Google Custom Search Engine Yields Good Results

Google informs me that one of the Open Source CMS Search Engines I built a while back now indexes over 18 million pages. Though it's a drop in the bucket next to broad category search engines, it's not too bad for a specialty search tool.

I started playing around with Google's Custom Search Engine (CSE) feature in late 2006. Google had just launched the CSE system and I thought it looked interesting. The system, in short, allows you to create a dedicated search engine for which you build the index as you see fit, identifying the sources and created the filters for the users. It looked like good fun -- a chance to take Google search technology and point it at what I wanted with tweaks to extract things a little more suited to my needs.

I set it up, played with the settings, then decided to move it off Google and embed it in a page template I could control. At the same time I popped in an Advanced Search functionality to make it a little more friendly for the power searchers out there. I thought the result was pretty good. If nothing else, it made it easier for me to do my own research into open source content management systems.

In December of 2006 I turned the open source CMS search engine over to water&stone, where it has been published for public usage on a sub-domain: http://cms-search.waterandstone.com

The traffic for the tool has grown steadily since launch. We received some good initial support from the trades and from Google and that has translated into a steady base of users.

Over time we've added sites to the index, sometimes in a concerted effort, most often when we find out about them. Earlier this week a new refinement (think: filter) was added to accompany the addition of 17 eLearning and Courseware systems.

Looking at it today I realize it needs some work. Looks like The Next Pet Project...