Google has made several business-friendly changes to its search of late, indicating that things are once again heating up in the Search Engine Wars. The company is set to release a customized version of its search engine for businesses that sports no ads, and APIs that will allow a business to include e-commerce enhancements, like one-click purchasing.

Google Custom Search Engine Business Edition is identical to its freebie cousin, Custom Search Engine, minus the ads and plus a few doodads that allow site administrators to restrict user searches, an XML API that allows companies to substitute their own logos for the Google logo, and the price tag, which will run somewhere between $1,000 and $15,000, depending upon volume. The Custom Business Search Edition is an intermediate step between the freebie Custom Search Engine and the Search Appliance.

The Custom Search Engine Business Edition joins Mapplets, as Google's latest business-oriented tweaks. Mapplets allow users to add third-party information to customized Google maps. For example, a user could grab information on available real estate from a local broker and layer it on top of a map of the area. Likewise, the user can synthesize data from multiple sources, so that same map with information on available properties could also show crime statistics offered by the local police agency, giving potential property buyers a look at crime rates in particular areas. The layering data are provided by third parties, of which Google has about 100 lined up.

In the past month, Google has also expanded its "pay-per-click" model to incorporate "pay-per-action" which charges the advertiser only when a specific action is completed on the advertiser's Web site as the result of a referral from Google's advertising programs.

The enhancements to Google's advertising products are not lost on would-be rival Microsoft, which has struggled to find an effective strategy to challenge the Google advertising machine. Microsoft recently appointed a new Search Czar, Satya Nadella, to recharge Microsoft's Live Search and adCenter programs.

Microsoft hopes to break open the search engine piñata by strategically breaking down searching into various niches, looking for market share in places like mobile content searching, with the introduction last week of Windows Live Mobile Search 2.0. Video searching is another area in which Microsoft hopes to score big, and it is looking at ways to index information that currently flies under the radar of other search engine tools.