Google aims for small businesses

Customising the new search should take small firms just 10 minutes

Google is offering small businesses the chance to provide a search capability on their websites.

For as little as $100 (£49) a year firms will be able to use a Google powered website search that does not require businesses to run Google ads.

The move is certain to stir talk that the search engine giant is aiming for Microsoft's enterprise business.

Google said its service was aimed at sites which lacked search engines or were unhappy with their existing ones.

New target

For the basic $100 a year fee, Google's Custom Search Business Edition will sift through up to 5,000 web pages.

Larger websites can pay $500 per annum to search as many as 50,000 web pages.

"If you have a web site, we already crawl your web site," said Google Enterprise product manager Nitin Mangtani.

"Now we are saying you don't have to manage search within your site."

According to Mr Mangtani, companies should be able to customise the new Google search engine within about 10 minutes.

Google has been moving closer to directly taking on Microsoft's core applications with the launch of a number of popular business web services including e-mail, calendars, spreadsheets and word processing, analysts said.

The new service offers something of a middle ground between the group's current Custom Search Engine - a free advertising-supported service - and the Google Search Appliance - a hardware device that sells for around $2,000.