After reading several articles about the new Google Co-op feature the Custom Search Engine, is this my first experience with this great (and fast) new service from Google.

Community powered search is not new, you find another version on the main page of this blog the “Swicki“. What is so special with the new Custom Search Engine from Google? First of all Google search results are fast and most of the time the SERP’s are from some value (if you use the right search query). Next its possible to insert the form and the results in your own website, this way you can create you’re personal search page together with other items (banner, RSS feeds etc.).

I tried to use the results on my website finalwebsites.com, where the search feature from Adsense was used in the past. Actually the new search needs fewer settings in the query string because all style information is resolved via a unique string. The bad point is that the first version doesn’t fit into my 760px wide website. Next I played a while with the feature to add refinements (labels) to the search, maybe I did something wrong but these labels are available on the result page for whatever my search string was.

At the end the old situation was quickly restored and I added a link to my new “Web Development Search“. I hope Google will make the code a little bit more flexible in the near future and in the meantime I will build up my community powered search.
Check this related story, this thread from the Webdigity community or the official Google CSE blog.