Google offers a customised search that you can add to your website or blog.
You identify a number of websites for the search engine to search and then you can choose whether it searches only those sites, the entire web emphasizing the the selected sites, or just the entire web.
If you want to see the power, check what I have running in my personal blog. In the right hand column see Crime Fiction Search. Use it to search an author or title (e.g. Ruth Rendell) and you will see how it works.
It strikes me this would be a very useful tool for a teacher who wanted to pinpoint some sites for users of their site: e.g. good history resources, biology resources and so on. Google gives you the code to embed in your blog or website.
I have 100 sites listed in my search box, and I think you would either want to try to list 20 or more sites, or use some really comprehensive ones to get good results. And be warned that it does take a while for Google to activate the search (about 45 mins. or so from memory), so that you begin to get results. You are able to add more sites later too.
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Another known way of providing more accurate results than a typical search engine is to provide a highly focused search engine that uses a subset of the Internet rather than the whole Internet. The good news is that you can leverage the mighty Google search engine for just this purpose.
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