Google Custom Search is now three years old and to mark the occasion the search giant has introduced a couple of new features and a brand-new Custom Search Wikipedia Skin that enables users to extend the functionality of the built-in Wikipedia search. The skin comes with quite a few enhancements but it's unfortunate that activating it requires editing the Wikipedia skin by hand, something that is bound to put off the more casual users.

“With the Custom Search skin, your search results are conveniently placed inline on the page. After you've reviewed the results, you can dismiss them and return to the current article of interest without having to switch to a different tab on your browser; you can access the relevant Wikipedia articles right within the Wikipedia interface,” Rajat Mukherjee, group product manager, Search and Mathias Schindler from the Wikimedia Foundation wrote. “The Custom Search skin also features contextual search — searching across different sets of pages as you navigate Wikipedia.”

The first thing you'll notice is the fact that the search results will show up on top of the page you were previously viewing so you don't have to navigate away from it when searching. But the changes are more than just skin deep as the new Custom Search has a lot of improvements over the default Wikipedia search.

It also has three tabs to switch between searching all Wikipedia pages, the Wikipedia pages linked from the one you are currently on and all pages linked from the one you're viewing. This makes it easier to search for related content as doing a regular Wikipedia search will not take into account the current page and content. The only downside is that you can't just enable the new search in the options, you have to manually edit the Wikipedia skin you are using to integrate it. The process is really straightforward but it does add a level of unnecessary complications. Appropriately, there is a Wikipedia help page on this, which should make it easy enough to enable it.

Aside from the Wikipedia skin, Google Custom Search has also gotten a couple of new features that should be welcomed by those using it on their sites. The look and feel of the Custom Search can be tweaked and users can choose between three layouts and several themes that can be further customized to match the design of the site. Finally Google also improved the support for metadata and webmasters can now include thumbnails as well as custom actions inside the search results.