Today marks a big day in Google history. The search engine giant, which controls over 60% of all website searches, has released Google co-op, enabling users to create a “custom search engine” that will search only websites they specify, allowing users to have a purely personalized search experience.

I played around with a custom 10e20 search engine and found the setup extremely easy to use. In a simple two step process (can it get any better than that?), you simply create a search engine by specifying the sites that you wish to search within, and run a test search. You can then navigate to the “control panel” for the particular engine you just created (there doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of URLs you can search nor the number of engines you can create) and grab code to throw on your site.

Additional features are available, including setup of the display of the Google search and the ability to enable collaboration for your friends and family. You can even integrate your Google AdSense account into it to make some money.

This is definitely something you should look into if you want to search within your favorite sites.

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