Retailers Panic Over Google Site Search

Google made it easier for people to search within a small number of sites by adding a second search box to the top results for those retailers.

That second box takes advantage of the useful search operator, site:. The site: operator allows the searcher to limit results to a query to ones coming from a specific domain.

Many people may not be aware that they can type something like site:example.com and focus their search results this way. Google's latest project, focused on a handful of popular sites, brings up the second search box so someone using it automatically searches within the domain in question.

It isn't being as warmly received as Google may have anticipated. The Utah nearly killed competitor keyword usage with a bill called the Trademark Protection Act. The bill would have required the creation of a database of registered keywords that search engines would have to check, and avoid presenting competing ads to searchers.

Fierce lobbying resulted in tweaks to the bill that removed the offending competitor keyword language. Businesses that hate the practice will be keeping an eye on Google to see if the search ad giant has dropped a second search box into their results.