I used it for some hacks i.e.: a people search engine once. And some SEO indexing checks before Google Search Console existed. Became pretty useless as the index was then seperated from the real Google Index.
Looking at it there is a way to upload XML files. Mhmmmmm... prop. good starting point for the next Google Bug Bounty Hunt.
The appliance used to come with a T-shirt, but no longer includes one.
That's probably the same thing that you've encountered with the search appliance.
A word that shows up in the document and no others means it gets a very high score, vs "and" shows up in every document and thus doesn't score well for any
It's what Apache Lucene does which is what ElasticSearch uses under the hood.
Seems some form of wiki always has value inside a company?
Its weird that Google has been so half-hearted about «enterprise search» since they stopped selling GSAs. You would think that they would be itching to know what lies behind your firewall.
https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=001532657764357279270:7uvopk6d...
I've tinkered with Google CSE a lot and it does have its uses. The knowledge map options are fun to tinker with even if a bit of a black box.
As for the xml - when you download the xml that's intended to be your starting point for an engine, it doesn't include parts of the definition of the CSE like sites you've listed to exclude. So that functionality seems to be a little broken, but I've confirmed you can add and remove elements of the knowledge graph at least via the xml file.