Branding Rant

A while ago, sponsors of MiniRiders approached us regarding the limited search capability of the site’s original search engine.

For those of you familiar with VBulletin, you probably know what I’m talking about. You can only search four letter words (without going to a lot of trouble), the search turns up horribly inaccurate results and it uses a lot of resources on the server.

It wasn’t too long till we decided on the answer to our sponsor’s problems - we had to install Google Site Search. It was a breeze to setup and I now have it setup as the site’s default search engine. Not only was it amazingly simple to setup, it came with a whole host of benefits which continue to put a smile on my dial.

• Extremely Relevant Search Results
• Familiar Search Interface for your Visitors
• AdSense Optimised Pages
• Decreased Server Load
• Extra Search Features (Spelling, Highlighting, Similar Pages)
• And Best of All - It Blends Seemlessly into your site!

It has worked so well on MiniRiders that I’ve put it up on my site. Go check it out if you like.

Despite this, I’m quite baffled. Why are so few people using Google Site Search on their sites? Sure you can understand why companies wouldn’t want their competitor’s ads turning up in their search results, but there is a competitive filter option to take care of their ads. It can even satisfy visitors if they came to your site looking for something which you don’t sell.

I think Google should really push it’s Site Search much more than it currently is. The benefits it presents for webmasters are quite significant and I highly recommend it at the very least. If you haven’t done so yet: