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Google is to allow businesses to customise what search results visitors receive when searching for information within their own sites.

The world’s most popular search engine will expand its existing service, the online news agency Reuters reports.

Visitors who search within a particular company’s website will receive customised results not typical to Google.com that could include previously untracked information from the firm’s own site.

The new service does not have to be installed or maintained independently but is hosted on the network of Google computers.

Custom Search Business Edition, which was launched in 2006, will be renamed Site Search and will integrate the new functions.

A product manager at Google’s Enterprise division, Nitin Mangtani, told Reuters that the extended system was aimed at businesses and governments that wanted to feature search without advertisements.

In related news, Loren Baker, editor of Search Engine Journal, has given tips on how to increase search engine optimisation (SEO).

He advised that without incoming links or SEO basics, websites would ‘probably not even rank at all’.

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Search engine providers need to be more transparent about how they utilise users’ data, a government initiative has said.

Get Safe Online, a joint initiative between the government and the Serious Organised Crime Agency, has said internet users should make a decision as to whether to remain with providers who use private information for things such as targeted advertising.

A report released this month by the European Union stated that search engines should not hold on to personal data for a period of more than six months. Google and Yahoo! currently carry a policy of rendering all users’ data anonymous after 18 months.

Managing director of Get Safe Online Tony Neate said: “It’s not always exactly transparent why they [search engine providers] need it [user data] so I’d like to see a bit more clarity in relation to the information that they hold and why.”

A June 2007 report by Privacy International said that Google demonstrated an “aggressive use of invasive or potentially invasive technologies”.

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