Google has now confirmed both to us via email and on a Google Web Search Help Forum thread that all of these specialty search tools are no longer available.

Uncle Sam and the computer specialty search search sites had been available for a at least a decade.

The other specialty search site, USGov.Google.com would have celebrated its fifth birthday next week.

When it launched Google said that the specialty search tool and site would not only offer a single search box allowing users to search federal, state, and local government info but it would also provide government news from a variety of sources. Finally, USGov.Google.com also allowed users to customize the layout of the page.

Google told us:

These services were established many years ago to offer search across a limited index of the web, which in the past was a better way to find this information. For example, google.com/linux was designed to help people find information from message boards and blogs about the Linux operating system. Today, search quality has advanced tremendously, and based on our analysis we’ve found that in most cases you’re better off looking for this kind of specialized information using the regular Google search box, for example by typing [linux fedora upgrade].

We would love to learn more about how the “analysis” and review some examples of searches that don’t not fall into the “in most cases” category.

Uncle Sam and the other specialty search tools that are no longer available were very similar to what Google continues to offer users with Google Custom Search Engines (CSE).

If Google believes that using the regular one-stop search box for all searches is a more effective way to search “in most cases” you have to wonder about what the long-term future has in store for the custom search engine service. What makes a custom search engine that’s focused on hockey or nuclear power any different than what USgov.Google offered?

On a Google Advanced Search help page the company points out that they offer advanced search tools for “extra power” when needed. However, the documentation also says, “Even very advanced searchers, such as the members of the search group at Google, use these features less than 5% of the time.

The elimination of the specialty engines seems to go along with the thinking that simply typing a few words into a search box will almost always produce results that users would be happy with.

We’re not so sure about that and in fact believe that vertical search (aka specialty search) tools are potentially more useful now than in the past and could likely grow in value moving forward.

The biggest issue I have is that Google users at the very least deserve some type of notice about what’s going on changes are made to web search and other search tools.

The company should do a much better job in disseminating the info, preferably before some change is made or moments, after they’re made. Of course, asking for feedback and then listening and responding to it before a change is made would also be very “Google” at least to this point in its history but it’s up to them if they want to take it that far.

In our response from Google we did receive this:

We understand that some users were surprised by this change, so we apologize for not communicating more clearly in advance of redirecting these services to google.com.

The apology is impressive to see and another one is provided in the Web Search Help Forum thread we’ve mentioned before.

As the web continues to rapidly expand and databases grow even larger trying to find what you’re looking for becomes more and more of a challenge for all searchers.

Every useful result can’t always be on the first page and specialty or “limited” search tools, if promoted correctly and used to properly, can continue to save searchers time, aggravation, and help provide focused or “limited” results from the outset.

Why not provide a number of ways to interact with the massive web database? Would doing this cause problems for Google? Of course, these additional ways to interact with the data will not at least at the present time become something that all searchers will use but it doesn’t mean that these types of resources don’t have a lot of value to those who do use them.

Specialty search/verticals have as much if not more value on the mobile web since starting with a smaller universe of focused or limited data can potentially allow users to access focused results from the outset. This can mean fewer click, less to input into the search box, and a large savings of time and most likely aggravation.

Finally, blending algorithmic search with well curated collections of material to be targeted and crawled to create a specialty search tool or vertical would appear to make a lot of sense these days.

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

As sites and pages multiplied exponentially Google became an increasingly necessary tool. We’re all familiar with the story. Now Google controls a majority of search traffic in most countries around the world. It has become a seemingly unstoppable force.

The influence of search (paid and organic) has been so powerful that billions of dollars have changed hands and established media companies have been all-but-toppled by their failures to recognize and exploit search effectively. Newspapers in particular fall into the latter category.

But the lessons of search and SEO have been well-learned by some media companies, many entrepreneurs and investors. In response, a range of so-called “content farms” has arisen to drive page views off “content” created by hundreds of mostly low-paid bloggers (and some former journalists).

Demand Media, Associated Content (now part of Yahoo), Examiner.com, Suite 101 and others recruit and train freelancers to quickly generate articles on all manner of niche topics that will drive qualified page views or lead generation in some cases. Yahoo just made a $100 million bet on this version of SEO. And AOL is pursuing a somewhat more refined version of this same strategy with Seed.

The original model arguably is “The Mining Company,” which in 1999 became About.com and was later acquired by the NY Times for its SEO/link value. While About.com was originally about “content curation” (organizing and commenting on links), the content farms are about content creation.

Despite the protests of the companies themselves about the terms “content farm” and “content mill,” the truth is that the articles and columns produced by these operations are of variable quality at best. And in some cases the content they generate should be considered a form of spam.

The proliferation of dubious or low-quality content from some of these sites is, over time, a direct threat to Google in my view. Google doesn’t present any publisher “branding” in search results so users must often click back and forth to find a quality source for the information they’re seeking. Google’s algorithm is supposed to address issues of quality and authority — and it often does — but the rising tide of mediocre, SEO-driven content creation is a fundamental problem for searchers.

Enter Blekko.

Over the past several years there have been many runs at Google and general search, including Powerset (acquired by Microsoft) and the ill-fated Cuil. None of these independent challengers has succeeded to date. (The jury’s still out on Bing of course, but arguably it has already succeeded by several measures.)

For those who haven’t heard of it, Blekko is a general search engine that will launch relatively soon. It has been written about several times by TechCrunch and I wrote about it briefly a year ago after an initial demo from founder Rich Skrenta and Mike Markson. Danny intends to do a “deep dive” on Blekko shortly so I’ll let him discuss features in depth.

There are two general characteristics that differentiate Blekko: transparency and user control. It’s also social in interesting ways; registered users can “follow” one another.

Blekko’s motto is “Slash the Web.” The centerpiece of that slogan and its chief innovation is the concept of “slashtags.”

Slashtags allow search personalization and filtering through the creation of mini-indexes of authoritative or favorite sites. For example, Skrenta has created a slashtag for wine blogs that he likes: “/skrenta/wineblogs.” In short this allows him or me to search an authoritative or personal sub-index of the internet for wine-related content and recommendations.

This way I can get articles and commentary from sites I trust or that people I trust recognize as authoritative — and cut out the, pardon the expression, crap content.

While there’s a short learning curve slashtags are easy to use and their value is almost self-evident. Blekko can also be used just like Google without slashtags as well.

Slashtags address the content-spam problem I described and provide control over results not offered by Google today. My prediction is that sophisticated search users will immediately be drawn to Blekko for the personalization, SEO tools (I’ll let Danny discuss) and social features it offers. I also predict that after it formally launches we may see some slashtag-like development from Google.

In 1998 the web was ripe for Google. But Google’s profound success and the way it has shaped the internet, giving birth to content farms, may have paved the way in 2010 for Blekko.

NOTE: Please see our detailed review that’s now available, Blekko: New Search Engine Lets You “Spin” The Web.

One of the most obnoxious in recent memory is the blog plug-in tool “snap shots.” Many blogs installed it because it looked “cool” but did very little in the way of adding value.

Bing does a version of this currently, which is relatively helpful but probably not widely used. An arrow to the right of each SERP link enables a small preview window. It would have a greater impact potentially if it showed more of the page and was more prominently called out on the SERP:

Roughly two years ago TigerLogic released a browser-based preview and search refinement tool called Chunk It, directed at consumers. Like most of these tools, few people used it.

Now the company has reinvented Chunkit as “yolink.” The new tool now does new things and abandons its consumer orientation for developers and publishers. From an adoption standpoint, that’s the right choice and gives it a fighting chance. The company just released an API that allows yolink’s enhanced search capability to be integrated into publisher site search and vertical search engines.

Yolink integration exposes more information about a document or page to users and makes that information clickable. You can see the tool in action in different contexts here.

Below is an example of Google Patent search, the current version and then the yolink-enhanced version. Text is extracted from behind the link, keywords are highlighted and users can click on the passage to go directly to the relevant discussion in the document.

While the presentation of the enhanced results and text are not particularly attractive there’s clear value in the service — at least for “power users,” academics and researchers. The question is whether niche search engines and mainstream publishers will see enough value to integrate it for “ordinary” users.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After watching how its customers were using the service the company has now come out what it calls “Crawl Packages,” pre-configured crawls of various sorts. Think of them as “vertical” or niche indexes. These include social networks and shopping sites:

Here’s the early list of these pre-configured crawls:

• Social networks
• Retail and shopping websites
• Real estate websites
• Blogs and news publications
• Business directories

The data being crawled are only those that are publicly available, CEO Shion Deysarkar explained. He said that many of 80legs’ clients were doing interesting analysis or building functionality on top of the crawls being generated by 80legs.

There are a wide range of applications for the service, including for consumer-facing sites and B2B services, such as social media monitoring. Deysarkar also gave the example of product sites being crawled to monitor pricing data. Another example: a startup that sought to add rental or for-sale property listings could use 80legs to collect that information from the top-10 real estate sites.

One could crawl and analyze all the public Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and so on. The service offers a cost-effective way to build an index or monitor certain types of content or activity online.

Which sites to mobilize

To start dominating page one in the SERPs with your company-owned websites, consider any company-owned website that is either on a separate domain or a subdomain. Here are a few examples of company micro sites that are ideal for this strategy, provided they are on their own domain or a subdomain:

• Larger divisions and subsidiaries
• Large products
• Corporate “about” sites
• Corporate charitable foundation
• Recruiting websites
• Customer forums
• Affiliate program overviews
• Sites that were created for special PR campaigns
• Company blogs

If your company has everything sitting on a single domain, unfortunately, it’s unlikely that you will dominate page one because search engines do not like to display more than one or two pages from a given domain. If this is your situation, ensure your website is listed at the top of page one for your brand terms, and then link to favorable content to push the favorable sites above anything unfavorable.

Ideas for getting your company-owned websites to rank

Just like any other SEO campaign, you’ll want to optimize each website you are trying to boost. Typically, you only need to optimize a few pages for your brand terms, and execute a good link building campaign to get the lift you need. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

On-page optimization ideas:

• Include at the bottom of the page, near the copyright information, text that indicates “XYZ is a division of ABC Company”. This gets your company name on the homepage of each website
• In the about sections of each site, cross-link to other company-owned websites, including the main corporate website
• In the about section, add an overview page that is about the parent company
• In the about section, add a history page that focuses on the brand phrases you are targeting. You could write about how this division/site is affiliated with the brand. One of my clients added a page to each subsidiary website that described how the parent company started this division and how they work together today
• Ensure that the main corporate website links to all division websites (you would be surprised at the number of companies who do not link to each of their separate websites)

Link building ideas:

• For each corporate site you are trying to boost to page one, you’ll want to obtain links that pass on relevancy for the brand terms you are targeting. To do this, find sites that talk about the parent company, and see if they will also link to the websites you are targeting
• Look for directories that have a category devoted to your company as a whole; for example, the Yahoo Directory has a corporate categories for large companies (Hewlett Packard and Dell are prime examples)
• You will also want to do a general link building campaign. Sometimes smaller divisions’ websites do not have the resources for thorough SEO and link building, leaving low hanging fruit that will easily give the site a nice boost

Setting expectations

Be prepared for this to be more difficult than it sounds. I find that mobilizing the internal troops to march to the same beat can be a challenge because these smaller websites have been up and running completely autonomously. In the beginning, everyone will be on board, particularly upper management; however, when they look at the proposed changes there will be resistance because you are suggesting they write using brand terms that are not a priority for each particular site’s messaging.

Bear in mind that the stakeholders of these separate sites probably know less about SEO than the stakeholders you normally work with, so operate as though you are back at square one and need to educate and get buy-in for SEO tactics.

For optimal results, I have found that it’s best to get everyone bought in conceptually, and then prepare my recommendations. I walk into to discuss recommendations with a full set of changes ready for approval, fully aware that they will rip it apart and say, “This won’t work.” To which I reply, “That’s OK. We can incorporate the phrases in any way that you want. We just need X repetitions on the page.” This allows stakeholders to actually see the types of changes needed, yet they feel completely in control of the wording and messaging on the site, which is what they truly want in the end.

As you get started, strap on your thinking cap and get creative to make the keywords sound just right, flow naturally and start boosting your rankings.

Jessica Bowman is the Director of SEO for Business.com and an independent consultant and author of the SEM / SEO In-house Blog. The Brand Aid column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

What is affinity linking and how do Google CSEs impact it?  As always, it best to illustrate by example. How’s this for verticality (no pun intended): Soaring Search. This search engine is oriented towards glider pilots, students, and instructors. This search engine gives higher rankings on glider-related results than other similar sky sports such as hang glider, para glider, RC glider, etc.

The first link building opportunity is to look for Google CSEs in your niche. If you run the Soaring Society of America site, then it’s a pretty good bet the folks over at Soaring Search will have an affinity for your content and include your site if they haven’t already.  Have they? Yes. But that’s an easy one. The Soaring Society of America is a non profit association-type site. Of course the folks at Soaring Search have heard of it and included it

I did a little more looking and found this soaring content that was not included at SoaringSearch. Zero matches equals opportunity lost. 

Don’t depend on the people running the many Google CSEs to stumble across your content. Be proactive and look for them. Use the Google CSE directory and see if there are engines that fit for your content. If you find one, contact the owner and suggest inclusion.

The second linking opportunity offered by having a Google CSE is from Google themselves.  Look at Google’s CSE picks again.  I bet those sites are getting several benefits from that inclusion, among them a little Google-centric link love.  Remember also to submit your Google CSE here of course. And here. And you might want to look through the results for the search "Directory of Google Custom Search Engines." They should yield a few links for your new CSE.

Lastly, forward-thinking link builders might plan for the possibility that Google could incorporate existing topical Google Custom Search Engines into regular Google results. It’s certainly logical. The people running topical Google CSEs are a secret army of human reviewers adding a layer of editorial oversight to what are normally spam-heavy results. Google’s CSEs are genius in that regard. I don’t know if or when the tipping point will come when CSEs are so prevalent that every subject has one, but as I love to say, the web is self organizing.  People find ways to make it better.

I also wonder if one day someone will use Google.com and search for "Soaring instructors", and among the results will be this entry

Try this search again at the topical Google Custom Search Engine Soaring Search.

If Google’s goal is to provide a better searcher experience, then wouldn’t a well maintained vertical Google CSE be a logical place to steer the searcher?  

I walk the walk as well.  I have my own Google CSE for the three sites I run. You can use the box below to search EricWard.com, URLwire.com, and WardReport.com. Give it a try.

Remember, don’t ignore the other players in the custom search engine space, like Rollyo, swicki, Gigablast, and Yahoo Search Builder. They offer similar opportunities, as well.

Eric Ward has been in the link building and content publicity game since 1994, providing services ranking from linking strategy to a monthly private newsletters on linking for subscribers, The Ward Report. The Link Week column appears on Mondays at Search Engine Land.

If you want to search just the very best sources — the search engines’ own blogs and those of the top industry experts and old timers, select “Top 25 sites about search engines”.

What’s included in the top 25? We’re flattered that Search Engine Land makes the list. We’re part of a pretty august group:

• The Ask.com blog, Ask’s official blog.
• Google Blog, the official one.
• Google Blogoscoped, unofficially covering Google (and the search scene in general).
• Internet Marketing Monitor, Internet marketing strategies, SEO tips, and case studies.
• John Battelle’s Searchblog, thoughts on the intersection of search, media, technology, and more.
• Live Search’s WebLog from Microsoft.
• Marketing Pilgrim, Andy Beal keeps his finger on the pulse of Internet marketing news.
• Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO, the famous GoogleGuy himself — the view from inside the Googleplex.
• Pandia Search Central, yes, searching our top 25 sites you also get hits from Pandia.
• Phil Bradley’s Weblog, Internet searching, web design, search engine developments and anything that will interest librarians.
• ResearchBuzz, news about search engines, databases, and other information collections from Tara Calishain.
• Search Engine Guide, a site that’s been around forever and has lots of useful info.
• SearchEngineJournal, Search Engine News on SEO, Search Marketing, Blogs, and Web 2.0.
• Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman and friends. Thorough research by the industry experts.
• Search Engine Lowdown, the search industry queries new media.
• SearchEngineWatch, still good without Danny Sullivan.
• The SearchEngineWatch blog, large amounts of great posts.
• SEO by the Sea, in depth Internet marketing and search engine optimization research.
• SEOmoz Blog, news, tips and highlights from the search marketing industry.
• Search Engine Roundtable, news from the search engine marketing community.
• Traffick, search engine enlightenment from Andrew Goodman.
• Threadwatch, points out forum threads and other links of particular interest for SEOs.
• WebmasterWorld, news and discussion for Web professionals.
• Yahoo! Search Blog, a look inside the world of search from the people of Yahoo!
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog, official news, tips and strategies.

According to Pandia, the broader search also includes:

• Search engine weblogs (a huge list)
• General search engine news
• Search engine news for librarians and researchers
• Blogs on Google
• The search engines’ own blogs
• Blogs on Web 2.0 and social media marketing
• Blogs on spamming
• Sites in pay per click advertising and paid inclusion
• Podcasts featuring search engine news and interviews.
• Non-English sites presenting search engine news and articles.

The Pandia Search Engine Detective looks like a great resource for anyone interested in search.

The Yahoo Featured Search Builder box looks like this:

As an FYI, Google also features their Google Custom Search Engine engines in their Google Picks.

It’s an interesting idea—sort of a multimedia directory of links to web, news and blog content, photos, forums, online bookmarks and “stuff,” products available for online purchase that relate to a particular subject. The idea is to filter the mass of information available online, presenting only the best or freshest content. While the resulting “box sets” are generally on topic, ironically, I found myself a bit overwhelmed more often than not.

Boxxet launched just yesterday, so it’s still very much a work in progress. Currently, Boxxet is heavy on sports and entertainment, with a smattering of collections on other subjects like cars, fashion and technology. Over time the quantity and variety of boxxets should grow. But don’t bother looking for collections on anything other than mainstream, popular topics at this point.

I checked out a few boxxets on topics I’m familiar with, to see how well they represented what I felt are the best sources of information and other content.

Major league sports are well represented in boxxets, so I looked at the Colorado Avalanche hockey team boxxet. The “best” page told me the top news sources, blogs and bookmarks, and also displayed headlines from the past week or so. While Boxxet does try to aggregate stories by subject, similar to the way Google News operates, it also displayed a lot of different headlines covering the same story. While many of the sources seemed good, my favorite source of Avalanche news, the Denver Post, wasn’t represented in headlines (it was ranked #49 by Boxxet users and included as a “bookmark,” however).

Also, the sheer number of links to stories from sources I have absolutely no interest in reading, such as OregonLive.com, the Houston Chronicle and “Ang’s Weird Ideas” (what do they know about my home team?) led to a definite feeling of information overload—exactly the opposite of what Boxxet is trying to accomplish by filtering sources of information.

The photo selection was awful—pictures of mountains, the Chevy Avalanche truck, several others I have no clue about, and a handful of pictures of actual Avalanche hockey players. Boxxet has three buttons to let you select “good,” “better,” or “best” photos and to be fair, clicking the “better” button increased the number of hockey pictures (though clicking “best” got rid of all pictures but one showing a two-week old photo of Avalanche player Andrew Brunette).

The merchandise selection in the “stuff” category seemed OK, though it was all offered by Amazon Apparel, from what I could tell.

I checked out other boxxets for science fiction author Neal Stephenson, the band Radiohead, and the Apple iPod, and in each case found some really great content that I was unfamiliar with—but also some really dubious stuff that was either off-topic or junk.

In part, this is because the Boxxet user community is still comparatively small, and the filtering based on votes and tagging doesn’t have enough of a sample to make good judgments about content. This is one of the most significant challenges faced by all systems that attempt to enhance algorithmic suggestions with human judgments.

Despite the drawbacks, I like the idea behind Boxxet and am willing to give it a chance to grow and evolve, and hopefully to improve as more and more people contribute their knowledge and opinions to the service. I’ll check back with it in a few months to see how it has grown.

You can find more info about Boxxet and its creators here.

The improvements to the service allow much greater input from each swicki user community, to let publishers leverage the knowledge of each community in order to better understand their traffic and drive more searches per swicki. The new features improve relevancy by allowing users to add content to the searches than they have been able to up until now. For example, once a search has been run a user can add information to the search result – perhaps pointing to other sites, making comments about the results and so on by clicking on the ‘write your own result’ button. Users can also ask the community for help by posting a question that the rest of the community can try and answer by using the ‘Ask the community for help’ option. Finally, individual results can be vote for or against. Unsurprisingly the publisher or moderator has complete control over these functions, so the danger of spamming results is kept to an absolute minimum, and people who have not registered can view the results, but can do no more than that.

The improvements are being rolled out now, and you can see examples of them by taking a look at Eurekster’s own swicki, or mine for example; try a search for search engine land and as well as results you’ll see a comment from me.

I think it’s an interesting move towards integrating search into individual communities and is building on already popular concepts such as Q&A resources and user voting. Obviously it’s not something that everyone is going to want to get involved with, although everyone will have some opportunity for getting involved, but without it becoming onerous. Future developments will I’m sure have fine tuning, related searches, lists of questions and so on. There are of course other options available, and I wrote about some of them back in September so I’m looking forward to seeing how they will respond to the challenges set by Eurekster.