I continue to be intrigued by Google’s custom search engines. These little tools have potential value for law practice and law business.
I recently blogged about a top US law firm search I created. After that, Mark Gould, Head of Knowledge Management, Addleshaw Goddard LLP contacted me and was kind enough to provide access to one he created for the Top 50 UK firms. Both now appear on a new resource page at prismlegal.com, Legal Market Custom Searches.
Assessing the impact of custom search engines (CSE) will take time. I can imagine many CSE covering specific niches. Web search engines do a good job of bringing back relevant results from the entire web. But searchers often get back are more than they want or can digest. Limiting the search to narrowly defined sets of web sites (URLs) can help make search results more meaningful.
One concern is validation. By this I mean that the user has to trust the engine creator that appropriate sites are included. I’ve not found a way to see a full list of the sites included in an engine someone else created. Of course, if a firm’s law library creates a CSE, validation is not an issue.
I will consider including other engines on the new resource page; if anyone would like to contribute, contact me at searches at prismlegal dot com.