Google’s Site Search Gets Faster; Yahoo’s Goes Away

Google has upgraded its Site Search tool to give users more control over the frequency that Google spiders a site. But, if you think this is something that will help your site’s performance on Google.com search results, it won’t.

Site Search is Google’s on-site tool for individual websites; you use it to add a search engine to your own website. The new feature, On-Demand Indexing, lets site owners tell Google to index their site by clicking a button, rather than waiting for Google to do it on its own schedule.

A Google spokesperson tells us that this has no impact whatsoever on a site’s indexing and ranking on the main Google.com search engine:

“This feature allows site owners to update search results on their website On-Demand, by adding them to a special, separate index for their own site. Pages indexed with On-Demand Indexing do not impact the ranking or indexing of pages on Google.com.”

There’s more on Techmeme about Google Site Search.

Meanwhile, it looks like Yahoo’s site search tool, Yahoo Search Builder, has been taken down. It used to be available at builder.search.yahoo.com, but that URL now redirects to Yahoo Search. We have an email in to Yahoo, and will update this post as we learn more.

UPDATE: Yahoo tells us that, in order to “focus on core strategic priorities and deliver a superior user experience,” Yahoo Search Builder was closed down as of September 30, 2008. Says Yahoo: “Most of the functionality provided by Search Builder is available through two other Yahoo! Search services: SearchMonkey and BOSS.”