How To Create A Google Custom Search On Your Blog

With all the features we love in WordPress, most of us would vote down the default WordPress search engine. Its ability is quite limited. Espcially when we have mulitsite installed, its search engine simply can't search site wide. I've tried a variety of plugins but they didn’t work the way that I wanted to. So, I decided to make Google work the way that I want, and now Goodle is working on my site and its making money for me.Here are the steps to go:1.Start off at Google Custom Search Engine (https://www.google.com/cse/) and create an account. Choose Google Custom Search Engine and not Site Search, Site search needs to be paid, custom search is free with google ads showing up on search result. But you can make money on those ads, so, it doesn't matter. 2. Fill out the forms. You can let google search your entire site by submit the root domain. You can also submit only some sections. It's really flexible.3.Click on Standard (ad supported) Edition and the terms of service, and submit.4. Go ahead, try out the different lookings and customize the search page in the way you like, and submit.5. Now your registration is completed, and you can go to control panelThe basic area can be reviewed. Change the settings to your preference, and set the search engine public.6. Click over to the make money button in the left column. If you have an Adsense account, simply enter your info. One thing to keep in mind is that you need to make sure you are signed up for AdSense for Search and not just AdSense for Content or Referrals. This needs to be done to make money off the ads that will show up as part your search results.7. Click on the code button to get the code for your site.8. In WordPress, create a new page called search and note the permalink for that page;9.In Google, add the URL for your newly created page into the area where the search results will appear;10. Now, paste the code you get from google into your WordPress page templates, paste it at the place you wish it appear.11. Modify the newly created search result page on step 8, make it look in the way you prefer. That's all you need to get a Custom Google Search on your site!

Wordpress has plugin that makes this process easy to follow. Wordpress themes may interfere between plugin code and the other calls. You need to make sure that plugin is updated regularly in order to see if it works. For me it worked on some themes whereas other themes simply refused to play with it. Anyway, nice tutorial for those who have small sites or flat file cms sites. The method in this tutorial is good for HTML or simple sites and not for CMS. For CMS you need to modify some of the theme code or the core code of the CMS. There are some plugins to do this for major CMS. Joomla and Mambo has few plugins, not sure how updated they're to begin with. Drupal has no extension i guess, you have to check it out on your own. Movable type has plugin but it is not working with version 5 which they released recently.