There has been increased debate over Google’s latest “site specific” search feature.

The new service was introduced to help us users shortcut our search into specific contents within sites. For example (refer to screen capture above), if I want to look for a certain news article from the New York Times, all I have to do is Google up NY Times and a new search box will appear under the first result (which is always the homepage of the searched item [Google will make sure of that, of course] — in this case nytimes.com). When you type a keyword for search in that new box (in the example the keyword is terrorist), Google will search and give results only on items that can be found inside the NY Times website (see picture below: all the results for the search are from nytimes.com only). Other well-known and oft-visited sites like Wikipedia, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and others have this feature added in their Google results page as well (since their sites produce so much traffic!).

Cool, huh? It’s another one of those ways that make our lives easier… and that of Google’s. You see, the main problem that we see with this set-up is that it totally goes around the whole website itself, which includes the possible advertisements and sponsors that each site has the right to include in their pages. Instead of having traffic for current and future advertisers, Google eats up all of that by keeping users in their sites (which are not free from advertisements mind you) until they get to see the specific page they want to visit. It’s ingeniously sly!

Many of these famous sites have filed complaints about the feature and Google was more than welcome to turn the feature off for those sites. Since Google is acting on itself when adding such features, it would be wise to check if your company’s site is one of those few that “suffer” from this feature. Although, I believe that it’s too late for any of you; since the “damage” has been done and most current users will be expecting the feature for your site, or if not from your competition.

Think about it. If you don’t have this feature, how can you compete with a site that has it? The user, seeing that it’s more convenient to find items from the other site that offers site specific search, wouldn’t even bother to visit your page – at least looking at the convenient side of the equation. Again, it empowers the user.

It’s actually an inevitable truth. Almost all of us that use this medium are already under Google. It’s hard to swallow but for most users, Google really is the gateway to everything in and about the web. Most, if not, all companies that have web-based units fight for supremacy over Google search results. And with this new feature, none of that would matter. If this feature sticks, who would want to advertise on your site when they can advertise on Google — since most of your supposed visitors stay there most of the time anyway – where the options are limitless and they can easily get back their investment? Google is making the lives of users much, much easier and the lives of online based companies a whole lot tougher.

We shall soon see which will benefit from either the lack or the presence of the feature – or if it even matters. Amazon.com is one of the sites that do not use that feature (apparently they had it removed). I’m sure we will see an article soon enough on the result of the removal.

Maybe I should or should not be doing this but what the hell: Another way of doing it is by including the words ‘site:<site address>’ with your search keyword. This will do the same type of search from only the specific site address, with or without the feature turned on.