Google Custom Search... How to boost your Google site ranking in 5 minutes or less (guaranteed)!

Well, almost. With Google’s Custom Search API , you can add a powerful site search feature to your website in a matter of minutes. This API allows you to easily create a customized search engine, influencing the results displayed. If you own a company that serves a particular market niche, for example, you can become a central hub for information on that topic, improve the “stickiness” of your site, and increase the likelihood that your users will read information on your site before being whisked away.

Google gives us several ways to control the results that are displayed via a web search. From keyword promotion and demotion, to site inclusion or exclusion, the methods allow for a surprising level of control. For example, if my site visitor performs a standard Google search on “Sharepoint”, my company does not appear in the top few search results. However, if I create a custom search engine centering on the Sharepoint topic, I can choose to display results from my site exclusively (probably not very helpful to the end user), or simply emphasize my site results over others. This means that my site visitor would likely see pages on Sharepoint from my site first, but sees other sites with Sharepoint information after that. Yes, ads are displayed in the free edition, but a business account will only set most people back about $100/yr to remove the ads from results pages. Not bad.

While a Google Custom Search Engine can be a great tool to improve site stickiness and engage your site visitors, they can’t find what isn’t there!