James Gray

Google Custom Search for Your Personal Website or Blog

This weekend I had a chance to explore Google Custom Search.  One of my boys manages a blog site and the amount of content has grown significantly making it difficult to locate content quickly.  My basic requirement was to include a search box on the site to provide relevant results for only websites that I selected such as the blog site and his YouTube site.  Google Custom Search provided the ability to configure indexing specific sites while also customize the search results page.  For example, instead of spawning another browser window for the search results, the results can be directed to a page on your website.  This provides a great user experience and keeps users on your site.

This free search engine service does include advertisements, but this is acceptable for personal use.  You can also monetize the search results by signing up for Google AdSense.  Ads-free results pages are also available for a fee.  

I would also recommend improving indexing by submitting a sitemap for your site using Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.

<InfoTechLeader.com>

Add a Bing Search Box to Your Blog or Website

It's easy to bring the power of Bing to enable users to quickly search your blog or website for relevant content.  Use the Bing wizard to automatically generate the code you need to add a Bing search box to your site.  You can easily customize the search box to only search your site, multiple sites, as well as the web.  I use Bing on the the InfoTechLeader.com blog site as shown in the screen shot.

I would also recommend you become familiar with the Bing Webmaster Tools site to submit a sitemap and review search statistics.  The Webmaster Tools site can be used to view when your site was last crawled, top search pages, and how your site will respond to keywords.

I Bing, U Bing?

<InfoTechLeader.com>

TypePad for Blogs and Websites

Over the last few years I have become a huge fan of TypePad for blogging. I use TypePad to host multiple sites including my personal blog as well as a site for my family.  Our family site is an online journal and photo album that enables us to stay connected with friends and family. Gone are the days of writing those year end holiday letters to inform everybody of those special events over the last year.  

TypePad offers many cool features but most of all it's easy to use and it delivers a professional looking style for your web presence.  I also enjoy the ability to use the best of the web to integrate my TypePad sites with services including Windows Live, Google Analytics, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to name a few.  TypePad is more than a blogging service as it also enables you to create a rich web site using drag and drop tools and many customization options.

Although TypePad is not free such as Blogger and Wordpress, I think you will find the value far exceeds the nominal cost.  Give it a try at typepad.com.