custom search engine

To create the engine, follow these steps:

Open the Custom Search Engine page at www.google.com/coop/cse/overview.
Click Create a Search Engine to open the first page of the wizard. On this page, type a name for your search engine, a description, and keywords. List the sites to search, or use your own site.

Note
If you haven’t logged on to your Google account, the logon window opens first; log in and then continue.
Click to accept the Terms of Service, and then click Next to view the next screen.
Type search terms into the text field, and click Search. Results appear in a window. To make changes to the contents of your engine and consequently the likely search results, click back to Step 1 to make changes and repeat Step 3. Continue modifying your search engine’s content as necessary.
Click Finish. Your search engine is ready for further use. For example, you can do these things:
- Add it to the Google home page, as shown in Figure 40.18.
  
  Figure 40.18: You can use a custom search engine in a number of ways, including a custom Search Console on your Google home page.
- Download and use the code to include an Add to Google button on your Web site to allow users to include your search engine on their Google home page. The code for the button is available from the Search Engine’s control panel.

On the Web

Go to www.google.com/coop/cse/examples/Latest to view and experiment with some featured search engines.

Building Subscribed Links

A Subscribed Link is used to provide customized information that is displayed as part of a user’s search results, such as the example shown in Figure 40.19.

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Figure 40.19: Subscribed Links are included as part of a user’s search results.

The Future of Accessible Searching

Google Labs is working on a product that is designed for those who work with screen readers and other assistive devices. Accessible Search is built on the same technology as Google Co-op and is designed to customize search results based on specialized interests. The Accessible Search tool first searches for the best results as in any search and then evaluates the pages for accessible markup. In particular, the pages are scanned for those likely to render well without viewing images, those that degrade gracefully, and those that are accessible with keyboard navigation, defined by the structure of the HTML.

The W3C standards and guidelines, such as Web Content Access Guidelines, are used as the benchmark for evaluating a page.

A Subscribed Link can be generated in three ways:

Use a basic link: A basic link is built through a wizard interface. Although it is the simplest type of link to build, it also is the least flexible.
Upload a feed file: Upload a data file from your disk to the Google servers in XML, RSS, or TSV formats. The uploaded file method is best for content that changes infrequently.
Submit a feed file URL: For data that is updated regularly, specify the URL for a feed file that can be in XML, RSS, or TSV file formats. The file is recrawled and reflects the changes in your data in the Subscribed Link output.

Refer to the Google Co-op Web site for more information and instruction on designing and using the feed files.

Froogle on the move

Sometimes, you may come across what seems to be a bargain on an item for which you hadn’t been searching and hadn’t researched. To find out if you have a real bargain in your hands, check out the product via your mobile phone or device and Froogle.

Cross-Ref

Read Chapter 8 for information about Froogle and Chapter 28 for Google Mobile.

You can use Froogle Mobile if your phone or device supports Wireless Markup Language (WML), an XML-based language that was developed for wireless applications and that complies with Wireless Application Protocol (WAP 1.2).

To check out competing prices for your bargain product online, follow these steps:

Load Froogle on your phone’s browser from http://wml.froogle.com.
Type the search term in the field, and click Search Froogle.
Check the results using the phone’s keypad arrows; sort by price or best match using the links at the bottom of the search results.
Proceed with your bargain purchase, or say “Thank you for your time” and leave the premises.

Searching tidbits

A few more products developing in the Google Labs are designed for searching. Some are fairly obvious in their function, while seeing how others are put to use will be interesting. These are some of the products to watch:

Google Glossary: You won’t see anything loaded into your browser or download anything to use Google Glossary. Instead, redefine how you search for content using definitions. You can search for words, phrases, and acronyms. In the browser window, type “define [term]” and click Search. Your search returns list dictionary links and definitions.
Google Suggest: Open the Google Suggest browser from the Google Labs listing, at http://labs.google.com. As you search, suggested keywords are added and change as the entered text changes, such as in the example shown in Figure 40.20. Google Suggest is available in English and Japanese.

Figure 40.20: Google Suggest completes terms as you type, according to the related result.
Google Sets: Open the Google Sets browser from the Google Labs listing at http://labs.google.com. Type the names of some items in the fields, and click either Large Set or Small Set (15 items or fewer) to generate a set of terms that likely are extensions to the terms you typed in the example set. It is an interesting experiment.