Google offers a free search engine which can be placed in any website. It allows visitors to conduct searches on the pages included in the site map.

The search bar provided will blend seamlessly into any site, but there are some things to take into consideration to integrate it successfully.

     · If you choose the quick setup technique, the results page will look like a regular Google search, and will not match with your website design. Once the user clicks on a result though, they will be brought back to the page of your website containing the information they were looking for.

     · The results page will contain ads by Google matching the theme of the search. These ads are relatively unobtrusive, but if the ads are a problem for you, there is a paid version of Google search which removes the ads.

     · The search function is powerful and will search every page you have transferred online. In fact, if there are any old pages you have removed from your project but not from your hosting server, they might also come up in the results. Make sure to remove old content from your server so that your results are most accurate and relevant.

     · Using the Google custom search requires agreeing with their terms of service, so you may wish to take a look at their terms.

Quick Setup

    1.  Head to http://www.google.com/cse/tools/create_onthefly to get started.

    2. Copy the code to insert a Google custom search box into your pages.

    3. Open your project with Web Creator.

    4. In the ‘Insertion’ menu, click on the icon to create a Web Object

    5. Paste the Google code in the Web Object and press OK.

    6. Position the Web Object where you want it in the page.*

    7. Save the current page

    8. Copy-paste the web object in other pages of your project if needed.

    9. Regenerate the project.

    10. Upload your website to the server as per usual.

Your search bar is now up and running.

* Note: you won’t be able to test the search engine while viewing your pages locally. The website has to be online in order for the search engine to work. You can upload your website to a subfolder on your hosting server (www.mysite.com/test/index.html) if you want to check your website without making it directly accessible to visitors.

 

Detailed Setup

*Note* Use the following instructions if you wish to match the search engine and list of results to the design of your website. This detailed setup for a customized search requires a longer web page to display the results in. You might want to create a special page for the search engine and results if you choose this option.

    1. Head to http://www.google.com/cse/manage/create  to get started.

    2. Give your search bar a name and provide a brief description.

    3. Provide your website URL and accept the terms of service.

    4. Choose a style and customize the colors. You can get perfect matches of your website’s colors by opening Web Creator and going to template colors tab and putting the numbers representing RGB (red green blue) into the boxes on http://www.rgbtohex.net/. This will give you a value you can put into the color customization fields.

    5. Copy the resulting code to insert a Google custom search box into your pages.

    6. Open your project with Web Creator.

    7. In the ‘Insertion’ menu, click on the icon to create a Web Object

    8. Paste the Google code in the Web Object and press OK.

    9. Position the Web Object where you want it in the page.*

    10. Save the current page and regenerate the project.

    11. Upload your website to the server as per usual.

Your search bar is now up and running.

* Note: you won’t be able to test the search engine while viewing your pages locally. The website has to be online in order for the search engine to work. You can upload your website to a subfolder on your hosting server (www.mysite.com/test/index.html) if you want to check your website without making it directly accessible to visitors.