Search is big, right, you know that. Why not create your own search engine using Google’s Custom Search. Custom Search allows you to use the Google search engine as designed by you. You get to determine what is indexed and what gets shown. I hacked together a very simple marketing related search engine I called GoGetMarketing to demonstrate this tool.

In this case I actually created a unique website and am hosting my own search engine. This could be a really great approach for people who want to create very narrow niche search tool that could provide hand picked results based on your own network of bookmarked sights - this could be far more beneficial than what Google would index and return.

Custom search would be a great way to create a local search engine and improve your local search results. You can manage all the sites indexed in your custom search engine or even give access to contributors to edit the site in your engine.

In addition, this tool allow you to place custom search on your own site or blog and create your own search on your site or easily include every blog on your blogroll in the search results.     

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Sending gift certificates, good towards the purchase of your products and, yes, services too, can be a great way to stimulate additional purchases. It’s also a great tool to use for referrals. Send out gift certificates to customers and ask them to give them away to someone who might use it. Then give your customer additional credits for each one of those gift certificates that comes back by way of a new customer.

PayPal has a feature that makes creating online and printable gift certificates for your products and services pretty simple. Here’s an example on Duct Tape Marketing (Just an example execution not trying to trick you into buying gift certificates - although people have asked!)

The only real downside is that to redeem the certificate the user must be or become a PayPal member.

If you are an existing PayPal merchant the process for creating gift certificates is as simple as completing a form and pasting the buy button into your web page code.

Another promising looking online referral tool is ReferNow. This service allows you to create referral campaigns that make it very easy for customers to refer. The service creates the tools that make it very easy for you to motivate referral sources and track referral activity.

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