Google has released a AJAX Search API . This api allows you to embed a search control that displays the results inside of the page using AJAX requests.
The Google AJAX Search API is an experimental API that lets you integrate a dynamic Google search module into your web pages so your users can mash up Google search results with other content on your site or add search results clippings to their own content.
While the uses for this could be plenty, the main reason I could see implementing such a feature would be for a site specific search. However, the API documentation doesn’t seem to offer a site specific option in the API although it may be available by passing a specific query string. Kudos for Google for allowing the results to be customized through JavaScript and CSS, although this is obviously just a way to bring more traffic to them. The main part about this new control that is scary is the following quote from the site:
The AJAX Search API is currently in Version 0.1. It’s an experiment designed to get developer feedback and may change dramatically over the next several months, so you shouldn’t deploy this on your mission-critical web site just yet. When we formally launch Version 1.0, it will likely require code changes to your site. Version 1.0 will also likely contain advertising.
Since Google is mainly an advertising company, it seems this new control may be a way for them to profit off of advertising on other sites. We shall see how it turns out.
