Google to expand business offerings

Google Inc said yesterday it is launching a new feature to help businesses that use its Site Search service to instantly incorporate and update new Webpages in the latest phase of its expansion into business services.

Although Google is best known for its free consumer search, which is supported by advertising revenue, the company has been developing more services that make money by licensing search technology or services to client websites. Website owners who use Google's Site Search service will now be able to add new Webpages immediately so the most up-to-date information shows up on search queries thanks to a new on-demand indexing feature. Before now an automated Google Site Search system "crawled and indexed" the client website's pages from time to time.

But this offered no guarantee of being up-to-date, the new on-demand indexing feature gives control to the website owner. Site Search is a paid Google service that website owners use so visitors are able to search for information on their site's pages.