Google is offering a customisable version of its search engine for people to put on their own websites or blogs.

The search giant has long offered a mini-version of itself for other sites to use, but the new version has more options. You can select what pages or websites the engine searches through or you can prioritise certain sites. You can even offer results in your corporate colours.

The Google Custom Search Engine can be tailored for any site and also provides "relevant" adverts from AdSense, Google's ad network.

You can still use ordinary Google to search just one website by adding "site:" followed by the site you wish to search at the end of your search request.

The service is currently only available in English. Google will host all search result pages. You can allow other users to add their pages or preferences onto your search engine.

Macworld has already started using the search engine in place of its inhouse search box - see what it thinks here, or there's more on the Google blog here. ®

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