Customized Site Search

Another summary written during my corporate library internship:

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Here’s some information about each of the major players in customized site searching. After seeing each of them, I think my recommendation would be to use either Gigablast or Google, Gigablast has the advantage of not requiring you to register to create a custom search, but Google might have more staying power. Swicki is the most interesting, because it lets searchers see what previous users have searched for, but it’s also the one that looks least “professional” in style, so I don’t know how well it would fit in with the look of your library pages.

-Molly

Gigablast (http://www.gigablast.com/cts.html)

• Search is handled through Gigablast’s site and results are returned on a page with your logo. You can also choose to receive results as XML if you want to process the results and customize the look of them further using PHP, etc.
• Search box can be embedded in a page.
• Gigablast gives you HTML code and tells you how to edit it to create your search box.
• An example of a page that uses Gigablast search: http://www.pandia.com/searchworld/gigablast.html
  

Rollyo (http://www.rollyo.com/)

• You create your “searchroll” (list of sites you want to search) through a web interface on Rollyo’s site. This searchroll is public unless you register with Rollyo. Registration only requires giving them your email address. Once you’re a registered user you have the option to make your searchroll private.
• Search box can be embedded in a page
• Results page can’t be customized with your logo. It has a logo for Rollyo at the top as well as ads.
• An example of a site that uses Rollyo: http://rollyo.com/susannek/search_engine_news/

Google Custom Search Engine (http://www.google.com/coop/cse/)

• You must be a registered Google user to create a search.
• There is no way to make your search engine private. It will be listed in the GCSE directory, which will allow people outside of UOP to use it to search.
• You can invite people to contribute sites to be included in the search engine. This seems redundant when you already have a link at the top of the UOP Links page that lets employees email you when they think of new sites that should be included. GCSE also requires contributors to create a Google account if they don’t have one already.
• You can add your logo to the results page, or frame the results in a page on your site.
• An example of a site that uses GCSE: http://www.realclimate.org/

Yahoo Search Builder (http://builder.search.yahoo.com/m/promo)

• You must have a Yahoo ID to create a search engine.
• It seems like there’s no way to have it search multiple sites.

Swicki (http://swicki.eurekster.com/)

• No way to make your Swicki private.
• Displays a tag cloud of search terms under the search box. This tag cloud changes as users do new searches. Users can see what other people have looked for (although not associated with a particular user’s name). This could be a plus or a minus depending on how private your users want to be. Terms that are searched more often will appear larger in the tag cloud.
• An example of a page that uses Swiki search: http://china-auto.blogspot.com/