SALP Google search

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Our Google search is using Google's Custom Search Engine to provide course listings from providers sites. It is similar to using Google itself, but with the work of excluding less relevant results already done for you.

Included sites and pages

We use the Google custom search to provide results from the parts of providers site which give the most relevant information about courses. The parts of sites included in the search are all listed on our provider courses page.

Filtering and displaying results

The project aims to enhance the basic Google results by giving two features which may be important to course seekers

  1. Direct link to providers home (or sign up) pages
    We examine the results and return a link to the provider's website in a pop-up window.
  2. Best of each
    For this option, we provide only the first two results from each provider. This allows the searcher to quickly compare offerings from more than one provider.
  3. Special Ranking
    Smaller providers who have much less online content, or fewer pages, are given a boost in the ranking so that their results appear higher in the listing.

Quality of results

The results are only as good as the Google listing for each provider. You can see the pages which are indexed by Google on the provider courses page.

The project has been working with providers to enhance their own online presence and the ability of Google to find their pages.

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