Google is offering a new service that allows individuals to create their own custom search engine. YOu can customize the look and feel of this search engine. Google provides an interface to change colors and other aspects of the results.

This search engine can filter the results down to searching only a specific list of sites. Sites and/or specific pages can be included or excluded from the search. The search criteria is defined in terms of regular google search criteria.

One very easy to over look feature of the site is the ability to embed the results into your own web site. At first glance this system looks a little hokey and not very appealing. But if you dive into it, it has alot of power.

I was able to create a complete new web site in about 20 minutes.My web site consists of just 2 web pages. The first web page is the search box. You type in a query and press search. The second page is the search results page. Customized to my specific settings.

You can see this site that I setup at torrentdigger.com

The search engine also has a built in capability for adding adsense advertising to your search results page. SO if you have an adsense account this can be a good way to make money with custom niche search engines.