Spotted on the TVC Alert, Gigablast lets you create a custom topic search of just the sites you select. You can use it for your own research, or include it on your web site. This is just the kind of thing I was looking for!
For example, when I'm researching computer products, I often search PC World and PC Magazine. I'm been researching multifunction printers, and also found some interesting info at ZDNet.com. And, of course, Eopinions can offer some good user feedback. So now I can create my own search box that will search these 4 sites in one search. Like so:
If you want your results clustered by site, just change the sc parameter from 0 to 1.
At work, I've created a custom topic search of the top legal research sites including Virtual Chase and Zimmerman's Research Guide on our intranet. This should be very handy for finding resources quickly when I'm working on the reference desk.
What topic are you interested in? If you have a list of favorite sites that you go back to again and again, maybe you, too, would like to create a Gigablast custom search. It takes a very minimal knowledge of html. Just grab the code from Gigablast, make the few substitutions as instructed, and you're set.
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