Technology

Google launched their new Google Site Search today. The new program is a re-branded version of the Google Custom Search Business Edition. Site Search helps to provide businesses with a way to offer Google search on their own personal web sites.

“Search continues to be the way people find information,” said Google enterprise product director Matt Glotzbach. “It has really taken over as the navigation paradigm for the Web. We’re really set on addressing that and creating a hosted search offering that’s accessible to everyone.”

The new Site Search offers enhanced index coverage. It now indexes documents on public sites that otherwise wouldn’t be indexed. Glotzbach described these files as “content that the crawler knows about but isn’t in the main index due to space constraints.” Public documents hidden behind submission forms represent the types of files that might not normally make it into Google’s index, he explained.

Site Search now handles synonyms, so a search for “car” will now include “automobiles,” for example. And Site Search administrators can add their own custom synonym dictionary to associate specific search terms with each other.

Top-results biasing and date biasing are also now available, allowing Site Search administrators to make specific documents rank more prominently for certain search terms. This is useful for presenting customers with newly released information, for instance, that might not otherwise rank at the top of a search results list.

And Site Search can be customized to reflect the design of the indexed site. Glotzbach said that Google’s logo can be completely removed from Site Search pages. But, he noted, “companies like the Google branding because it really inspires confidence in their users.” Google says it has over 10,000 active users of its various enterprise search appliances and over 1,000 Web sites using Site Search.

Dave Girouard, president of Google’s enterprise group, claimed in a statement that Site Search can increase customer satisfaction and business results. To support that argument, Google cites a variety of research firm findings. It points to Media Metrix’s finding that 80% of site visitors will abandon a site if the search is poor. It also cites Jupiter Research’s finding that 85% of site searches don’t return what the user sought.
Google Site Search has been integrated with Google Analytics, so Web site owners may benefit from site usage metrics in addition to the Google search experience.

In conjunction with the Site Search re-launch, Google has marshaled happy clients to attest to the power of search. It quotes Layla Rudy, Web site content manager for EMC Insignia, who attributes an 85% decrease in customer-requested refunds and a roughly 20% increase in e-commerce sales to the addition of Google Site Search.

Google says businesses can sign up and have Google Site Search available on their sites in about 10 minutes. Google Site Search costs $100 for up to 5,000 pages, $500 for 5,001 to 50,000 pages, $850 for 50,001 to 100,000 pages, and $2,250 for 100,001 to 300,000 pages. Businesses with more than 300,000 pages have to contact Google sales for a quote.