The .NET Developer Search Engine

While listenening to a recent episode of DotNetRocks, Dan Appleman noted that he created a Google Custom Search Engine called SearchDotNet.com. This search engine searches only relevant .NET sites that Dan himself deems as “experts” in the fields. THis search engine helps with the topic of Discoverability (see the front page of SearchDotNet.com for more info on Discoverability).

Example:

He gave a good example, go to Google.com and search for “RSS”.

The top 5 results are:

1. Rss (wikipedia)
2. Xml.com (what is Rss)
3. Rss 2.0 Specification
4. New York Times Rss
5. Rdf Site Summary

As a .NET developer this poses no great info for example: how to implement Rss, or maybe .NET Rss feeds.

Enter Dan’s search engine, SearchDotNet.com.

Entering the same exact search phrase returns vastly different topics (in regards to .NET).

1. Scott Gutheries Blog feed
2. Raymond Chen’s blog
3. Asp.net blogs
4. Microsoft Team Rss Blog
5. The ServerSide Rss Feed

Try searching for other topics on his site, such as the word “Triplet”. Mads Kristensen blogged about this class awhile back, but searching for “Triplet” on Google.com would return you all kinds of non-.NET related articles.

Dan recommended that the developer try to search on SearchDotNet.com first, then if you cannot find what you’re looking for, then go search on Google.com. Thats what I’ve done and found it immensely useful.

See for yourself, go try it out now.