Google Custom Search

I recently updated a list of storytime blogs to follow so I could gather more ideas for the ALD Storytime Resource Packs. I'm in the process of sending many of their feeds straight to my Outlook which is great to keep track of new posts. (I do have Google Reader but I never seem to remember to go there!) However, sometimes I'm looking for something specific (a new rhyme about flowers, or astronauts, for example) and it would be nice to be able to search in one place rather than in lots of different blogs.

I was messing around in Google and saw the "Custom Search" section, and remembered that a few years ago Amy Cervene taught a Google class and had us create our own custom searches. A custom search looks only in a particular website, section of a website, or combination of websites, rather than the entire web. I made a couple, but it never became an indispensible tool for me, so I thought I'd try again now.

I created a search to look in about 20-30 storytime blogs, wikis, and sites. I've tested it a little, but so far I'm not in love. Here's why:

The free version requires ads, so you have to scroll past some ad sites before you get to the storytime results.

Sometimes it doesn’t direct you straight to a particular relevant post on a blog, and you have to either scroll a lot or give up and do a separate search on that blog.

Many storytime bloggers also review books on their blogs, so a search for “pigs” returns review posts as well as storytime plan posts.

I have to go back and pay more attention to the URLS for the sites and enter them again, and I can’t get it to recognizes pages on the wikis, so right now it’s working mostly with the blogs.

There seem to be a lot of duplications in the results.

Doing a regular Google search for “X and storytime and blogs” seems pretty effective.

I will keep noodling around with this! Perhaps fewer sites will make it more useful, or maybe I should include only the sites that primarily are about storytime plans rather than book reviews.

You can try my storytime search out yourself on this page, or make your own custom search here.

If you've made one before, was it more useful than a regular Google search?