Question

Answer

If you want visitors to your site to able to search your site's content for certain topics, you can sign up for a Google Custom Search Engine and add it to your website.

Setting Up a Google Custom Search Engine

You can sign up for a Google Custom Search Engine at http://www.google.com/coop/cse/. Click on the "Create a Custom Search Engine" link on the right side of the page.

1. First you'll give your search engine a name, description, and list of relevant keywords. It will also ask you what sites you want to search. Here you'll type the url to your own website, in this format: www.mysite.com/*. Typing it like this, with a /* at the end, will allow your entire site to be searchable.

Google will also give the option of which edition you'd like. You can choose the free Standard Edition, in which "you must show ads alongside the search results, unless you are creating your search engine for a nonprofit organization, university, or government agency, in which case you can disable ads. You can make money from these ads with the AdSense For Search program.") Or you can choose the Business Edition, which "starts at $100 per year and comes with additional options. You get guaranteed support and greater results customization options via an XML API. Ads are not shown next to search results."

2. Click "Next" at the bottom of the page and you'll be taken to Step 2, where you can try out the search for yourself. If you're satisfied, click the "Finish" button.

Adding the Search engine to your site

3. Now that you've created your Google Custom Search Engine, you should be at Google's "My search engines" home page. Find the name of the search engine you've just created, and click the "control panel" link next to it.

4. At the top of the page you'll see a number of links. Look to the far right and you'll see "Advanced". Click on this and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, where it says "Advanced search results control using AJAX search API". You should see a code in bold text, that looks something like this: 011552473634739391383:skca-5g35ts.

5. Pull up another browser window and login to your admin site (the "back office" of your website).

6. Go to Edit Site > Content > Search > Google Search, and find the field called "Google Search ID".

7. Copy the Google Search ID code (from #4 above) and paste it into the Google Search ID field in the back office.

8. Click "Save".

Adding a Search link to your Site Menu

The last step is adding a link to your Site Menu, so visitors to your site can get to your new search page.

9. From the CMS admin site, click on Content > Menu & Structure.

10. Click the "Add New" button on the right.

11. Leave the Status set to "Active".

12. Give the link a name (i.e. "Site Search").

13. Under Link to Content, scroll down to "Search: Google: Google Search" and click on it so it's highlighted.

14. Under "Nested Order", leave it as Top Level if you want this be a main level link, or select another category if you'd like this link to be nested in another section of your site.

15. Give the link a priority order, based on where in the link menu you'd like for it to appear (the higher the number, the higher it will be on the link menu).

16. Click "Create".

17. When you go to your website now, you should see a link to your new Site Search!