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Adding Google's Site Search to Your Web Site

By Will Bontrager

This article provides a step-by-step for putting the Google Custom Search site search box on a web site's pages. It does not go into the many good reasons for most web sites to have site search available for visitors, just the "how to do it."

The steps include how to put the search results on your own custom web page. The steps were valid when they were written. Google might or might not have changed things since then.

There are five things that need to be done, with steps for each:

1. Create a blank search results page.

2. Create a site search engine account.

3. Paste the search box code into a test web page and the search results code into the search results page.

4. Test that it all works.

5. Paste the search box code into the other web pages.

When Google Custom Analytics is running on your site, you will be in position to make good use of the Site Search Analytics software.

The first step —

Create a blank page that will later hold the search results. Name the file what it will be named when it is live and upload it to your server. Make a note of its URL.

Second —

Go to http://www.google.com/sitesearch/ and:

1. Click the Add Site Search to Your Site button (or, if you already have Google Custom Search on another domain, click "manage your existing search engines" and then "New search engine").

2. Fill in the basic information page the best you can. At the "Sites to search" text box, click on the "Tips on formatting URLs" link for information about formatting your URL(s).

3. When done with that page, click the "Next" button, then "Finish."

Third —

Click on the "control panel" link of your newly created search engine on the "My search engines" page.

(If you're not already in the Google Custom Search Engine management area, log in and click on the "My search engines" navigation link.)

When the search engine control panel has loaded, you'll see a row of navigation links near the top of the Control Panel page.

Click on the "Code" link. Then:

1. In the "Search results hosting options" section, check radio buttons "Host results on a non-Google site..." and "iframe...".

2. In the "Specify search results details" section, specify the URL of your search results page. This is the URL of the blank search results page you created and uploaded earlier.

   If appropriate, also change where the advertising will be placed.

3. In the "Search box code" section, copy the code and paste it into a test web page. Later, you'll be pasting this code into every web page that will contain the search box. For now, only the test page needs it.

4. In the "Search results code" section, copy the code and paste it into your blank search results page. Later, you can design the page and add other stuff. For now, just upload it to your server.

Fourth —

Load the test page with the search box into your browser and:

1. Do a search for a term you are certain exists on a page of your site that Google has indexed.

2. Verify the search results appear on your search results page. If they don't, go back over what you did and try to find out what needs to be corrected.

Fifth —

Once the technical aspects work, you can add design and content to your search results page and add the search box code to your site's other pages. It is prudent to also put the search box on the search results page so searchers can drill down if they don't get their desired result the first time around.

The search engine management control panel for Google Custom Search has other menu items you may wish to investigate. For example, the "Look and feel" page lets you do some customizing of the search box and search results.

Site visitors will appreciate having a site search box to help them find what they're looking for at your web site.

The Google Custom Search management control panel lists only "popular queries". To get analytics of all your site search box queries, analyzed as search terms or as individual words, site-wide or by individual pages, optionally within certain dates, use Site Search Analytics.

May 17, 2008

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© 1998-2001 William and Mari Bontrager
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