Google Site Search Announcement

I just returned from a Google Seminar where they promoted the use of the their new Google Site Search. As I am a Google partner, I could feel the pain of some of the Google enterprise salespeople in the room as the product managers said the announced, with excitement, the power of the new product and very low pricing. Why the pain? Well, it will be hard to sell Google Search Appliances for public facing web sites with this powerful announcement.

I have long advocated the use of the custom search engine, and now Google has added the capability to add custom crawling of any documents are not present in Google.com or in "deep web" repositories.

Who does this affect? Well, most studies show that public facing web site search is not good. In fact, dissatisfaction rates may climb as high as 90%. So, this affects everyone, but it really helps the procrastinators and those those sites that have spent lots of time and money to improve their site search with dubious results. With the Google Site Search, you can provide your users the experience that they seek with the customizations and control that most businesses demand.

So, for all of you that do not like your public site search, you now have the ability to fix the problem and fast.

Does this mean that your search "tasks" are over? No! While, but you can stop worrying about the technology and focus on applications. When you do a search for weather 60657 on Google, you get the weather. Have you created those types of "shortcuts" for your business? Google has hundreds of shortcuts that answer users questions immediately and increase satisfaction. Now that you don't have to worry about the search, now you can focus on producing value added services for your client base that only you can create.

A vast number of studies show that people are searching more, but yet most organizations spend most of their time and money on content management systems, branding, and navigation schemes. Google has provided you a great service that will serve as your foundation for your search, so now every business must work to add value to Google's core site search product.

Are you sold yet? Well if you are not, then don't forget that using the Google Site Search will get your content indexed by Google.com and drive more users to your web site.

So how important is this announcement? You can slash your web site search costs and increase your traffic. In sum, that should be a pretty high priority for any organization.

Let the countdown begin until you have the same control over your internal data. You don't think that Google really likes to ship out hardware to end users do you? I don't have any information about migrating intranet search to the cloud, but all the pieces are getting put in place...