When I created a Delphi Custom Search Engine (CSE) I not only found it really useful but that it returned much better results than just using google.com. I’ve been playing with the same idea for C# and Facebook development and have created the following search engines including links to quickly add these to your browser’s Search Bar for Firefox and IE7:

http://www.stevetrefethen.com/csharpsearch/

Add C# Search to your browser’s Search Bar

This engine includes 26 sites so far and I’m sure I’ll be adding to that over time. I’ve only been using it a few days now and I can already see the improved quality of the links coming back.

Here is one for Facebook development. I really like the Facebook platform and there seems to be a lot of interest in application development for it.

http://www.stevetrefethen.com/facebooksearch/

Add Facebook Search to your browser’s Search Bar

I’ll be tweaking both of these as time goes on and feel free to ping me if you know of some good resources for either. Btw, Google Coop rocks!

Btw, please let me know if you would like to collaborate on either one. Same goes for my Delphi Search engine since I’m rarely using that one these days.

Enjoy!

[Update: Oct 19th] Fix Add search engine links

Awhile ago I created a Delphi custom search engine and when I went to create a new search engine I took a peek at its statistics on Google Coop. Much to my surprise this search engine is actually averaging 17 searches a day. Sure, that doesn’t exactly sound like much but I was really expecting zero as I never got much feedback about it. I’m glad there are at least a few people out there using it. Here is a chart of it’s usage: 

I think the April results are so skewed because I was testing it a lot and it’s when I first blogged about it. I really like Google Coop and have created a custom search engine for my OPML allowing me to do easy blog searching. If you’re using the Delphi search engine and have sites you’d like added to the list just leave a comment and let me know or if you’re using it and find it effective that would be fun to know as well.

Btw, I tried adding some JavaScript to this post to display the top queries but it seems Google’s JavaScript is busted. Oh well.

I was searching for this post by Jeff Atwood and this got me thinking that it's crazy Google Reader doesn't have search! I think when you start using Google Reader you should automatically, and behind the scenes, get a Google Co-op search engine that tracks the sites you are subscribed to and let's you search only those sites.

Ah ha! It just so happens you can do this yourself. All you need to do is:

1. Export your Google Reader OPML
   
2. Create your own Custom Search Engine (CSE)
   
3. Import your OPML file into your CSE
   1. Browse to Google Coop
   2. Click the control panel for your CSE
   3. Click the Advanced link
   4. Under "Annotations" browse to your OPML file and click Uplolad

Presto! You now have a now have a Google Search Engine of your subscribed blogs. Let's see how well it works on the aforementioned post.

Search from Google.com

Search with Google Custom Search Engine (CSE)

Sweet! Worked like a charm, now if Google would just do the leg work for us.

In an effort to make the Delphi Developer Search Engine I blogged about the other day easier to use I've added OpenSearch support so you can add it to your browsers search bar (for FireFox and IE7). All you need to do is browse to the search engine page and click the "Add DelphiSearch to your Search Bar" link from the left hand column. Once added you no longer have to visit the search page to search using this custom search engine.

Additionally, here is information on how you can use this search engine on your own blog or web page.

I've been putting together a custom Delphi specific search engine using Google and I'm finally ready to blog about it. The URL is:

http://www.stevetrefethen.com/delphisearch

That page contains a search box that will search (currently) 45 different Delphi related websites I've personally selected. For example, here is a search for TListView. Here is another search for MagicAjax.NET that avoids the search problems I mentioned with CodeCentral, notice the CodeCentral link is second in the list though it's the author link not the article link but still much better than before.

Give it a shot and let me know how well it works for you. I may also be looking for contributors so let me know if that's something that interests you as well.


[Update May 2, 2007] Fix TListview search link