Google Unveils Search Add-On for Businesses

Google took another step into the business applications market Tuesday with the introduction of Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE), a pay service that allows businesses to add customizable, advertisement-free search bars to their Web sites.
"Businesses spend a lot of effort and energy creating and promoting great websites for their products and services, but quality search is often missing," Nitin Mangtani, product manager for Enterprise Search, and Rajat Mukherjee, group product manager for search, wrote in a blog post.

Business Edition builds on Google Custom Search Engine, a similar service introduced in October 2006 that also enables the addition of customizable Google search bars to Web sites. That free service, however, includes ads in search returns and, in most cases, displays Google brand imagery.

"Businesses have asked us for greater flexibility and support – and we're addressing those needs with CSBE," said Mangtani and Mukherjee.

That flexibility includes the ability to produce search results that access the Google repository of Web sites but do not look like traditional Google results. Users can upload their company logo and change the colors of search result pages, Google said.
"Now those of you with business sites have the option to turn off ads and have further control over branding," according to the blog post.

The service is available for $100 per year for Web sites with up to 5,000 pages and $500 per year for those with pages between 5,000 and 50,000, according to Google. Anything beyond 50,000 pages would require a special arrangement with Google.
Users can turn off ads with an XML feed from CSBE or through user-built interfaces that integrate an XML feed of search results, according to Google. They have the option to replace those ads with links that appear above search results for keywords of choice. They can also opt to include terms with results that help people refine their search, much like Google's "did you mean?" function.

The application supports about two dozen languages, including Chinese, French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Spanish.

Google said in an interview earlier this year that its Apps unit is moving forward on several pilot projects for larger companies, according to a spokesman. Several weeks ago, the company acquired e-mail security company Postini for $625 million, a move intended to attract more large businesses to Google Apps.

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