As a developer of GIS, and more broadly Microsoft .Net software, I have come to realize there is a level of information overload within the industry. There exists more data, information, tools and programming language concepts than can realistically be absorbed. Often, I rely on Google Search to find the information and implementations I need. Without getting too bogged down in the nitty and gritty of programming methodology, the point is that programmers, heck all users, today have an overabundance of options to discover new data and information. The online search tool then plays a necessary role in assisting and aiding in discovering this flow of information quickly. But when performing a search the user has to wade through tons of results often consisting of numerous unrelated links, before finding the information they were looking for. So how exactly can users find information faster with more reliable results? One answer is Google Custom Search. This post will explain how this tool is useful for searching for specific GIS and geographic related information, with a focus on a new search tool I have added to this site, GeoSearch and GeoBlogSearch.

Discoverability - I Need Answers Now!
Discoverability describes the ability to quickly gather and find relevant information that exists. In the world of development new technologies are being developed at an extremely rapid rate. Because of this, developers obviously cannot know everything. This leads to relying on Google to fill in the knowledge gaps. Take as an example a simple Google search for RSS. Google returns thousands of results, but only 1/4 of the results are meaningful to the developer. What is needed is a tool for only searching development or dot net development sites.

Empowering Searches Using Google Custom Search
Dan Appleman has recently used Google Custom search to create such a tool on his site search dot net. The premise behind Google Custom Search is that you select the sites you want to search and only search those sites. As well you can choose just a page or the links within a page. This can then be embedded into a website or can be used through the user’s Google Custom Search Home Page. As well Google gives you the ability to create predefined sub searches. Overall it gives the searcher greater flexibility and power to find just the data in a specific domain they were looking for.

GeoSearch and GeoBlogSearch
My primary motivation was to create a search engine just for GIS and geography. I have tried to add credible sites that provide solid useful information. I have tried to stay within the realm of good solid information and have purposefully omitted Wikipedia, as I do not feel the data quality can be validated. As well, after the initial search, there are three subcategories: Google,ESRI and Dictionary Search. These categories will further search just for the data from selected sites that have been defined for the category.

GeoBlogSearch sprouted from my desire to find data from an older geoblog I had read on Planet Geospatial. I realized how difficult it was to remember the exact key words just to bring up a geoblog. So the larger idea here is to add as many of the geoblogs so as to provide a means just to search geoblogs and not get all the extraneous hoopla of traditional browser searching.

GeoSearch Example
You can quickly see where this resource might prove valuable if you play with the tool a little bit. If you wanted to find information on hurricane Dean, in Google and you wanted it map related you would have to enter not just the main search thread, but additional threads such as: geo,geography, Google Map…etc. This will return some of what you want and some trash as well. With Geosearch, you can just type in hurricane Dean or Dean and because it searches just the sites on the list, you don’t have to add any additional search criteria. The results you get back are all spatially related and should provide a more concise and cohesive result set. If you then decide you only want to see Google map content related to the search, click the Google map tab and presto you have now all the Google map related records at the top of the results.

Give It A Spin
Go ahead, give it a try. Remember it is a work in progress and I would like to hear all and any feedback. As well, I encourage you to add suggestions for sites for either search engine, as this will only get better with your recommendations. I especially encourage you to leave me blog suggestions, as I would like to get as complete a list of geoblogs as possible. There are too links at the bottom of the page, one for getting code to place the search on your website and the other for adding the engine to your Google Desktop. Also, you can get to this from the upper right corner of my main page, under GeoSearch and GeoBlogSearch. Take it for A spin and let me know what you think!

Custom Search Engine Links
GeoSearch
GeoBlogSearch

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