Google recently announced a new technology. The Google Custom Search Engine, allows anyone to build his or her very own custom search engine. Below is part of the official announcement made by Google. "We want to make it easy for anyone to create a search engine about all of their favorite topics, without needing a Ph.D.," said Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. "Everyone - businesses, organizations, moms, dads, teenagers, and teachers - can harness the power of Google technology to create a personalized search experience that reflects specific knowledge and interests." Google custom search is built upon their highly successful search platform which allows you to quickly create your own search engine by choosing which websites and directories you want to include in your index and give those sites a ranking of your choosing. Some of the other features of the Google Custom Search are: * Choose what results or directories from the sites to include or not include. * The ability to add thousands of URL sites to your customized search engine. * Place the customized search box anywhere on your website. * Customize the look or theme to your website. * Add sub-search refinements to help narrow the search. * Make Adsense money in the search results. * Encourage others to contribute to the search engine. Another attractive feature is the ability to add Custom search engines to your Google homepage. You can put the "Add to Google" button anywhere on your website that allows your visitors to easily add your specific custom search engine to their Google homepage. Other features include a Google Marker that enables you to quickly add websites to your search engine while surfing the Internet. You can also allow others to edit your search engine and add new websites. The potential of this new tool developing at the same time that niche sites or long-tail marketing is starting to expand, is vast. A Webmaster can create specific Google Custom search engines pertaining to a niche, including or excluding whatever results they choose. By providing these highly targeted searches to a site it will provide an increased value to the end user. Providing this highly targeted unique search can bring repeat visitors to a website. When you are looking for general information, Google is great, but when you really want to dig deep into a particular topic, these specialized search engines will provide much more value. As the Webmaster you can choose exactly which websites represent the knowledge you want to share, by delving deeper into specialized niche topics. When more customized search engines are created, Google will have essentially created a layer of custom search engines on top of its main search engine. Personalized Web Search Goggles long-term vision is to have millions of small search engines built on top of the Google search engine that position the proficiency and knowledge of its end users. These customized search engines will only be limited by our imaginations. It will certainly be interesting to see what the webmasters will create with this tool. These new custom search engines have the potential to offer outstanding value to the end-user. The introduction of this new technology also suggests the direction and future of Google search. Social search and or Personalized search and are quickly coming upon us. Goggle's Customized search engine is one of first steps into the sphere of social search. It is permitting webmasters to design their own search engine dedicated to their particular area of knowledge and interests. The social part comes in when they allow others to contribute a choice to their search engine, growing your search engine into an even more valuable resource based on what your visitors actually want. Google is empowering users by allowing them to segment their massive search engine into thousands of sub-topics. Social search is all about giving control to the users.