If only 10% of the sides which have a website included this search interface on their website this would provide over 30 additional ways for potential dancers to find a morris side!

From your side’s point of view you can use hosting of the search interface as a positive feature: you could advertise your page as a way to advertise for potential dancers in your area. 

And from a wider perspective it will demonstrate the fact that joining a morris side means that you are part of a wider community; a friendly community.

Questions / Concerns 

You may have questions bout the service, and possibly concerns you’d like addressed before adding the search interface to your website:

• You’d like to know how the search service works: The service is based on the profile information held on the Teamfinder service which has been indexed by Google. The content can be found from a general Google search and in some cases (such as “Looking for a mixed morris side in Dorset“) relevant results will be found on the first page of the results. However for other queries the search results may not be on the first page of results, and therefore unlikely to be found. The search interface, which uses “Google Programmable Search“, restricts the search to the Teamfinder area of the Morris Federation website, provide a search of the almost 500 side profiles.
• My side’s information is minimalist! Almost half of the sides have added profile information – which means that for just over 50% of the profiles only contain brief factual information.  We recommend that all sides add rich profile descriptions, including photos, videos and a side hashtag, in your profile
• Is the service likely to be around for a significant period? I wrote a blog post about the Google Custom Search Engine (as it was then known) in July 2010 – and 14 years later a search of University blogs still works (search for “web”).
• My side’s web expert has warned me of dangers of adding 3rd party content to our website!  There can be dangers in making use of third party content, especially in using service from smaller companies which be be liable to folding or being taken over. However this is not the case with Google!