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Google Custom Search VS Azure Cognitive Search

Compare Google Custom Search VS Azure Cognitive Search and see what are their differences

Google Custom Search logo Google Custom Search

Google Custom Search enables you to create a search engine for your website, your blog, or a collection of websites.

Azure Cognitive Search logo Azure Cognitive Search

Azure Search makes it easy to add powerful and sophisticated search capabilities to your website or...
  • Google Custom Search Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-10
  • Azure Cognitive Search Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-27

Google Custom Search features and specs

  • Ease of Integration
    Google Custom Search is straightforward to integrate into websites and applications, offering a user-friendly setup process with comprehensive documentation and support.
  • Advanced Search Capabilities
    It leverages Google's powerful search algorithms, providing fast, accurate, and relevant search results, benefiting from features like synonyms and advanced language understanding.
  • Customization Options
    Users can customize the search experience to match their website's look and feel, including adjusting the search box, results display, and controlling which sites are indexed.
  • Cost-Effective
    Offers a free tier with sufficient features for small to medium websites and relatively affordable paid plans for larger sites and custom needs.
  • Monetization via AdSense
    Integrates with Google AdSense, allowing website owners to generate revenue through ads displayed alongside search results.
  • Automatic Updates
    Automatically updates search indices, ensuring that the search results are always current without requiring manual input or intervention.

Possible disadvantages of Google Custom Search

  • Ad Inclusions in Free Tier
    The free version of Google Custom Search includes ads in the search results, which might be undesirable for some websites or users.
  • Limited Customization in Free Version
    The free tier has limited customization options compared to the paid versions, which might restrict certain advanced features or modifications.
  • Dependency on Google’s Ecosystem
    Relying on Google Custom Search means relying on Google’s ecosystem, which could be a risk if there are future policy changes or if the service is discontinued.
  • Data Privacy Concerns
    Some organizations might have concerns about data privacy and control, as the search data is processed and stored by Google.
  • Keyword Restrictions
    Certain keywords and search terms might be restricted or censored, limiting the scope of searchable content based on Google's policies.
  • Cost for Advanced Features
    Access to advanced features and higher query limits requires a paid subscription, which could be a significant expense for large-scale or heavily trafficked websites.

Azure Cognitive Search features and specs

  • Scalability
    Azure Cognitive Search can handle large amounts of data and queries, making it suitable for both small and enterprise-level applications.
  • AI-Driven Capabilities
    It incorporates AI-powered features like natural language processing, image recognition, and text analysis to improve search relevance and provide richer search experiences.
  • Integrated Security
    Provides built-in security features such as encryption and identity management, ensuring that your search data is secure.
  • Easy Integration
    Easily integrates with other Azure services and third-party applications, enhancing its utility in a multi-service environment.
  • Customizable Ranking
    Offers features to customize search result rankings and tailor the search experience to specific business needs.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Cognitive Search

  • Complex Pricing Model
    The pricing structure can be complex and may require careful planning to manage costs effectively.
  • Learning Curve
    It might have a steep learning curve for developers unfamiliar with Azure services or cloud-based search solutions.
  • Limited Advanced Search Features
    While powerful, some users may find it lacks certain advanced search features found in specialized search platforms.
  • Dependency on Internet Connectivity
    As a cloud service, it depends on internet connectivity, which might not be ideal for applications requiring offline capabilities.

Google Custom Search videos

Create a Google Custom Search Engine To Monetize Your Site

Azure Cognitive Search videos

Azure Search Tutorial - Azure Cognitive Search | AZ-203 | AZ-204

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google Custom Search and Azure Cognitive Search)
Custom Search Engine
68 68%
32% 32
Search Engine
78 78%
22% 22
Custom Search
67 67%
33% 33
Search API
44 44%
56% 56

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google Custom Search and Azure Cognitive Search

Google Custom Search Reviews

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Azure Cognitive Search Reviews

4 Leading Enterprise Search Software to Look For in 2022
It should be mentioned that the Azure cognitive search pricing is fully flexible to the needs of your enterprise. For example, you can decide whether to get more performance by gaining more queries per second or a higher document count each time you use the search. These alterations influence the costs that makes final pricing fully individual based on your needs.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Google Custom Search should be more popular than Azure Cognitive Search. It has been mentiond 7 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Google Custom Search mentions (7)

  • Creating your own federated microblog
    Google offers Programmable Search Engine [0], a service where you can create site-specific search box. That's probably good enough for most small personal websites. [0] https://developers.google.com/custom-search/. - Source: Hacker News / 28 days ago
  • Is there a way to search keywords faster?
    Google's programmable search engine comes to mind: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/. Source: over 2 years ago
  • How important are Google search operators/ Google dorks compared to other tools?
    Dorking is not only a very useful technique to find not-indexed results and unvoluntarly exposed content, it it also helps to improve beginner's analyst mindset. You can take it as an introduction to basic query language. What I can strongly suggest is to test your skills by creating your own google custom search engine (https://developers.google.com/custom-search/) that will faciltate your onlime search by... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Brave Search passes 2.5B queries in its first year
    It looks like is targeted towards website owners and not the general public. https://developers.google.com/custom-search. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • Google-clone - Google Search Clone Built Using React/Next js And Tailwind CSS
    A functional replica of Google's search page, you can use it for searches. Styled with Tailwind CSS to Rapidly build and look as close as possible to current google search page, the search results are pulled using Googles Programmable Search Engine and it was build using Next.js the react framework. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
View more

Azure Cognitive Search mentions (4)

  • Make your Azure OpenAI apps compliant with RBAC
    Microsoft offers an array of different AI-powered products, including Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, Azure AI Speech, and their most recent Microsoft Copilot for Office 365. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Show HN: Dera – A platform to manage chunks and embeddings for building RAG apps
    Very cool. I wonder when it makes sense to engineer things at this level vs using something like Azure AI search. [0] Love to see version control on all the things! Wonder if the version control features would be more robust if implemented in Doltgres. [0] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/ai-services/ai-search/ [1] https://github.com/dolthub/doltgresql. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • 🎵 Do you want to build a Chatbot? 🎵
    Azure Cognitive Search may seem out of place in an article on conversational AI, but I do believe that chatbots are really often a form of conversational search. You're interacting with a virtual agent looking for some piece of information or looking to accomplish some task. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Managing the infrastructure of a reusable ecommerce platform with Terraform
    In the ones where we need a persistence layer, we rely on the resources Azure Cosmos DB or Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Other services provide an API to search among a catalog of products with Azure Cognitive Search. As I will explain later, we work with different environments, therefore, creating and updating the resources across them becomes a harder task. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google Custom Search and Azure Cognitive Search, you can also consider the following products

Algolia - Algolia's Search API makes it easy to deliver a great search experience in your apps & websites. Algolia Search provides hosted full-text, numerical, faceted and geolocalized search.

ElasticSearch - Elasticsearch is an open source, distributed, RESTful search engine.

Site Search 360 - Site Search 360 enhances and improves your built-in CMS or product search with autocompletion, semantic search, filters, facets, detailed analytics, and a whole lot of customization options.

Apache Solr - Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on Lucene search library, with XML/HTTP and...

Sooqr - Sooqr Search provides relevant and innovative site search engine for the website.

Amazon CloudSearch - Amazon CloudSearch is a fully-managed service in the cloud that makes it easy to set up, manage, and scale a search solution for your website.