Google launches Site Search

Search Site, Google Enterprise's new service, gives web owners the opportunity to create a self-branded, Google-powered search bar for their websites.

The service is hosted by Google and starts at 50.95 ($100) per year for searching 5,000 pages.

Site owners will now be able to quickly implement search functionality that is familiar and useful to their visitors. It will also allow them to customise Google Site Search to their site and content.

The Google Site Search takes advantage of the power of Google infrastructure and flexibility of cloud computing.

Head of Google Enterprise in the UK Robert Whiteside said that Google Site Search would play a vital role in enhancing a company's website appeal.

"This is our opportunity to bring Google quality services to all websites of all sizes. For companies that don't own the technical resources we can offer them a whole range of search tools," he said.

"There are lots of companies that spend money on building up websites but once people come to their sites they may not be able to look around very easily. Search is a very powerful way to navigate a site. If you want to maintain interest then using search is ideal," said Whiteside.

Google Site Search will offer enhanced index coverage, which gives comprehensive search results on any website by crawling and indexing more content. It will also offer synonyms, which will allow queries to be expanded upon to include commonly searched terms.

The new service will also offer date biasing, so that site owners can influence search results based on the age of documents; top results biasing, which will allow specific sections of the site to appear at the top of search results, as well as offering full customisation of a website's look and feel.

President of enterprise at Google, Dave Girouard, said that using cloud computing in this way would vastly increase customer satisfaction.

"Cloud computing makes powerful search readily accessible to any business on the web."