Google Custom Search Engines

Google has rolled out a new “custom search engine” feature that is going to knock some start-ups like Rollyo dead in the water. It’s simple to set up a custom search for a list of sites. I’ve already created a life hack search engine (example search: how to stop drinking coffee) for searching about common life improving tasks. Creating engines is simple, but what is nice is that they’ve added features so that you can brand the engine, collaboratively develop it with other people, as well as collect AdSense revenues. There is a real incentive to use your expertise to build a top-notch engine.

I predict the rapid development of 356,724 custom search engines that aren’t refined after the first week. After around a few months there should some clear domain specific engines with real expertise behind them.

UPDATE: Fellow wp.com-er Vik Singh made a pretty sweet tech search engine and posted the instructions (via Scoble).

UPDATE 2006/11/15: Google Blogoscoped gives a tutorial on advanced custom search engine tweaking

(FT, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch Blog, TechCrunch, Matthew Ingram, Google OS, Blogoscope, Problogger, Slashdot)