Google Custom Search Engines Open Worlds of Potential - …and They Will Come
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A number of people and organizations have already built custom search engines to suit their needs and the needs of their users. To take the example I hinted at of a search engine that focuses on the science of global warming, Real Climate (http://www.realclimate.org/) focuses on the science without the politics; all entries are vetted by scientists in the field before they’re added to the engine. Searching on ethanol in this engine, for example, delivers a nice assortment of news items and highly scientific articles.
Intuit offers Jumpup (http://www.jumpup.com), a search engine specifically aimed at helping small businesses find the resources they need. This is a full-fledged site, with all sorts of resources on its own, and an apparently thriving community. You can choose to search only the Jumpup site, or top business resources selected by Intuit. Unlike Real Climate, when you do a search on Jumpup, you get a set of sponsored results to the right of the organic ones (more on that later).
Excavator (http://www.winexcavator.com) is a vertical search engine focused on Microsoft technology and news. You can do a general search, or try an advanced one (which offers the familiar options of looking for “all of these words,” “exact phrase,” and others). You can perform a search based on a predefined term; there are fourteen to choose from on the home page, covering security, networking, development, news and analysis, and more.
Tech Stuff (http://vik.singh.googlepages.com/techstuff) lets you enter a search term, then filter your results for reviews, forums, news, and several other categories (one at a time). Like Jumpup, this website displays ads.
AI Research (http://vik.singh.googlepages.com/machinelearningsearch2) is a custom search engine devoted to machine learning. I asked it “what is machine learning?” and received some interesting options before the organic results (though sponsored links came up first). There were a variety of links I could click on sorted by the level of the material, the specific application, the methodology, and the algorithm style. This is the kind of search customization that you can’t get from a general search engine, but is practically indispensable if you’re doing intense research on scientific and/or scholarly areas.
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