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October 23, 2006

Google Co-op Launches

Michael Arrington

109 comments »

Google just launched a customized search service called Google Co-op (screen shots below). Co-op allows a user to create and launch a search engine with just a few specific websites included. Searches will return results from only that website.

Users have a number of options to customize the search engine: choosing which pages they want to include in their index, how the content should be prioritized, whether others can contribute to the index, and what the search results page will look like.

This isn’t new - Rollyo, Eurekster and Yahoo already have similar products. But Google is also offering, as an option, to bundle the service with Google Adsense ads and share revenue with websites that embed the custom search engine into their site. Only Eurekster currently shares revenue with users. Yahoo’s product, which got a lot of press at launch, has barely been mentioned in the nearly three months since then.

For bloggers, using Google Co-op may be a better choice than the built in search feature. A search engine can be created that searches just a single site, and Google search is generally better than search features included with blog software, and with the addition of Adsense this will generate a separate income stream as well.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Roger

    October 23rd, 2006 at 9:22 pm

    I don’t think the other offering will be able to compete with this new service from Google. The ad revenue sharing is going to make everyone switch.

  2. Michael

    October 23rd, 2006 at 9:32 pm

    http://google.com/coop/cse/

    :)

  3. Jorge

    October 23rd, 2006 at 9:46 pm

    Oh god, not another half-assed Google beta.

    They should go back to working on their search engine and making it useful again, instead of the utter crap it’s become.

  4. Andy

    October 23rd, 2006 at 10:02 pm

    This “search results for ipod” sample page looks like a domain link-spam site. Thankfully, the jerks that make these useless pages won’t have to create the pages themselves anymore.

  5. cvos

    October 23rd, 2006 at 10:04 pm

    What would really be useful is a brandable/skinnable intra site search feature that is adless. Atomz used to be king of this arena, but they too now have ads. i would be willing to pay for this.

  6. Raj

    October 23rd, 2006 at 10:31 pm

    Looks good so far. I created 3 niche search engines for 3 domains.
    However i am yet to try customising the look and feel of my site… i feel Google is not allowing to customise the search box and similar stuff while Yahoo allows the same.

  7. Eric

    October 23rd, 2006 at 10:37 pm

    I tested this new service but I prefer Blogbar (blogbar.org). It is easier to install, and prettier ;)
    And I like to be able to seek on several search engines at the same time.

  8. keanu zhang

    October 23rd, 2006 at 11:43 pm

    google is so smart. i guess they want to collect people’s favorite search habit. I noticed there is an option called “invite people to contribute”. if people would like to contribute the same thing with you, google can get the majority behavior. it should be helpful for google to optimize search engine.

  9. elvirs

    October 24th, 2006 at 12:06 am

    if google wants us to use it for monetizing our website, could not we do the same from adsense for search?

  10. vik

    October 24th, 2006 at 12:41 am

    I wrote a review and included the XML files that were used in developing the advanced feature examples on my blog: http://zooie.wordpress.com

    Three quick examples on how to brand and embed a co-op search on your own site:
    http://vik.singh.googlepages.com/techstuff
    http://vik.singh.googlepages.c.....ingsearch2
    http://google.com/uds/samples/cse/index.html

  11. bricktop

    October 24th, 2006 at 1:07 am

    I’ve collected some known CSEs here http://wink.com/Google_CSEs.....ollections
    Raj, please add your three to this list. Anyone else, If you’ve made one - tag it “google cse” and add it to this list.

  12. Sten Pittet

    October 24th, 2006 at 1:50 am

    Isn’t it just like microsoft live macros ? They launched a service allowing you to create specific searches once you’re logged

    Sten

  13. Petr Kral

    October 24th, 2006 at 2:33 am

    I have just created a simple job search engine to check this out and to me it works well: http://google.com/coop/cse?cx=.....omqe11dgyy

    Is this the end of sites like Indeed or Simply Hired? Yes, they have maybe more filters, menus and all that stuff, but still? This is totally free, no server infrastructure needed. And the business model is the same - promote the site to get traffic and make money on Google AdSense.

  14. Ray

    October 24th, 2006 at 3:37 am

    If you want a job search engine, it is even easier to just combine Indeed, Simply Hired, etc. etc., as I have done with http://www.resultr.com It is much easier than using google coop, although the results are not mixed, but shown according to source.

  15. Putch

    October 24th, 2006 at 3:57 am

    Upon checking this out, three features stood out:
    1) You can exclude sites that you do not want in the results
    2) You can easily do so using the Google Marker
    3) Anyone can volunteer to help

    So we decided to throw up an experiment to encourage everyone to mark spam sites to be excluded from search results.

    Working together as a community we may be able to radically improve the quality of the search results (or perhaps just get in a blacklisting war?)

    The result is Putch - http://www.putch.com

  16. Anshul

    October 24th, 2006 at 4:24 am

    Adsense for search does the same. Isnt there any way else to make money of a custom search engine rather than all this customization.

  17. Martin Porcheron

    October 24th, 2006 at 4:34 am

    No, Google Co-Op has existed for ages now. Google simply launched the Custom Search Feature of it. You’ve even mentioned it in two articles in the past.

    http://www.google.co.uk/search.....&meta=

  18. d3bruts1d

    October 24th, 2006 at 5:33 am

    Google Co-Op isn’t new it came out back in May (IIRC); they’ve just changed the main page for it. What’s new today is the “Create your own search engine” part of Google Co-Op.

  19. Jean-Jacques Humbert

    October 24th, 2006 at 5:37 am

    Great, more ads. Thank god for Adblock.

  20. Dreamchaser

    October 24th, 2006 at 5:57 am

    AdBlock def.comes handy :-)

    Cheers,
    Dreamchaser

  21. kevin

    October 24th, 2006 at 5:57 am

    Pretty useful. I just created a Web Tech Blog search so I can easily search for say “calendar web apps” and just query TechCrunch, Mashable, Micro Persuasion, and many other great blogs that are focused only on web apps.

    Seems like a simple and powerful way to focus searches to content that is relevant.

    here’s the url for the Web Tech Blog search I created:
    http://www.google.com/coop/cse.....prbwmqm5nw

  22. Florian SEROUSSI

    October 24th, 2006 at 6:55 am

    I think that Google will keep competition few miles behind. I find this feature very useful mostly when you are precisely looking for something. Search narrowing is just it!!

  23. Nemrut

    October 24th, 2006 at 7:03 am

    Interesting…the implications for this are potentially significant. Aside from the additional revenue stream, This coud be very beneficial to public schools and government organizations.

    The only scary thing is now Google has a sharper scalpel to measure traffic…

  24. Roger Jennings

    October 24th, 2006 at 7:09 am

    I tried to set up a service this morning, but received a “Bad Request - Your client has issued a malformed or illegal request” error. The message gave no hint of what was wrong with my request.

    Not a very auspicious start IMO.

    –rj

  25. Kevin

    October 24th, 2006 at 7:17 am

    This is likely not unique to Co-op, but what happens when one of the Sponsored Links displayed is a competitor of yours…?

  26. dumbfounder

    October 24th, 2006 at 7:25 am

    I was at Search Engine Strategies San Jose in August where a guy from Google was presenting Google co-op (it actually soft-launched about 6 months ago) and it seemed to be the case of a product created without an audience. That conference had several social search sessions with Yahoo (flickr and del.icio.us), eurekster, and others that had big turnouts and everyone seemed very interested. When Google came to talk it really seemed like they didn’t know what they wanted to do with their product, and the audience lost interest and a lot of people left. There is a lot more to Google co-op than the Rollyo-like functionality, but it is very very hard to understand. Even I had difficulty grasping it, and eventually gave up, and building search engines is what I do for a living.

  27. Tech Blog

    October 24th, 2006 at 7:38 am

    I easily added this to my webpage that is currently my most pofitable check it out here : http://www.bishamon-pallet-jack.com sells 20k in pallet jacks a month! - if that isn’t a hard internet sale I don’t know what is …

    I am also going to be using it on a little start-up I’m working on

    I think its marvaleous but Also I had to lie! - to get no ads :) later - RB

  28. d3bruts1d

    October 24th, 2006 at 7:58 am

    Google Blog has been updated with information about this…
    http://googleblog.blogspot.com.....e-has.html

  29. Karthik

    October 24th, 2006 at 10:11 am

    Great to hear that. I was just waiting for google to do something like this.. I think I will build one myself..

  30. Matt

    October 24th, 2006 at 10:17 am

    Clearly just another way for them to push out ads. Search aggregation is far better…try http://www.srchr.com, a true search aggregator complete with a badge.

  31. Search Engines WEB

    October 24th, 2006 at 10:22 am

    Surprised :-o it took Google so long to do this

    This is a great search resource

    mattcutts.com/blog/review-custom-search-engine/

    here is a good overview by one of Google’s Engineers

  32. Dan

    October 24th, 2006 at 11:51 am

    I made a Web 2.0 Search Engine:

    http://www.google.com/coop/cse.....kfzgid8_jc

  33. Amit

    October 24th, 2006 at 12:35 pm

    The yahoo code is not very good. It takes up too much space.

  34. Ragu Sivanmalai

    October 24th, 2006 at 1:04 pm

    While reading this article I want to invite users for a discussion in my blog

    Can google get Gods mind?

    This was one argument in 2004.I want to validate this argument with diverse opionions by comparing the current trends of google like the one which is described in the post above

    http://ragusivanmalai.blogspot.....-mind.html

    Come on Google users

  35. Rick

    October 24th, 2006 at 1:24 pm

    Not good for Squiddo.

  36. Thomas

    October 24th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

    My biggest concern about using Google Coop would be the same concern I have about using any Google service for my business. Google Customer Support is terrible. They cannot resolve the most basic issues given any amount of time. I have gone back and forth with them over a simple AdSense account for months. My clients have tried to get assistance with the purchase of search engine ads for nearly a year. That is their primary income source and they cannot support that! Google may be picking up new investors but that are alienating customers at the same time.

  37. Rick

    October 24th, 2006 at 1:30 pm

    They don’t exactly make it easy to figure out that you can share the proceeds. Interesting…

  38. Thomas

    October 24th, 2006 at 1:41 pm

    To be honest, customer support at any rapidly growing business or any business with more than 1 million customers is usually terrible. Customer Support departments are the red-headed stepchild at nearly every business. I purchased a brand new Pontiac this year and two months later Pontiac Customer Support could not and would not help me find a replacement tire. Told me to look in the phone book for tire store!

  39. Rick

    October 24th, 2006 at 3:01 pm

    I just made this site in about 30 mins. They did a good job with this Coop thing. Stand alone search engines.

    http://stbartsearch.com

  40. Peter

    October 24th, 2006 at 4:00 pm

    As another example of what you can do, I made this information architecture search engine: http://iasearch.net/

    Took about 2 hours (I guess I’m slower than some of the others here!) ;)

  41. Rahul

    October 25th, 2006 at 9:49 am

    hi, gr8 thing, I just create my own search engine

    http://www.google.com/coop/cse.....eqmj0nzgei

  42. Ritika

    October 25th, 2006 at 10:01 am

    hi, I think this is nice service, we can use adsense here in search results.
    thanks - Ritika

  43. Steven Ickman

    October 25th, 2006 at 11:37 am

    Putch,

    I’m not sure how well that’s going to work (excluding spam sites from results). There has to be a limit on the number of domains they let you associate with a CSE. I’m not sure what the limit is for Google but for Windows Live it’s 25 so I wouldn’t expect Google’s limit to be much higher if any. It’s certainly not going to be in the thousands which is what you’d need for this project. Keep in mind that these CSE definitions have to be turned into SQL on the backend so Google (and anyone else) is going to want to limit the size of that SQL.

    -Steve

  44. Numair Faraz

    October 25th, 2006 at 8:08 pm

    As a means of avoiding the need to type “wikipedia.org” every time I wanted to search for something on Wikipedia, I spent 2 minutes creating http://www.wikp.com .. Enjoy…

  45. Alred

    October 26th, 2006 at 6:00 pm

    I’m a huge Disney fan and just ran across 2 Disney sites that are already using GCSE:

    http://www.searchdisney.com/
    http://www.thedisneyportal.com/tdp/portal.asp

    The 2nd one (Disney Portal) uses a number of so-called Refinements.

  46. Keith Cash

    October 26th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

    Wow! the power of being a search engine master. The SEO power I now could have being number 1 in all my keywords.

    Great service

  47. Jeff

    October 27th, 2006 at 5:48 am

    It is great to see Google roll out with new search capabilities!

  48. Ken Raeside

    October 28th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

    I just used the CSE to build a custom search engine for heavy metal music ( http://find-metal.com ). Very nice. Only took a couple of hours to set up. Now I’m tweaking the mix of sites to search and refinements.

  49. SEOking.eu

    October 29th, 2006 at 5:12 pm

    I have been testing Coop now for 1 wee, with my “SEO Search Engine”:

    http://www.seoking.eu/seo-search-engine/

    People seem to love it. The Engine has good traffic, and lots of requests. I use it myself and administer it as well as I can, to boost the quality of the SERPs.
    http://www.SEOking.eu

  50. John Owen & Paul Codman

    October 31st, 2006 at 7:53 am

    If you are interested in publicising your CSE you may want to be an early bird submitter at our CSE links directory at http://www.cselinks.com - your submission will include as long a description of your CSE as you wish together with relevant keyword lists, both of which you will be entitled to edit and keep up to date if you register as an Editor. You can also add new CSEs as you build them. All Editors will also have permission to rate and comment on other CSEs thereby constantly improving the overall quality of our visitors’ experience. The site will officially go live on Thursday.

  51. Filipo

    November 2nd, 2006 at 2:16 am

    Launched a video search at http://www.videonik.com with Google Coop

  52. James

    November 2nd, 2006 at 3:56 pm

    And, I have a version that helps you find jokes. It’s using Google’s AJAX API currently. Would LOVE comments and recommendations…

  53. James

    November 2nd, 2006 at 3:57 pm

    Oh MAN!!! Left out the link:

    http://findingfunnies.com

  54. Hunegnaw

    November 2nd, 2006 at 7:10 pm

    Well, I just put together http://www.grabajob.com using Google Coop… took 45 minutes.

  55. Mark

    November 26th, 2006 at 5:32 am

    Here’s a simple implementation of Google Co-op, http://www.gootube.net
    By Customizing Google Search, GooTube was able to provide a Search Engine exclusively for videos. The results can be refined by different sources or video hosting sites.

  56. Panagiotis

    December 6th, 2006 at 4:24 am

    Some coop engines are trully unique and very usefull.

    We created the first google coop search engines directory at http://www.coopdir.com
    Its free of course.
    We just went on line, so there are few links posted. Thats good for you of course, youll get more hits… :)

  57. RankSpotDotCom

    December 6th, 2006 at 7:38 am

    Panagiotis, your verification is broken, drop me a mail, but last not least nice AS integration in coopdir.

  58. searchforbooks

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:35 pm

    My experiment: a search engine to find books and book reviews.
    http://searchforbooks.googlepages.com/

  59. Andreas

    January 25th, 2007 at 4:29 am

    It works great for my website which is about origami the art of paperfolding:

    http://www.origami-kunst.de/suche/

    And since Microsofts UMPC (Codename Origami ;-) ) the search engine makes even more sense.

  60. Sjaak

    February 14th, 2007 at 7:28 am

    @ Mark: how did you succeed in showing the videos in your search results?

  61. Vidal

    February 16th, 2007 at 2:56 am

    New Google CSE searchengine lauched! SearchHacker, Quick searches for many different file types like:
    mp3. mid, wav, au, wmv, avi, mpg, mov, mpeg, doc, xls, pds, txt, jpg, rar, torrent… you name it, can come in very handy! Have a look: http://www.searchhacker.com

    Another searchengine from them is http://www.camhacker.com where you can search for live public unprotected webcams

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