There’s a newly released Firefox addon, called Google Custom Search 1.1.2 and made by Kai Londenberg. It creates independently-hosted anonymous Google CSEs, which you can manage and refine from your Google search results / browser. Although it uses the Google API, your engine’s data appears to be stored anonymously on a server in Europe…
“A Google Account is not required anymore, Custom Search Engines can be stored anonymously on quicksear.ch”
Basically, using this addon gives you a seamless melding of the normal Google results format with the major configuration possibilities of a CSE. It’s Google’s SearchWiki on steroids, in an exo-skeleton.
But I don’t see any way to backup your CSE’s XML annotations file of URLs, which means it would be rather risky to invest large amounts of time building a subject-specific CSE this way, rather than using Google’s own interface. Perhaps a backup option will appear once the quicksear.ch site goes live — the addon and service are currently very new, having seemingly been live since September.
There’s no way to upload a “big list ‘o URLs” in the traditional manner, and have them automatically boosted in the CSE’s search rankings. Your CSE is currently a “add one URL at a time” job, as you surf the search results day in and day out. Which perhaps gives your CSE some interesting anti-spam/anti-SEO features, if your CSE is to be used as a mass collaborative anonymous engine (which it apparently can be — tick “accept volunteer contributions” when creating your CSE). And it doesn’t seem to include Google Books results, even when you tell it to include them and boost their rating by 100%.
You currently lose Google’s new “Options…” sidebar, when searching via your quicksear.ch CSE addon (which appears along with the others, in Firefox’s top-right mini search box).
Just like the official Google CSEs, you get cut-and-paste HTML code, which lets others try out your CSE without needing to log in or install anything. I created a new experimental CSE titled JURN collaborative, with permissions for collaborators, but how collaborators contribute to it is currently a mystery.
Update: it seems that to collaborate you would have to share your quicksear.ch password with your collaborators.
Here’s how to backup an CSE that’s independently hosted on http://www.quicksear.ch/ …
In the following URLs, replace the cse_id= and owner_id= numbers with your own numbers, then load the URL in a browser to get the XML.
The Base XML:—
http://quicksear.ch/CSEAPI/?action=CSEXML&cse_id=81955_75637_647&owner_id=3390&t=1260223555?output=xml
The Annotations (i.e.: where your URLs are kept) XML, the first 100:—
http://quicksear.ch/CSEAPI/?t=1260223541&action=AnnotationXML&owner_id=3390&start=0&labelNames=_cse_81955_75637_647%2C_cse_exclude_81955_75637_647“/
The Annotations (i.e.: where your URLs are kept) XML, the second 100:—
http://quicksear.ch/CSEAPI/?t=1260223541&action=AnnotationXML&owner_id=3390&start=100&labelNames=_cse_81955_75637_647%2C_cse_exclude_81955_75637_647“/
Hi ..
I’m the developer of said extension. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to respond to your Email in a timely manner, but I was very occupied.
You got it pretty well how to back-up a CSE. I considered adding such an option (including reading it back in, propably under a different account or CSE id/name) as well. If there is need I will add this feature to the next version of the extension.
When it comes to collaboration, quicksear.ch currently does not support this directly. If there really is demand for it, I might implement it as soon as I find time.
There still is a way to get it working, though – assuming you know and trust your collaborators. Simply share your quicksear.ch Account with them. You can currently assign arbitrary usernames and passwords (Main Menu->Tools->Custom Google Search). If that is no option, please contact me and I’ll see what I can do.
My next step regarding the Extension and quicksear.ch is to make it better than google hosted CSEs by adding a way to configure boosts and exclusions on a per-keyword basis (providing different CSE XML Files depending on the query terms). Maybe even make the CSE learn ..
If you have any questions, feel free to Email me..
Kai Londenberg