Creating a basic Custom Search Engine is very easy. Just add some sites or pages, and you're done.
However, you can also add features to enrich the search experience for your users and improve the appearance of the Custom Search Engine interface.
To make changes to your Custom Search Engine, access the Control Panel as follows:
- On the Google Custom Search home page, click the search engine you want to edit. (If you haven't yet created one, click Add.)
- If prompted, sign in with your Google Account.
- The My Search Engines list shows the search engines associated with your account.
Control Panel features are listed on the left-hand side of the page. Here's an overview of what you can do:
Manage the content of your search engine
On the Custom Search home page, click Edit search engines. Select the search engine you want, and then:
| To do this ... | Click this |
|---|---|
| Add new sites or pages to increase the scope of your search engine | Setup » Sites to search |
| Ask Google to instantly crawl and index new or updated pages in your search engine. | Setup » Indexing » Index now |
Improve the search experience
| Categorize your search results, and help users search by category | Search features » Refinements |
| Add a special box to the top of your search results promoting a certain URL | Search features » Promotions |
| Improve search results by automatically including synonyms for search terms (for example, you can specify that any searches for [monkeys] also return results for the term [apes]) | Search features » Synonyms |
| Save the user's time by displaying similar searches as she types | Search features » Autocomplete |
| Change the appearance of your search engine | Look and feel |
Get rich
| Associate an AdSense account with your free CSE | Setup » Make money |
Get Google Site Search
| Convert your free Custom Search Engine to Google Site Search (costs vary). If you’ve already converted to Google Site Search, use this tab to manage business settings and view quotas and usage for Google Site Search. | Business |
Manage your Custom Search Engine
| Rename your search engine, find your search engine ID, or change basic settings such as language | Setup » Basics |
| Add a user to your Custom Search Engine. This user will be able to add sites, refinements, and promotions, but won't be able to add other users or access the Make Money tab. | Setup » Admin |
| See your change history | Statistics and Logs » Audit log |
| Test your Custom Search Engine | Look and feel » Right-hand Preview panel |
| Get usage stats for your Custom Search Engine | Statistics and Logs |
| Important! Update the code snippet on your site. You need to do this whenever you change the layout of your search engine. | Setup » Basic » Get code |
| Find your search engine ID. | Setup » Basic » Search engine ID |