Let's say you have a custom search engine that allows your users to search for recipes. Some users may want to search for any recipes that include a certain ingredient, but others may only want to see results from vegetarian recipes, for example. Other users might only be interested in desserts. With Refinements, you can add labels to your custom search engine to let users narrow the scope of the search and find the results that are most relevant to them.
In order to use refinements on your search engine, first you have to create some labels and then apply those labels to sites included in your search engine. You can choose whether the results only include sites you've labeled or if those sites are just treated with higher priority.
Create a refinement:
- From the list of search engines, select the search engine you want to edit.
- Under Overview, scroll down to Search features. Click on "All search features settings"
- Under Search Features, Refinements section. Click Add.
- Enter a label name for the refinement and choose whether "search within sites with this refinement" or "change priority of sites with this refinement". If you want to further narrow down the search, you can also add optional words which will be added to the user's query when they search within the label by clicking on Advanced.
- Click Save.
You can configure your search engine to display the number of refinements to show for a search by selecting the option from the drop down menu from "Max top refinements to show for a search". under Refinements section.
Apply a refinement:
- From the list of search engines, select the search engine you want to edit.
- Under Overview, scroll down to Search features. Click on "All search features settings"
- Under Search Features, Refinements section you will find all the Refinement labels created.
- Click on the Refinement labels name link. Under To attach sites, select the site you want to attach to the label.
- Click Save.