SitesForSoreEyes
Build Your Own Search Engine
By Jim Calloway and Courtney Kennaday
In our last “Sites for Sore Eyes column” (June
2008), we talked about search engines and other ways
to find content online. Although we showed you some excellent
sites, how cool would it be to design your own search
engine—customized to search specific websites?
Pretty cool, we think! Well, a custom search engine is
not only possible: It’s easy!
It probably never occurred to you to create a customized
search engine, but think of what a valuable tool that
could be. Suppose a tax lawyer realizes that she primarily
relies on eleven different websites for 90% of her information
searches. How much simpler her research would be if she
had a custom search engine that searched only those eleven
sites! And if she could add her custom “Tax Search
Engine” to her law firm’s website as a public
service (and marketing tool), then so much the better!
Think of how much traffic your law firm website might
generate if you had a custom search page for news and
information about your city or geographical region (particularly
in a small town or city). Custom search engines are really
only limited by your imagination. You could have a custom
search page for your hobby, whether it’s golf,
bowling, or knitting.
What about a custom search page for your favorite sports
team, combining fan blogs and sports news sites? Take
a look at Red Sox Nation Search created by Wall
Street Journal technology columnist Walter S. Mossberg
at http://rollyo.com/wmossberg/red_sox_nation.
Or perhaps custom search engines dedicated to your columnists,
Courtney or Jim? Well, OK, our parents and relatives
might like it, but there are not really enough websites
devoted to us just yet. But keep a happy thought, and
maybe we will return to that idea in the future.
How to Easily Build a Custom Search Engine
We will cover two easy ways to do this: Rollyo and Google
Custom Search. There may be other ways to do this as
well, but if you have one way to build a custom search
engine powered by Yahoo and one way powered by Google,
we think you are in pretty good shape.
Rollyo is located at http://rollyo.com/,
and the name stands for Roll Your Own Search Engine.
As noted, it is powered by Yahoo.
Rollyo allows you to create custom “Searchrolls” that
you can use for your own research purposes or share with
others. Before you create your own, check out the examples
of Searchrolls on Rollyo, including some created by celebrities
like Arianna Huffington or Debra Messing.
Registering is quick: just create a username, password,
and provide your email address. Then you can get right
to creating your own Searchroll by selecting sites from
your own Bookmark file or browsing through other Searchrolls
for ideas. You can use the Rollyo Dashboard tool to personalize
your search page and pick search engines to add. Add
sites to your Searchrolls on the fly using the RollBar
Bookmarklet tool, one of the free apps Rollyo offers.
When finished, add a Rollyo Searchbox to your website
with site search and as many Searchrolls as you want.
As shown with the Red Sox Nation Search example
above, your custom search engine page will have its own
unique link that can be shared with others if you choose.
A really fun section of the Rollyo website is http://rollyo.com/explore.html,
where one can explore the Searchrolls made by other people.
There is a list of the most popular Searchrolls, or you
can perform a search. The query “law” found
dozens of Searchrolls, the majority of which were indeed
law-related, but it also found “clawfoot
bathtub” and “lawncare.”
Rollyo is easy and free, and, most important, it works.
But we haven’t heard as much about Rolloyo since
Google developed its own custom search engine product.
Start yours at the Google Custom Search page: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/.
Of course, you have to have a personal account with
Google to do this. If you already use Gmail, iGoogle,
Google Calendar, or one of the many other services offered
by Google, you’re good to go.
Google Custom Search is as easy to set up as Rolloyo
on the basic level. But there are some very advanced
features for those who like to tinker.
The basic search can be demonstrated by a custom search
page Jim set up a few years ago to search law practice
management resources like practice management blogs and
ABA Legal Technology Resource Center. Here is the link
to Jim’s Oklahoma Law Practice Tips Search http://tinyurl.com/yredb3 (or
see Courtney’s South Carolina search engine at http://tinyurl.com/66cus4).
If you really only want one custom search engine, we
suggest creating one and inserting it as a gadget on
your iGoogle page. That way, once you have logged into
Google at the beginning of the day, anytime you do a
Google search your custom search engine will be ready
to use if you need it. Of course, you can insert many
other gadgets in your iGoogle page, such as RSS newsfeeds,
weather, games, or photos. Google’s
custom search page makes insertion into your iGoogle
a snap.
In fact, there are so many facets to Google Custom Search,
there is a technical blog dedicated to it: http://googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com/.
Don’t worry if you don’t understand all of
the high-level development posts there—it’s
really geeky.
We had a hard time deciding what to include in this
article as we kept stumbling across cool items that we
hadn’t seen before. You can automatically generate
a search engine based on the links on your website or
blog with “Google Custom Search on the fly” http://www.google.com/coop/cse/onthefly.
Just copy some code from this page and paste it into
your webpage. It will create a custom search that will
search only the links included on your site or blog—no
special expertise or knowledge of html code required.
For Google’s set of examples and featured custom
search engines go to http://www.google.com/coop/cse/examples/GooglePicks.
Custom search engines are a great way for solo and small
firm lawyers to jazz up their websites for free. To start
with, add one focusing on your areas of law or expertise,
and one for your community or region. It’s a unique
way to market your law firm.
Finally, another custom search tool has been released.
This one is from Yahoo. It is called Alpha, and it is
in beta http://au.alpha.yahoo.com/.
This is a bit different from the other tools discussed
above and we will let you explore it on your own for
now. We just included it because we like saying it is
called Alpha and it is in beta.
And if any of you create a really great custom search
engine, send us the link. We’d love to see it.
Jim Calloway is the director of the
Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program.
He served as chair of the ABA TECHSHOW™ 2005. Calloway publishes the weblog, Jim Calloway’s
Law Practice Tips, at http://jimcalloway.typepad.com, and was coauthor of the book, Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour. He serves on the GP|Solo Division Technology Board. Courtney Kennaday is the director of the Practice Management
Assistance Program of the South Carolina Bar. She advises bar
members on practice management and law office technology.
© Copyright 2008, American Bar Association.
