If Google's free search product is not customizable enough for your needs, perhaps what you want is your own private search engine. SOLR, a Java-based search app, might be for you. SOLR has a RESTful services API, scales way up, and allows "faceted" searching and custom data schema. Definitely worth a look if you are in the market for a custom search engine.
After you have walked through the SOLR tutorial, you may want to check out these deeper articles:
- Search smarter with Apache Solr, Part 1: Essential features and the Solr schema
- Search smarter with Apache Solr, Part 2: Solr for the enterprise Part two of the article on SOLR gives the dirty details of using SOLR in the real world.
