Google® Business Solutions All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Adding Google Search to Your Site

In This Chapter

• Understanding what Google site search can do for your site

• Testing out site search

• Customizing your search engine

• Customizing your home page

One way to gain from Google Search is to add Google Search to your own site. This is a great way to add to any site, whether large or small, the power and credibility of the best and most-recognized search engine around.

Google offers a tool called a Custom Search Engine that lets you add a Google search box to your site for free. You can even customize the look and feel. Your "price" is that Google ads appear in the search results.

If you don't want the Google ads, just upgrade to the business site search. Prices start at just $10 a year.

You can also create all sorts of fancy features like search across multiple sites. This is great stuff, but we're not here to make you a search guru, just to help you make some money (or get whatever other result you want) with your site. So use this chapter to help you create a Google search box for your site.

Tip

If you want to see the full range of Google Search features, start with the Google site on the topic at http://www.google.com/coop/cse/, as shown below.

Avoid the confusion

Google used to make it very easy to add a free search box to your site. Now it's made the concept more general, more powerful — and a lot more confusing.

Google now promotes its free search boxes as Custom Search Engines. It promotes Custom Search Engines as tools for searching ...