Google has teamed up with four state governments – Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia – to make public information on their Web sites more searchable. The four states have made their public databases more accessible to Google’s crawler by using sitemaps to identify the structure of their sites. They have also used Google’s Custom Search Engine service to include the Web sites of various state agencies in a site search.
“Connecting citizens with their government by offering the public better access to public sector information and services is consistent with our broader vision – to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “These partnerships are among many that Google is pursuing with government agencies to better serve the public.”
Google has a page on its site dedicated to helping public sector groups to use Google services.