Google Custom Search Promotions

Google's Custom Search engine is generally accurate at finding the results I'd like it to find when searching this site. However, sometimes it doesn't find what really is the best result. Until now, there hasn't been much you could do about that.

The new "Promotions" feature gives us a way to help. Simply, you define keywords, a title and a link. If those keywords are used, your link appears above all the normal results.

You can define more than one promotion. For example, if you type "laserjet" into the search box at the top of this page, you'll see that I have added two promotions: one for "netcat" and another for escape sequences to select trays. I think those links are likely to be more important than what Google selects by itself.

This is new (I just found out about it this morning), so I haven't added very many of these yet. I don't know what limitations Google has on the total number of promotions or the number per keyword. but I'm sure I'll be using as many as they will allow. Better search results mean happier visitors, right?

Got something to add? Send me email.

2 comments

Tue May 28 15:33:59 2013: 12094   anonymous




You are limited to 3 promotions per page. They are also randomly selected.





Tue May 28 16:33:12 2013: 12095   BigDumbDinosaur




I quit using Google several years ago, mainly due to all the cruft that gets presented, as well as their ever-increasing intrusiveness. My search engine of choice now is Ixquick.

------------------------

Have you tried Searching this site?

This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more.

Contact us