Use your expertise – build a topical search engine
From the post:
Did you know that a topical search engine can help your users find content from more than a single domain? You can use your expertise to provide a delightful user experience targeting a particular topic on the Web.
There are two main types of engines built with Google Custom Search: site search and topical search. While site search is relatively straightforward – it lets you implement a search for a blog or a company website – topical search is an entirely different story.
Topical search engines focus on a particular topic and therefore usually cover a part of the Web that is larger than a single domain. Because of this topical engines need to be carefully fine-tuned to bring the best results to the users.
OK, yes, it is a Google API and run by Google.
That doesn’t trouble me overmuch. My starting assumption is that anything that leaves my subnet is being recorded.
Recorded and sold if there is a buyer for the information.
Doesn’t even have to leave my subnet if they have the right equipment.
Anyway, think of Google’s Custom Search API as another source of data like Common Crawl.
It’s more current than Common Crawl if that is one of your project requirements. And probably easier to use for most folks.
And you can experiment at very low risk to see if your custom search engine is likely to be successful.
Whether you want a public or private custom search engine, I am interested in hearing about your experiences.