Google today released their Custom Search Engine, which enables anyone to create their own search engine. You can specify sites to include, sites not to include, keywords to emphasize, modify the look and feel, even earn money through Adsense.

I'm impressed. There have been attempts in the past - Rollyo, Eurekster and Yahoo have tried similar services, but have either been too small or too unspectacular to have worked. Google, being the largest player in the traditional search space, is a natural favorite in this space, and in all probabilty will emerge soon as the clear leader.

Where does this leave the vertical search startups? Bixee, Guruji, Sidestep.com, Oodle.com - to name a few. What stops me - with a few fellow volunteers - from creating a vertical search engine that could rival, and perhaps better, some of the existing vertical search products.

The hosting costs would be zero, the algorithm would be Google's, there would be no need for sneaky botting type techniques, no legal liability ?, a pre-existing index of websites . . .

How could one possibly compete with that?

Moral : If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I see that I am the first to post.... I have done this search engine. It is rather cool, only it doesn't let you ACTUALLY ACTUALLY customize your own search engine. You get tonarrow down a bit of your search results by giving keywords, but you don't actually get to tag sites and put them in your engine... It is rather cool however and I reccomend it to someone who wants to make a search engine.

I experimented with this Google Service, although I don't really see how it would help your website, if you let it search for releated sites, isn't it just advertising the competition?