Mortgages.co.uk and Google Custom Search

Mortgages.co.uk is a a leading provider of information about mortgages in the UK. We recently asked Peter Walker, their CTO, about their experience using Google Custom Search Business Edition.

Google: Tell us about why mortgages.co.uk needed a search engine.
Peter: Buying a home for the first time, moving house or refinancing your existing mortgage are some of the biggest financial decisions the average consumer makes, and we want to get it right. The web has revolutionised the way we research and transact when we travel, insure a car or buy a new gizmo.

The problem we all face is how to turn the mass of data out there into useful information to help us all make informed choices, and search for the heart of the answer. Here at http://www.mortgages.co.uk/, we don’t believe in best buy tables, long lists of options, or pushing a viewer into making a choice.

We have over 3,500 pages of the latest news and information (growing daily) to help our visitors increase their knowledge and become better informed, with real people standing by to provide advice and guidance.

The problem we faced, with such a vast amount of content, was how to help the viewer to find the information they needed and find it quickly. We needed a search engine for our site.

Google: What technology did Custom Search Business edition replace and why?
Peter: We tried the search / index solutions that come with Microsoft IIS web server. We also tested costly specialist search software, but then we found Google Custom Search Business Edition.

Google: What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?
Peter: The results of using Google Custom Search were instant. Viewers who had been grappling with the depth of content on our site could suddenly jump directly to the information they wanted, displayed in a way they knew and loved. Page views per visitor have increased by as much as 8%, and conversions per visitor are up by as much to 16% since visitors are finding what they need.

Google: What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?
Peter: The setup could not have been easier. We also appreciate the simplicity and that search results show the viewer - the most important person to us - results in a way they are already comfortable with.

Google: What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?
Peter: It's been terrific, we would not have expected changing something as simple as search would have such a positive impact on use of the site.

How Handstands.com uses Google to Power Their ECommerce Site

HandStands.com offers market innovative, quality and competitively priced accessories for iPod, computer accessories, air fresheners, mouse mats and CD DVD Binders.

The company recently implemented Custom Search Business Edition on its site, so we asked Jade Hansen, their Director of eCommerce, about how their experience has been.

Google: How was the implementation process?
Jade: The implementation was very straightforward and easy. Google obviously knows how to make things easy, while supporting the latest technologies. The various possibilities with XML also made it easy to customize CSBE to work for our needs.

Google: What technology did Custom Search Business edition replace and why?
Jade: CSBE replaced a custom built search that, unfortunately, didn't work as intended. One of our more popular products, known as the Sticky Pad, for instance, never even showed up even if you typed "Sticky Pad" within the search field. It was limitations like this that caused us to go looking for another quick and easy to implement solution.

Google: What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?
Jade: There are several benefits from using CSBE. Some of the ones that help us and our customers are the following:

• the familiarity of the search results page. As most know, Google holds the majority of the market share for internet searches, so the familiarity of the search results is a plus for customers. They know what they're looking at and aren't confused with what they see.
• The ability to track search terms. We love being able to view what people are searching for and even being able to act on it. We may receive a search for a color of a product we don't carry. We took advantage of this data and introduced a new product color. It helped make all the difference for our most popular product online.
• We love how we don't need to worry about updating the search index on a weekly basis. Google handles it all for us.
  

Google: What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?

Jade: A search function on a website can almost make or break a site, especially as the sites grows and adds more and more content. We're glad to be able to take advantage of Google's technology and give it a home on our website.

How DaniWeb IT Discussion Community Uses Google for Site Search

The DaniWeb IT Discussion Community recently implemented Custom Search Business Edition on its website. We asked Dani Horowitz, the owner of the site, about their business and experience using Custom Search.

Google: Please give us an overview of your existing business as well as some information around the business pain that caused you to seek out Google Custom Search Business Edition.

Dani: DaniWeb IT Discussion Community is an interactive, online community for everyone in the IT industry from software developers to web developers to Internet marketers to tech enthusiasts. A quarter of a million members strong, and increasing by nearly 1,000 a day, we've been around for about four years with features such as forums, blogs, IT news, a code snippet library, and more.

As with most large forums, the all-important site search has always been a concern for us. We outgrew our forum system's internal search feature a couple of years ago. Since then, we have been playing with multiple options such as MySQL Fulltext Search and SphinxSearch. When Google offered a SOAP-based API that would allow us to outsource search while still providing Google-quality results, I thought it was the end to our problems. However, the 1,000 queries per day limit was frustrating, and the program was closed down just as we began to exceed the limit. We were forced to migrate back to SphinxSearch and, as our web traffic grew, eventually offloaded it onto our mail server. While SphinxSearch was rather fast, our main concern was how literal the results were, often returning no results at all despite a significant amount of information within our database on the query submitted. Obviously this wasn't an ideal situation. We also played around with AdSense for Search, and while the results were spot on and it was nice to make money on search result pages, it wasn't as flexible as we needed.

Somewhere along the way I heard that Google was now offering XML-based results, for a fee, so I decided to search around Google's API and Product Info pages for more information. It seemed as if XML results would be comparable to the SOAP-based results Google used to offer. I soon discovered Google Custom Search Business Edition, but we didn't seem to fit into its default pricing model. I called up my Google AdSense rep who hooked me up with a CSBE representative who was able to get us live before the end of the same week, and the rest is history.
Google: How was the implementation process?Dani: The implementation process couldn't have been easier. I was able to gain access to the XML-based results roughly a day after signing the contract. Once that happened, it didn't take more than an hour to write a PHP script to fetch the results. However, I had wanted to take that a step further, and it took another few hours to customize the results by integrating them with DaniWeb's internal database.

Google: What technology did Custom Search Business edition replace and why?

Dani: Google replaced every other internal search script or algorithm that I was able to get my hands on or code myself over the past few years, from Google's SOAP-based API, to MySQL Fulltext search, to SphinxSearch, to AdSense for Search.

Google: What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?Dani: Pretty much the only direct benefit that I was looking for in CSBE was XML-based results. This allows us to have the same amount of flexibility as we did with in house solutions such as MySQL Fulltext and SphinxSearch, while still having amazingly accurate Google-powered results. This gives us the ability to not just spit out search results, but, as a database-driven website, actually heavily integrate the results with information we already know about each page.

As a huge site which covers just so much content, navigation and usability has always been a huge problem for us. It's great to be able to actually take Google results and have the flexibility to replace the URLs of each result with a site-specific navigational breadcrumb. This allows a searcher to always be aware of exactly where they are in the hierarchy of our website. We've also been able to filter out navigational pages from the search results, ensuring that searchers are always taken directly to the content-based forum thread or article pages that directly contain the information they're looking for.

Something else that we've been able to implement, thanks to CSBE's flexibility, is the ability to highlight search keywords and keyphrases on the landing page for each search result. This allows a searcher to not only know that what they are looking for is contained somewhere on the page, but specifically where on the page it is.

Additionally, we're using Google AdSense custom search units on our search result pages, thanks to my AdSense rep, so that plays a major role in offsetting the cost for us. We also use Google Analytics, and their new Search feature makes it really easy to see exactly how search performs for us. I can now say with confidence, thanks to CSBE and Google Analytics, that visitors who use our site search feature visit an average of 10 times the number of pages and spend ten times as long on the site. And thanks to a few thousand people searching a day, it adds up to a noticeable increase in retention rate across the board.

Google: What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?

Dani: My favorite features of CSBE include the high quality of the results, the ability to include and exclude individual pages and directories by using wildcards (although RegEx would be a nice future addition), XML-based results, a flexible pricing model, and integration with Google AdSense for Search (thanks to my AdSense rep). If any one of these features were missing, CSBE would most likely not suit my needs and/or be within my budget.

Google: What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?

Dani: CSBE has only been running for a couple of days so far, but the results have been overwhelmingly positive. I'm excited as I look to DaniWeb's future without the constant worry that an internal site search is a greater problem the bigger we grow. Being able to have an outsourced solution with all of the benefits of an in house solution definitely is one less thing to have to worry about. It's also amazing to witness that Google provides better results than search algorithms that have direct access to our content database.

Custom Search for Toolhawker's eCommerce Site

Sean Mayo
Senior Software Engineer
Toolhawker

Toolhawker provides tools, equipment and supplies for the professional technician. Sean Mayo recently implemented Custom Search Business Edition for Toolhawker, and we asked him how his experience has been.

Google: Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?
Sean: I had built a complete custom e-commerce store from the ground up. With more than 6,000 products in our catalog, searching became a problem. Performing a queries on the database to find any relevant products was slow and not always accurate. Google's search algorithms and speed have always WOWed me so I decided to give Custom Search Business Edition a try.

Google: What technology, if any, did it replace and why?
Sean: It replaced our former database search technology and added good technology. We were able to use the XML stream model to deliver us fast search results directly from Google and completely customize the appearance to match our website.

Google: What benefits have you derived from using Google CSBE?
Sean: There are a lot of technological reasons I like Google CSBE - but from a business standpoint it has really helped with the speed of our website and with customer retention. We want buyers to find what they're looking for - and fast, or they'll look elsewhere.

Google: What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?
Sean: I appreciate that Google gives me so many options on how I can implement CSBE on my site. I chose to use the more advanced XML option but even novice programmers can easily implement a plug-and-play option.

Google: Are you using Google Analytics on your website?
Sean: Yes, I use Google Analytics on all of my websites. Google has become a real internet partner and provides a solution for almost all the tools you need to run a successful website.

Google: What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?
Sean: The overall impact has been excellent. Along with better and more relevant search results and greater speeds, we've seen our average customer "pages per visit" increase by 25%.

Google: Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the CSBE for their company's use?
Sean: The XML was easy to implement and all of the documentation is straight forward and easy to understand. Most of my pages were already indexed with Google so the search worked just like Google.com.

Scott Jordan
Founder and Chief Executive
SCOTTEVEST
www.scottevest.com

1) Why did you need Google CSBE?
SCOTTEVEST(SeV), offers consumers clothing designed to accommodate
electronic devices and their wires. Our products allow you to both
carry and use electronic devices including cell phones, PDA's,
cameras, as well as other items such as keys, water bottles, eye
glasses, etc. The SeV web site, www.scottevest.com, needed a powerful site search
solution that could handle our multi-media-rich content archives, and
we also wanted to control the user-experience and focus the results on
SeV pages only.

2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?

CSBE replaced standard Google Site Search, as well as an outdated
"Product Quick Finder" that helped people get directly to our 2 dozen
products, but not to any of the rich supporting content that helps
make the SeV shopping experience unique and enjoyable.

3) What benefits have you derived from using the CSBE?
We know that our site search experience is now much smoother and more
intuitive from a usability perspective. We also know that our site
searchers stay with us vs. clicking off to other natural and paid
search links/sites. As a Google tool shop, we already use
Google Docs (to keep our network of contractors working together) and of course the main Google engine.

4) Features of Google CSBE you appreciate most and why?
We like the ability to limit searches by domain, sub-domain and the
ability to exclude specific site areas /directories from search. We
also appreciate the ability to customize the results experience in
order to maintain brand consistency.

5) What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE for ScotteVest
Our customer experience has been exceptional. CSBE has provided us easy dynamic information without us having to worry about the architecture of the file structure. And by deploying CSBE, we also add credibility to the SCOTTEVEST brand.

6) Advise you'd give others in implementing the Google CSBE for their company's use?
Do it. How else can you spend $100 and know without a doubt that you
are (1) keeping more hard-earned traffic on your site and (2) making
your shopping experience measurably "bettersmarterfastersmoother" for
your most interested and valuable customers?

Layla Rudy
Webmaster, EMC Insignia

About EMC Insignia

Building upon EMC’s leadership and expertise, EMCInsignia.com is a large website that features six information management software products for small and medium businesses. Our site architecture has three tiers, and between product support pages, informational PDFs, and product comparison tables, there is a lot of data.

The Issue

We did not have any search technology prior to implementing CSBE, and it was definitely overdue.

The Solution

CSBE was simple and quick to set up, and there is almost no maintenance. With constant updates to the site, it is convenient to have this solution that runs itself. The control panel is easy to use, and we were able to tailor the search results page to conform to our branding standards.

Business Impact

1.Our customers see the familiar Google brand and search results page, which is clean and acts just like regular Google searches, so the customer doesn’t have to navigate another interface to find their information. With CSBE, users can search PDF, Excel and web pages to find exactly what they need.

2.The CSBE helps our customers access data quickly, get answers to common support questions, and find key product features. This not only helps customers; it helps our support staff worldwide as well. We have saved valuable technical support resources, reduced the number of incoming support calls, reduced the number of product refunds, and helped customers choose the right product.

3. In addition, there has been an approximate 85% decrease in customer-requested refunds. Since customers are able to find product information more easily, they are able to find the correct product for their needs. For the same reasons, we have also seen an approximate 20% increase in e-commerce sales.

4. Our support staff can quickly find links, documentation, and common answers to direct customers to in the case of on-the-fly inbound calls.

5.On the first full day of implementation of CSBE, we had 90 queries, and our statistics had reached almost 200 queries per day by the fourth day. Our site has an average of 2,300 visitors per day. By the end of the first week, almost 10% of our visitors were using CSBE.

Advice for others?

Google CSBE is so simple and quick to set up, there’s really no additional support needed. The only thing I would say is to make sure the search box is in a prominent place: CSBE makes it really easy to find information, but CSBE shouldn’t be difficult to find!

Are there particular industry specific uses that CSBE was able to add value to?

Support: searching for keywords and finding answers within our FAQ’s and support articles more quickly.

Sales: key product benefits are easily searchable, purchasing methods are found more quickly, Channel Partners can find part numbers and pricing immediately.

Product info: Google’s automatic spellchecker helps customers find the correct product information quickly.

Lyndon Docherty

Trueways Survival School

www.Survival-School.org

1) Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?

Trueways Survival School is 'The Authority' in Survival advice, information and training. We make survival training and resources accessible to everyone through a portfolio of courses designed to take participants from basic principles through to advanced training. The goal of our Web site is to offer visitors everything they need relating to survival courses and products and provide the most specifically relevant information in as few clicks as possible. Our web site content is rapidly expanding and we needed to both improve "stickiness" and create opportunities to up-sell visitors on products related to their search queries


2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?
Previously we had 2 separate search technologies, 1 from within our shop only returning product related results and the other from within the site forum software only showing forum results - both provided results on a different page with a very different presentation style. Obviously, requiring our visitors to use a separate search for each function caused huge navigation issues. In addition to the confusion of needing a different search for different results types, this made it impossible to show products to people only looking for information, thus making ‘related’ sales a challenge. In addition, we were previously unable to provide a search for general pages from the site which didn’t reside within the shop or forum.


3) What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?
We are now able to present 'relevant' products for sale to people looking for information alongside the specific results they want. This has obviously had a measurable impact on our sales. In addition, we can now offer a general site search facility and provide the ability to search for relevant information from all of the content types on our site and present them in a single, consistent manner with a single user interface. This means that people spend more time on the site, find what they want faster and easier and we can track 'what' people are looking for. The fact we can see how much they use search now is a bonus too.

4) What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?
We value - highly - the customization. With CSBE, we've designed and built a system similar to Google Adwords - placing 'adwords style' results alongside the standard Google returned results so that any searchers can look at the standard text results, and if they're looking for a specific product, the picture will appear too with the same destination click. This has 2 distinct advantages: 1) a picture is much easier on the eye and faster for clients searching; and 2) we're able to display relevant results immediately (even before Google has indexed the pages) along side other relevant results from our site in the main section of the results page.

5) Are you using Google Analytics on your website?
We understand the clear benefits of good analytics so we're in the process of integrating Google Analytics. Because our site runs on technology which is now a few years old and builds pages dynamically from a MSSQL Database, we've had to take more time on this, but we're almost there so watch this space.

6) What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?

Thanks to our customized CSBE, we've consistently seen an increase in sales of products immediately after they appear vs having to wait until people find them. And CSBE has enabled us to remarkably refine results for our forum, shop products and general information creating an infinitely easier user experience throughout our site.

7) Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google CSBE for their company's use?
Sure. Really make the most of the search to aid your site's navigation. Search is an afterthought for many sites as it was for ours, but with navigation and usability as important as they are, your customers will really get more value from their visit if you encourage and promote it. Give it a prominent place on every page and you'll see the benefits. I use search now to navigate to parts of our site even though I know where they are in the menu as the search is faster or requires fewer clicks.

Jeff Frey

Partner

Keystone Country Store

1) Why did you need the Google Mini?
We purchased the Google Mini to increase customer satisfaction on our retail website. We wanted our customers to have a consummate user experience that Google customers everyday to find whatever it is their heart desires.

2) What technology did the Google Mini replace and why?

The Google Mini replaced the antiquated search software that came with our shopping cart package years ago. We wanted our customer to be able find one of more than 12,000 items in seconds, with the highest level of relevance to keywords typed. Does anyone do it better than Google? We thought not and better yet the learning curve for the customers was eliminated due to strong user preference for Google search online by Internet users.

3) What benefits have you derived from using the Google Mini
We’ve experienced a significant increase in sales conversions across the board in all categories; while driving our call center phone calls down for issues related to “Can’t find X-Y-Z item online” or do you stock this particular item.

4) Features of the Google Mini you appreciate most and why?
The best thing about our Google Mini is the customer experience bar-none. The application allows our customers to quickly learn how to use it; and the results are second to none.

5) What's been the overall impact of using the Google Mini for Key Stone?
The Google Mini has helped deliver higher sales conversion across the board, a reduction in the number of problem phone calls to our call center, better customer service and increased confidence in our brand. Bottom line: it was one of the best technology decisions we’ve ever made.

Nathan
CEO/Owner
Computer Hope
http://www.computerhope.com

1) Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?

We were confronting the limitations of an existing in-house solution and needed to upgrade. We had been working on developing a new in-house solution. However, after the first few months of development and the projected time and cost involved to complete the project we found it would be much better solution to use CBSE.

2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?

We used an in-house search engine written in Perl that indexed all pages and allowed users to search the site using another Perl script that parsed results from the generated index. In addition to this search engine we also utilized the included search on
the forums to search pages posted on it. We needed to replace these search engines as we began encountering CPU overload related issues when we started exceeding 10,000 searches daily and because of the need to search other sections of our site including our forums stored on another MySQL server.

3) What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?
The benefits derived from using Google CSBE are numerous and those that stand out the most are:

• Having one search engine capable of searching all pages of the site and not just sections of it.
• Reduced overall strain on our servers.
• Spelling recommendations.
• Quick results to search queries, even at peek times of the day.
• Daily, monthly and even overall search statistics that are updated frequently.
• Cost effectiveness, especially when compared to other products, services and re-designing a new custom search engine.
• Easy and fast to implement and test.

4) What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?

Overall the features I've enjoyed the most have been the ability to
index and search any of our pages that are accessible on the Internet,
spelling recommendations and the ability to refine search results into
specific categories.

5) What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?

Shortly after implementing the search across all pages and sections of the site I started to notice an increase in traffic and new users on the forums and a slight decrease in received e-mail pertaining to questions that have been answered on the forums. I attribute these results to the fact that users were now finding answers to their questions from the website that have been addressed on the forums.

6) Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google
CSBE for their company's use?

I'd highly recommend Google CSBE to any small, medium, or large company
as you're getting access to the best search engine and search features
available on the Internet at a price that’s very affordable.

Recently we talked to Jamin Arvig, Director of Business Development at WaterFilters.NET, a leading distributor for the major water treatment brands. WaterFilters.NET makes it easy for its customers to find and purchase commercial and residential water filters, whole house water filtration systems, reverse osmosis systems, water softeners, and more types of water purification products.

1) Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?
Our previous search engine was running into problems as we were adding more and more water filter product pages to our site. Some of our pages were not indexed at all and the search results seemed to be getting less and less relevant.

2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?
[Previous Search Provider] was more expensive than Google search, and its results were not as good.

3) What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?

• Before we made the switch, customers would complain that they couldn't find the correct water filter. There was no doubt many more people that left our site after not finding the filters they were searching for. Even our employees had trouble finding the right product pages for customers that were on the phone.
• Now, it is very easy to find the relevant results on searches for all content and product pages.
• Our bounce rate decreased by 4%. Our conversion rate increased by 11%.
• As another bonus, the Google site search shows us whether Google is having trouble indexing our site. If Google site search is having trouble indexing a page, it might mean that the main Google search engine is also having trouble.

4) What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?
We like the statistics available in the control panel. We also like the common "Google" look and feel that people are familiar with.

5) Are you using Google Analytics on your website?
Yes.

6) What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?
It has helped our searching capabilities, improved our water filter sales, and allowed us to focus on water filtration rather than waste time worrying about a faulty search engine.

7) Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google CSBE for their company's use?
There are many great features that we haven't explored yet. But even the basic features of the search engine provide the most relevant results, and are very easy to implement.

8) Are there particular industry specific uses that CSBE was able to add value to?
It was able to integrate pages from applicable water filtration websites into the list of possible results within the results page of our main site.

Thomas Astuto
Webmaster - Public Affairs
Con Edison




1) Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?
We needed to implement a search engine that would find all types of documents including HTML & PDF's. We also wanted to create an engine that was user friendly, and Google is the top rated search engine so what better engine to use then Google?

2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?
It replaced a custom built engine using CGI that only showed the titles of the results. Now our search queries have spiked and users find it much easier to find the information they are looking for.

3) What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?
First and foremost the results that come back are detailed and have a summary. The search capability of PDF documents is great. And having the ability to tailor your search engines results using an XML annotation file has proven to be very useful to place certain pages in the top results for certain search phrases.

4) What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?
The CSBE engine itself is the best thing that could happen to webmasters, the engine is extremely powerful and easy to set up. There are so many great features like the XML annotations, included & excluded sites, and all the great webmaster tools like analytics on you search engine.

5) Are you using Google Analytics on your website?
Absolutely, this is the best breakdown I have ever seen. I have been a web developer for 10 years now, and I must say that compared to other products on the market like Web Trends, Google Analytics is so easy to measure your website results with an easy to read/navigate user interface. Every month I send a detailed report to my manager so he can see how certain content is being utilized and retrieved. And the ability to just click and save the results is also great.

6) What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?
Using this powerful search engine has given our end users the ability to find the information they are looking for with a common user interface results page. We now boast in advertisements about our search capabilities on our site. And the price was very reasonable.

7) Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google CSBE for their company's use?
For the price, just give it a try and you will see the results for yourselves. Make sure you learn all about using the XML annotation file for custom results.

Written by Nicole Bildy

Marketing Manager

Codeware

Codeware Inc., established in 1985, is a specialized niche player focused exclusively on providing comprehensive software for the design and analysis of ASME Section VIII vessels and exchangers. The site serves as a portal to provide product and support information as well as a trial download of the proprietary software for prospects and customers in the industrial engineering sector.

Before Google’s Custom Search technology, we used a third party tool which we had received feedback indicating that our online knowledgebase resource was not very useful. Upon further investigation we realized that users could not find the information they were looking for because the searching algorithm could not produce relevant responses. When we discovered that Google offered a customized search we knew we needed to implement it. We've always felt that when it comes to searching ability, Google is by far the leader.

Based on our needs, we implemented two separate 'searches'. We implemented one to act as a general site search and the other to search our online knowledgebase. There were several important changes that took place upon implementation:

1. Site Search Implementation: Our website users have an alternate method of navigating our site. Search was now a potential primary factor in the user’s sense of navigation.

2. Knowledgebase Search Implementation: By improving our online knowledgebase search results, our customers are able to find solutions much faster, increasing the number of repeat visits. Using our third party search tool, it took visitors 1:23 to find the knowledgebase item they were looking for compared to 0:53 seconds using the Google custom search engine. Also, the bounce rate for the search results page decreased to 17.54% from 24.52%. The % of visitors that exited the site from the search results page stayed about the same.

3. Our Support Team has seen a decrease in the number of commonly asked questions. This has provided a great incentive for our team to increase the information available in our online knowledgebase. Because our Support Engineers know that customers can now find the information posted, we’ve seen a large increase in the amount of information submitted by our Support Engineers for incorporation into the knowledgebase.

We appreciate the ability to offer such relevant search results to our users. On the administration side, the CSBE interface is very user friendly. It is very simple to add or remove pages searched and customize the look to fit our corporate image. Also, as we operate in a niche market, it is nice to display search results without advertising our competitors.

We are also a Google Analytics user, and as Codeware’s Marketing Manager, I’ve found the quantitative information available through Google Analytics enables us to better monitor and measure our online marketing efforts.

Besides providing our users with an additional way to navigate our website, Google CSBE has helped us manage our technical support load. By providing better knowledgebase search results, our customers are able to find solutions to their issues immediately.

For other users out there thinking about CSBE, I would recommend spending time planning which pages to include in the search results. We decided to include our online manuals and technical papers along with our knowledgebase items and that decision has greatly increased the value of our Knowledgebase to our customers.

Insights from Clicktime CEO

Alex Mann

CEO

Clicktime.com, Inc.

1) Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?

We needed to add a search feature to our public-facing information
and marketing site. We're a Sofware as a Service (SaaS) company and
our web site is our primary form of customer contact. That means our
site does most of the talking for us in a pre-sales situation. In
order to provide the best information to customers, we've accumulated
quite a bit of content that's increasingly hard to navigate. We've
got whitepapers, case studies, extensive product documentation, etc.
But each potential customer has very specific interests so we need to
connect them with the content they need with as few clicks as
possible. That's where search is so important.

2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?

We had no search tool in place before Google. I think we were
actually less conscious of the importance of internal site-search
before exploring Google CSBE.

3) What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?

• It helps customers zero in on specific aspects of our product, our
  customer segments, or our whitepapers that are beneficial.
• It keeps customers on our site longer, so they're more likely to
  find the information they need and explore the purchase of our product.
• We are able to juxtapose our brand with the Google brand -- a
  positive association to most people.

4) What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?

Ease of setup is the biggest one. We've got a big challenge keeping
our site fresh, easy to navigate, and compatible with the latest
browsers. Not to mention all the effort we invest in building and
maintaining the best software products in the industry. Handing off
our site search to Google was a no-brainer, especially when the
implementation took less than an hour! The absurdly low cost is the
other obvious win -- there's simply no rational case for taking any
other approach.

5) Are you using Google Analytics on your website?
Absolutely. We couldn't live without it.

6) What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?

We've got visitors on our site staying for an average of 5% longer.
That may sound like a little, but that's a big difference to us. We
project an increase in conversions (visitors that become sales leads)
of 10% by year's end, due largely to CSBE.

7) Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google CSBE for their company's use?

Prior to public launch, we went through the exercise of searching for
a large list of terms and key phrases on our site using CSBE. By
finding out which terms had poor quality results in the search, we
were able to better arrange our content so searchers would quickly
find what they were looking for. This exercise had the unintended
benefit of improving our SEO results, so it was well worth taking the
time to run through those search scenarios.

Talk with Ed Boutilier, CEO of Stealth Computer

Ed Boutilier

CEO

Stealth Computer

1) Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?

We needed a highly effective way of providing detailed search capabilities to our website that has grown quite large in size over the past few years. This not only assists new and existing customers but provides easy access for company employees when guiding outside people.


2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?

Over the years we have used several freeware scripts; they were basic in nature and lacked customization. They also lacked in the area of page relevancy, not returning the proper pages would have liked to have seen in the search results.


3) What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?
Google’s CSBE has been a great benefit to us:

• The name brand recognition by partnering with Google adds credibility to our site without question
• Allows visitors to make very detailed customized searches (saves time)
• Extremely quick results provides for a positive experience reducing site navigating time
• Enhances existing and potential customer experience by not wasting their time or frustrating them causing them to leave and search elsewhere
• Search results leads to more sales by easily finding what they need

4) What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?

The main feature we most appreciate is its high level customization and ability to limit which sites search results are compiled from. The ability to easily integrate into an existing web site design is also a big plus.


5) What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?

Google’s CSBE has given our websites search capabilities more credibility and instant name brand recognition. Since implementing Google’s CSBE we have seen an increase in usage of the search feature. More people will use it in order to find information on our website which in turn helps reduce the amount of time our sales professionals are needed to answer questions that are already answered on the website. Overall it enhances the customer experience which drives sales and satisfies customers.


7) Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google CSBE for their company's use?

When integrating Google CSBE into an existing design please spend the time to tweak the formatting in order to make it clean and seamless. Be sure to find a key and consistent location to place the search box on every page in order to give visitors easy access to the search feature.

8) Are there particular industry specific uses that CSBE was able to add value to?

Our company serves a niche marketplace which means there are many keywords, descriptions as well as detailed technical specifications searched for. CSBE is an easy, quick and accurate application that provides excellent results for a low investment costs. The ROI is quantifiable almost immediately.

Q&A with CEO of MagentoCommerce

We talked with Roy Rubin, who was the driver behind the beautiful implementation of CSBE at Magento. We have decided to retain his original Q&A format so that prospects and users can easily see the decision process for this particular case to use Google's Custom Search Engine. Enjoy! - Richard Wan.


Roy Rubin

President

Magento Commerce

1. Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?

When we started to draft the requirements to MagentoCommerce.com we rather quickly understood that the search would be an integral part of the site. Given the incredible amount of content (most of it user generated) it was critical for us to provide a search experience that would as good as … well … Google.

We also had a big challenge with content spread out across a number of modules across the site; knowledge base, wiki, blog, forum, etc. – it was important for us to display the results in a way that the users can filter or view subsets based on the modules.

Finally, MagentoCommerce.com’s blog is translated now into 14 languages and with CSBE we are able to display results based on the users locale – this was an important aspect for us well as we continue to provide multi lingual content.

2. What technology, if any, did it replace and why?

Our site is implemented using an off the shelf CMS product. The built in search was not only slow, but did not allow us to provide an experience that would be acceptable to our user base. With CSBE we had the advantage of supporting the built in spelling correction, plural, switches, etc. that are provided out of the box.

3. What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?

Here is a quick list:

• Full control over layout and display: we had very specific requirements that needed to be met
• Fast, reliable search that did not drain existing DB/CPU resources
• A top of the line search experience that allows our users the ability to find the content they are looking for and fast
• Ability to filter by module type and view results specific to the section of the area they are browsing
• Spelling Correction – this was huge for us in making the decision
• Quick time to market – we spent minimal resource in implementing the solution (took us 2-3 days for the entire project)
• Low cost in comparison to other solutions we were evaluating

4. What has been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?

We wanted to create an experience that is unlike any other open source project out there. We’ve invested heavily in many aspects of the site (content/videos/screencasts/documentation) and our search experience does not fall short. With our experience, search is always an area that is not perfect and can be improved, but not in this case. We see our site search as one the leading factors for the success of our project so far and have received positive feedback from our base.

5. Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google CSBE for their company's use?

I would highly recommend CSBE implementations due the relatively low cost and quick set up time. It is hard to find a comparable product that is as critical for the success of content-driven sites.

6. Are there particular industry specific uses that CSBE was able to add value to?

Spelling was huge for us since we have a large international audience. Given our background in ecommerce, we are planning to use CSBE on upcoming ecommerce projects (specifically in use of layered/faceted navigation) and we expect a positive experience there as well.

Hot Tourist Website leverages Google Search

Joseph Brown

Editor

Miami Beach USA

Miami Beach USA covers one of the world's hottest tourist destinations with profiles of visiting celebrities, coverage of special events such as "Art Basel Miami Beach," and articles of academic interest on diverse subjects such as "MiMO" or Miami Modern architecture. As a Google News source site our "South Beach Magazine" section produces articles each day on a broad range of topics designed to appeal to prospective tourists from all over the world.

Our search problem was simple: We had 11 years worth of content that was rapidly becoming unwieldy to present to our readers in a meaningful way, and we needed a search function that gave our visitors immediate access to all the content we had produced over the years. In short, we needed a search function that was fast, accurate and cost-effective.

After trying various perl scripts that ultimately didn't fit our needs, we decided to give Google CSBE a try and the results were phenomenal. We grabbed the code, pasted it into our includes, and in literally 10 minutes our search problem was solved. We now have a fast, reliable search solution that gives us an exact picture of what topics our readers find most interesting. CSBE acts as a guide allowing us to channel our future content generation efforts toward the exact topics most desired by our readers. Our next step will be building our own user interface using CSBE's XML feed.

While the speed and accuracy of Google search is a given, it's also interesting to note that having the "Google Custom Search" logo in our menu bar has the added benefit from the user's perspective of putting a familiar face on our site's search function. We feel it gives our visitors confidence that using our search function won't be a frustrating waste of time that users may have encountered with some other less capable search solutions.

Google CSBE has been a huge success for us because it benefits our users, and that's what success on the web is all about.

Search for FOREX Market Website ACM

John Hatzakortzian

Head of Web & Marketing

ACM Advanced Currency Markets

ACM (Advanced Currency Markets) is the world leader in online currency and precious metal trading. Founded in 2002, the company places innovation, efficiency, and user friendliness at the heart of its technical development strategy.

ACM trading platforms are aimed at private individuals and institutional clients. A white label solution is available for banks or financial institutions that want to offer their customer such a service.

The online trading business is very technology sensitive; therefore any innovation is welcome that increases user friendliness and reliability. A lot of our customers are looking for educational content and general information about the FOREX market. And our website is full of this kind of content, but we had no internal search engine to help customers and staff easily find information sought.

So when we completely redesigned our corporate Website we really wanted to do it in a way that reflects our quest for improved technology – including search. And in researching the best internal search engine, we came to the conclusion that any in house developed solution couldn't be better than a Google algorithm based search engine, as far as relevance of the results is concerned. And for ACM, Google’s Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE) was clearly the search tool that provides the most reliability, efficacy and ease of use.

The keyword search feature and the speed of the CSBE have been invaluable and from a web marketing point of view, the CSBE has allowed us to track the most sought after content and make sure it's easily available.

The CSBE as a whole has enabled us to improve our user experience, user friendliness and increase our tech legitimacy within the FOREX market.

Online Tutorial Search for Students

John Lynn

Co-Owner

GeniusDV, LLC

GeniusDV is a small business providing training and tutorials for a niche of products related to video editing including Final Cut Pro,
Motion, DVD Studio Pro and Avid.
 
Instead of encouraging students to take notes during class, we liked the idea of referring them to our web site using keywords to find
specific tutorials. While a great idea initially, we found that searching our website was cumbersome when trying to locate our own
content.  Plus, customers would occasionally see competing companies related to their search terms. We eventually discovered that it was
harder to find certain entries and sometimes the wrong content on our site superseded the tutorials customers were trying to find.
 
Google's Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE) solved the problem. The CSBE has been a wonderful search tool, since it allows a user to
search only the content of our own site.  We've also included other sites that pose no competitive threat to our business.  For example,
since we teach the Avid Xpress Pro software, we allow Avid Technology's support forum to be searchable. This provides an
incredible tool for our customers needing help with the Avid software.  Not only can they find related articles that we've written, but they
can access the resources of the company that makes the software.
 
CBSE provides a great resource for our students after they leave our courses.  With CSBE, students can easily find tutorials for things
we've covered in class.   This is invaluable, because students spend more time learning and less time taking notes. And since we link the CBSE to popular support forums that are helpful
to the software products that we teach, CSBE has also helped reduce the number of support calls we receive.
 
To help increase our web visibility, we also use Google Analytics in conjunction with CSBE. We value knowing where our customers are coming
from and what keywords they are using to find our site - knowledge that generate fresh ideas for new content to develop.  We print out all the search keywords for any given day and then look for interesting searches that do not match the content that we offer.  We are then able to improve our own content based on user keyword
searches. We've tried a half dozen analytical website packages, and nothing compares to the features and ease-of-use Google Analytics
offers.

CSBE has helped GeniusDV dramatically improve the value we offer our customers, and we're always confident our clientèle can easily find exactly what they seek using CSBE from our home page.

Enterprise Superstar Questions

We've heard so many fascinating anecdotes about customers who've used the Google Mini and Google Custom Search Business Edition in innovative ways that we created the Google universal search Superstar Award program to recognize the companies and the employees chiefly involved.

Google Search Superstar Award winners receive a physical award (a cool, custom-made robot crafted out of Legos), a site badge they can use in marketing materials to identify their organization as search innovators, public recognition by Google, and a box of coveted Google goodies (you'll have to win to find out what these are).

We will choose new Google Search Superstar Award winners on a frequent basis primarily based on the product success stories that customers submit.

2007 Enterprise Superstars:

Please reply to rwan@google.com with the answers to the following questions:

Your name:
Company name:
URL of implementation:

1) Why did you need Google Mini/Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?

2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?

3) What benefits have you derived from using Google Mini/CSBE?
(List as many as you'd like; quantifiable benefits if available)

4) What features of Mini/CSBE do you appreciate most and why?

5) Are you using Google Analytics on your website?

6) What's been the overall impact of using Google Mini/CSBE on your website/internally? (Please include statistics where applicable, thanks)

7) Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google Mini/CSBE for their company's use?

8) Are there particular industry specific uses that CSBE was able to add value to? (I.e. Travel: finding pricing information on travel sites, Museum/Artwork: finding foreign artist name abbreviations/hydrogenations with Google's automatic spellchecker)

Bethel University (Google Mini)

Written by
Andy Altepeter
Manager of Web Development
Bethel University

Based in Arden Hills, Minnesota, Bethel University offers students a Christian higher education that integrates strong academic programs with a vital spiritual life and purpose. Approximately 5,600 students are enrolled in nearly 100 undergraduate, graduate, and seminary programs.

In our quest to improve search for both our web site and intranet, we needed to replace a customized free search engine that underperformed by delivering non-relevant results as the most relevant results. For example, a search for "Bethel University" consistently returned old, obscure news releases from our archives as the most relevant results.

After careful review of our needs, we determined the new search technology we would implement had to be 1) world-class technology, 2) affordable 3) easy to set up and easy to use and 4) familiar to users. For our money, the Google Mini was the obvious choice.

For our Google Mini deployment, we partitioned our web space into collections for both public and intranet use and provided a customized interface for both. Once out of the box, we had the Google Mini up and running in no time, and we now highly value the following features:

* Easy, but powerful configuration capabilities; down to the one button on the Mini that makes it very simple to use

* The ability to index our fileservers as well as intranet content. Getting
results from the fileserver is an unexpected benefit for our searchers. This
feature approximately doubled the anticipated number of indexed documents.

* The ability to view all indexed documents in HTML, and cached versions showing
highlighted keywords.

The Google Mini has truly delivered for Bethel University. Now instead of grumblings about our search engine, our web department consistently hears about how impressive our search capability is. And, our users are putting actions behind their words: we've seen the number of searches increase to approx. 800 searches per hour.