Watch an overview of Custom Search.
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 Manage your existing search engines. (If you haven't yet created one, click Create a Custom Search Engine.)
- If prompted, sign in with your Google Account.
- The My Search Engines list shows the search engines associated with your account. Click control panel next to the Custom Search Engine you want to change.
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
To do this ... |
Click this |
Add new sites or pages to increase the scope of your search engine |
Sites |
Ask Google to instantly crawl and index new or updated pages in your search engine |
Indexing |
Improve the search experience
Categorize your search results, and help users search by category |
Refinements |
Add a special box to the top of your search results promoting a certain URL |
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]) |
Synonyms |
Save the user's time by displaying similar searches as she types |
Autocompletions |
Change the appearance of your search engine |
Look and feel |
Get rich
Associate an AdSense account with your free CSE |
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 settings |
Manage your Custom Search Engine
Rename your search engine, find your search engine ID, or change basic settings such as language |
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. |
Admin accounts |
See your change history |
Audit log |
Test your Custom Search Engine |
Preview |
Get usage stats for your Custom Search Engine |
Statistics |
Important! Update the code snippet on your site. You need to do this whenever you change the layout of your search engine. |
Get code |