Google Custom Search Engines Open Worlds of Potential - Potential Uses and Benefits
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I mentioned that some of the search engines already built with Google Custom Search Engine included sponsored links. These were supplied by Google. That’s right, building a search engine with Google is free, and it can make you money! This is perhaps the real reason Google is offering CSE, lurking behind Google’s statements about improving search experiences for people; it’s another way for Google to deliver a highly targeted audience to its advertisers.
Aside from the purely monetary aspects though, the ability to create your own search engine without having to know code opens up a plethora of possibilities. Imagine parents and teachers – maybe whole schools – creating search engines that can help students with their homework and research, which exclude misleading (or even unsafe) web sites. Or how about a small group of hobbyists building a web site around their hobby, complete with its own search engine that makes it easy to share newly-discovered resources? And speaking of discoveries, scientists in any field could benefit from building a customized search engine to help further the exchange of ideas.
In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. As a result of this new service from Google, within two years we will see the rise of a new occupation: search engine designer. Remember, before SEO became a separate occupation, everybody was responsible for doing it for their own sites; and while it’s still possible to learn how to do the basics yourself, many companies trying to win high rankings in the SERPs for competitive keywords find themselves turning to professional SEOs.
Google CSE is rather like Dreamweaver and other website design programs, but for search engines; you don’t need to be able to code from scratch (which opens the field to far more people), but there are still certain things you will need to know, and be prepared to put in the time to learn, to make a really good vertical search engine that people will want to use. Since more people want web sites than have the time or know-how to create and maintain them, we have web site designers. Since more people want to score high in the SERPs than want to spend the time learning SEO, we have SEO professionals. Like web site design and SEO, building a good customized search engine will be found to be as much an art as a science; many will create such engines to feed their own passions, but many organizations will turn to professionals to get the job done. SEO and SEM, meet SED.
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