17

I'm using Google Custom Search on a client website. They are not very happy about rival companies showing up on sponsored links on their own site. I know we can use Google Site Search but it has an annual fee. I've been looking all around for a Free/OpenSource alternative for Google CSE, but found little I can use. Anyone have any suggestions?

Nightfirecat
  • 11,432
  • 6
  • 35
  • 51
Eduardo Mello
  • 925
  • 3
  • 15
  • 32
  • This is suddenly an important question because Google just (2/21/2017) canceled Google Site Search and are going to down grade all their paying customers to Google Custom Search with adds once their subscription runs out. – Joshua Feb 22 '17 at 12:20
  • Bing has an alternate now - Bing custom search API. More details here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/bing-custom-search/. It has free access keys for 30 days post which one can buy paid subscription from Azure portal. – Ronak Dec 07 '17 at 01:57

6 Answers6

6

Check this question. What is a good search engine for embedding in a web site. IMO if the client dont want to pay for a search engine then they will have to live with the advertisements if they want a good search engine.

Google has a paid version of search. You can read about it here. We use it in our intranet.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Shoban
  • 22,920
  • 8
  • 63
  • 107
  • 1
    Yes. I know about the paid version Google offer. I've linked it on OP. I agree with you about paying for it. But they asked me for alternatives so i'm checking out. ty – Eduardo Mello Jul 30 '09 at 04:51
  • This answer is limited to ASP.NET. – Ozzy Jul 27 '12 at 11:09
  • Google site search keeps the indexed data on it own servers, right ? So this way the server load is also reduced at our end? & considering a big website like stackoverflow which is frequently updated with newer data, wont frequent indexing by google cause an overload on our database servers due to too many database queries to return pages to google, as it attempts to index the newer data ? – Rajat Gupta Jul 24 '13 at 17:29
6

Check out the Google JSON/AJAX Search API. It's a lightweight way of doing a query and returning pure search results that you can then display.

http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/

Brandon
  • 13,956
  • 16
  • 72
  • 114
  • 1
    That API is now deprecated and they've limited the number of queries per day (they obviously had realized it was competing with their paid site search). The link you gave pushes users to the Custom Search API which is limited to 100 free queries per day. – Ozzy Jul 27 '12 at 11:08
4

Search is very big business right now because it is relatively immature as an industry - similar to the OS industry many years ago. Anyone with something good is going to charge for it. The open source community will only catch up when the core concepts around search stabilize and become more widely understood (and therefore reproducible). Right now much of the basics are still trade secrets.

Short answer - if you want something even remotely as good as Google, expect to pay for it.

Rex M
  • 142,167
  • 33
  • 283
  • 313
4

You can block your competitors just as with AdSense, "While AdSense allows you to filter ads by URLs, you can also filter URLs from your search results within your CSE account." - https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=91652

zylstra
  • 740
  • 1
  • 8
  • 22
1

opensource alternative:

http://lucene.apache.org/

david
  • 21
  • 1
1

The Austrian company Mindbreeze ( http://www.mindbreeze.com/index_en.html ) has a good alternative site search for websites. You can test it here for free: http://www.mindbreeze.com/RegisterInSite.html

user1256593
  • 11
  • 1