Search the top 10 blogs or create your own search engine

Guess what, I just created my own search engine! And it took me less than ten minutes. It isn't a general-purpose search engine like Google, but a vertical search engine: one that restricts its search to a few well-focused or high quality websites.

What does my search engine do? It enables you to search the top 10 blogs in the world according to the ranking of The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem (which calls them "higher beings").

For this search engine, I didn't write a single letter of program code. I just made use of existing web services like Google Co-op and the macros feature of Microsoft's Live Search. I used them both, and now I have two seach engines. In fact, I just took the TTLB Higher Beings as an example to compare the features and performance of Google Co-op and Live Search with Macros.

Wanna put one of these search boxes on your site? No problem, just copy-paste one of the following code snippets.

Put the Google search box on your site:

<div style="border: 1px solid black; width:360px; padding: 10px; background: #eeeeee;"><!-- Google CSE Search Box Begins --><form id="searchbox_004166010952655593447:tbvguelcysi" action="http://www.google.com/cse"><input type="hidden" name="cx" value="004166010952655593447:tbvguelcysi" /><b>Search the <a href="http://truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php" target="_blank">TTLB Higher Beings</a></b><br /><input name="q" type="text" size="40" /><input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" /><input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:1" /></form><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=searchbox_004166010952655593447%3Atbvguelcysi"></script><!-- Google CSE Search Box Ends --></div>

Put the Live Search box on your site:

<div style="border: 1px solid black; width:360px; padding: 10px; background: #eeeeee;"><b>Search the <a href="http://truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php" target="_blank">TTLB Higher Beings</a></b><br /><form style="float: left;" id="searchFrm" class="searchform" action="http://search.live.com/results.aspx" method="get"><input type="hidden" name="FORM" value="QBJG" /><input type="hidden" name="q1" value="macro:consblogs.higherbeings2" /><span class="sc"><input tabindex="0" class="q" id="q" name="q" /><input class="go" name="go" type="image" align="top" src="http://search.live.com/s/srch_but_off.gif" value="Search" /></span></form>   <a href="http://www.live.com"><img class="powered" alt="powered by Live Search" src="http://search.live.com/s/poweredbyWL.gif" width="170" height="23" border="0"/></a></div>

Because the list of these Higher Beings can change over time, here's a snapshot of the list at the time I created the engine:

1. Instapundit.com
2. Michelle Malkin
3. Daily Kos: State of the Nation
4. lgf: the fuad ramses of web design
5. Captain's Quarters
6. Stop The ACLU
7. Power Line
8. Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
9. Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
10. The Volokh Conspiracy

On the technical level, Google Co-op is currently better suited for integrating your own searchbox on your own site. And you can earn money by connecting your existing Adsense account to your search engine. The macros feature of Live Search is limited to 50 30 sites (which was no problem in my example) but has more advanced features for vertical search based on location, IP address etc.