On Tuesday, Google added a new Customer Search Business Edition (CSBE) to its search offering. It is a lower-end complement to Google's enterprise-targeted appliances targeting small businesses who are not willing to pay even $2000 for Google Mini. The new Google search edition is just $100 for searching upto 500 pages and $500 for pages up to 50,000 pages. Higher volume is supported but the pricing model is not yet announced.
The key feature of Google CSBE:
1. Hosted search edition for small business at very nominal cost
2. Add-free search lets small business to do their own branding
3. Quick setup through online wizard
4. Customization feature on website for branding
5. Online reports and web analytics about visitor behavior
6. $100 for upto 500 pages, $500 for upto 50,000 pages
7. XML feed for search results
8. Make refinements to help categorize search results
9. Subscription
10. Internationalization
11. Payment integrated with Google checkout
Some of the limitations of this edition:
1. No control on indexed content - crawling as well as indexing
2. No scheduling or control on indexing of content - specially for events
If I have a small company with no or limited IT resources and budget, this is great option I have. The advantages are more than the limitations of Google CSBE. I still feel it is better option for small businesses with no or limited IT resources over IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition.
But IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition is not a hosted solution and can be alternative to overcome the limitations of Google CSBE. We are not trying to compare oranges to apples. Both products are trying to solve small and medium businesses but not in the same category.
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No doubt Google CSBE is a great option to look into if your IT teams resources is limited.
But if you have a spare server where you can install and host Yahoo IBM Omnifind, then it should be your #1 choice even for small business for the simple reasons that its "FREE" and you have "TOTAL CONTROL" over what you want your users to see as results.
Omnifind also has a good forums for help with various problems
http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.net/forums/index.php
And developers of OYE are constantly improving the application.
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