New Google Site Search lets Web sites shape search results

Tuesday, Google launched Site Search, a rebranded overhaul of "Google Custom Search Business Edition" that gives Web site owners tools to influence the search results that appear on their sites' custom search pages.

The new hosted solution allows Web sites to offer Google-powered custom searches that are free of Google ads, stated Vijay Koduri, product manager at Google, in a company blog post yesterday.

Through the enhanced indexing capabilities, the hosted solution is able to serve up all content from public Web sites -- "even deep pages or frequently updated material" -- as search results, according to Koduri.

"To do so, we create special indexes that supplement pages already searched by Google.com. For even greater coverage, site owners can upload their SiteMaps," he maintained.

Site Search also gives users three different approaches for shaping search results. With "top results biasing," customers can make sure that certain documents -- such as Web pages of companies' business partners, for example -- rank high among their search results.

Through "data biasing," customers can give a higher ranking in the search results to recent documents. "Synonyms," on the other hand, is designed to let end users find documents with related terms without needing to conduct multiple searches.

"Point out that 'cd' stands for 'certificate of deposit' on your administrative console, and Google Site Search automatically returns results for both, whichever of the two terms in typed into the search box," the product manager wrote.

Google Site Search has also been integrated with Google Analytics, to let customers perform site usage metrics in conjunction with search.