Create your own search engines

Several companies already let you create your own search engine using their technology.  Now Google has developed the same capability with Google's Custom Search Engine.  In short, you can create your own list of web sites that you or your friends can search.  Google's custom search engine has many features to play with and allows for collaboration. Google ads are included in the results, but not if you use it in a university, government or non-profit setting. Rollyo.com has been out there for a while, but you are limited to 25 sites.  Gigablast also offers a "custom topic search," which is a little more difficult to create than Google's.  Gigablast allows up to 500 sites to be added, while Google's custom search engine lets you add as many sites as you want.  One note about an experiemental Gigablast creation: foreign sites that were not a part of the list began to creep into the search results.