Google are widening their search engine power with the release of CSE (or Custom Search Engine). So, whats all the fuss about? You could always have a custom search facility on your web site that was powered by Google, but now you can list who/whatever you like.

By example, before CSE you could only display pages from your own web site. Now you can display pages from any web sites you want. You can also order these web sites so your web site/partners web site comes top.

The beauty of this is that if a search is not going to give a result from your own web site, then your results will always give some sort of result.

On top of this, you can either have the results displayed by Google, or you can include the results on your web site within an IFrame.

Benefits: -
You can customize the look of the results displayed
You can order the results to force certain URLs to the top of the results
You can filter results out by expression or by url
You dont need a crawler for your own web site

Drawbacks:-
If you are a profit organisation, then you have to display Ads with the results
The results aren't going to help your rankings in Google because Google provided the listings in the first place

So, at first glance the benefits outway the cons. This is a great move by Google and will help them to capture more of the vertical search market.

If you want to read more about CSE then check out Matt Cutt's blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/review-custom-search-engine/

If you want to use the product then go to http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ and sign-up. Ok. you'll need to have those all important web skills, but its pretty straight forward.

If any of you out there have used it, please leave your comments so other people can see what its like.