- Make Money From Blog - http://agentcities.com -

How To Create Google Custom Search Engine

Posted By BlogsNBucks On August 2, 2007 @ 7:33 pm In Blogging | No Comments

Google Custom Search Engine or CSE is becoming more popular everyday. If you are planning to optimize and monetize your blog or website you should use Google search box not default WordPress search. In this easy step by step tutorial, i will show you how to make a decent but professional looking Google Custom Search Engine. I also explained some additional features that you might not need if you want to create a basic custom search engine.
  1. Visit Google Custom Search Engine (need to have an account with Google or need an account at G-mail). Once you are there, it will ask you for few basic information about your customized search engine. These fields are:
    I) Add Title of your custom search engine (it will show up in the title bar)
    II) Add description for your search page.
    III) Add some major keywords for your custom search engine.
    IV) Select your preferable language.
    V) Select world wide web search OR your blog/website search option. Since i am planning to monetize my personal blog, i will select “Only sites I select.” for this option.
    VI) Add your blog URL. Again, i am planning to add this custom search engine only to my personal blog. Therefore, i will only add my blog URL. But if you wish, you can add other websites or your other blogs URL here.
    VII) Select “Show ads on results pages.” for next option. It will show Google Adsense ads on the search result pages. This will add some extra revenue to your monthly income.
    VIII) Read Google Custom Search Engine Terms and select the box IF you agree with Google terms of service.
  2. Click Next button at the very bottom. It will finish the initial setup for your custom search engine. You can try out the search engine in this page and select the option to send you a confirmation e-mail(optional).
  3. Click Finish button. It will take you to the Google CSE homepage or management page. Your recently created custom search engine should show up in the list here.
  4. Now, click on the “control panel” link. It will take you to the initial setup that we have just done on step #1. Once you are there, you can see few other options on the menu bar or the top navigation bar like these : [Sites | Refinements | Look and feel | Code | Collaboration | Make money | New! Business Edition | Advanced | Preview]
  5. Click on Code from top navigation button.
    There are two ways you can add the Google Custom Search Engine to your blog or website. a) Just add a Google custom search box and it will open search result page on a new Google window. OR b) Add Google custom search box and also create a page in your domain where you want to show search results. I prefer the second since it’s more professional looking and visitors don’t need to leave your blog/website. Blogs And bucks dot com uses the second option. Feel free to try our custom made Google search engine. To created a Google custom search engine inside your website, you need to add ONLY two pieces of code to your website. Click on the “+” sign where it’s says “Search box and search results code for your website” (scroll a little bit down when you are on “Code” tab page).
    >>First, select a branding style for Google search box.
    >>Provide a URL where your search result will show up by Google.
    >>Select how Google should show advertisement on custom search results pages.
    >>Copy the Google Custom Search Engine box code and add it to you blog where you want to show the search box.
    >>Copy the second portion of code and add it to the page(you can create a simple html page that will match your website template or layout or you can add the code to an existing page) where you want to show the Google Custom Search Engine results.
  6. Preview (Optional): You can see your finalized Custom Google Search Engine anytime by clicking on the “Preview” tab.
  7. Make money (Optional for non profitable organizations): Once you are on this page, you need to provide your email address, postal code, telephone number(last 5 digits)and your location that corresponds to your Google Adsense account to integrate Google Adsesne and Google Custom Search Engine. () So, that you can get profit when your readers clicks on the search results pages ads. Once you click on finish/save button on this page, it will send you an confirmation e-mail. You need to verify that you give Google coop authority to access your Google Adsense account by clicking on the link in the e-mail.
  8. Sites (Optional): Your blog or website URL will appear here. You can add filter for your search engine here in two ways Included sites, Excluded sites. You do not need to add anymore URL in included section since our purpose is to use this search engine for a single domain or blog. But if you do not want to show some specific URL in your search results, you can add them in the “Excluded site” section. Learn more about how to use URL patterns for site/URL exclusion.
  9. Refinements (Optional): This is similar to tagging system. You can add as many refinements or tags you want to narrow visitors search experience. Learn more about Refinements. If you use multiple domains or URL, you can add different refinements labels for different domains at step #8 (Sites tab). Once searchers click on the Refinement or labels, Google will filter search results containing specific tags or labels. To add refinements, click on “Add Refinement” button. Add your Refinement name, select one option between searching only labeled domain/s or provide priority to labeled domains. See my custom search engine for example or visit Google’s example for refinements. Related reading : Learn more about Existing Search Refinement Labels
  10. Look and Feel, Collaboration, Business Edition & Advanced are all additional features that you can play with to customize your search engine more. One last feature i would like to mention about this Google CSE is that Custom Search Business Edition costs $100 per year for websites with less than 5,000 web pages, and $500 per year for websites between 5,000 and 50,000 web pages.

Article printed from Make Money From Blog: http://agentcities.com

URL to article: http://agentcities.com/how-to-create-google-custom-search-engine/