#15. Custom search engines

I think the concept is good and in practice I'm seeing better results than I might without the CSE function, but there are still problems. My litmus test with any search engine is "John Gay" (the 18th C. English playwright). Years ago, when doing work for my Gulliver's Travels site, I tried this search and retrieved lots of "sponsored-site" ads with oiled hard bodies and very few links to men in powered wigs and silk brocade. I tried a few pre-rolled searches on Rollyo for John Gay and the CSE hits were consistently good but the sponsored sites are still of a different nature (e.g. ""Get Blown" Away by Hot Guys on Gay.com"). If someone is going to promise custom searches, I want better control.

One thing not discussed in the lesson is that you can search SearchRolls in Rollyo, to see what CSEs others have created, test them, edit them and/or add them to your account. I couldn't locate an existing 18th Century searchroll but the English literature searchroll created by Simmons College Library works like a charm. There is a good area for libraries to explore.