Google Custom Search Engine

This tool is pretty self explanatory.

What you do in a couple easy steps is customize a Google-powered search engine to a set criteria of what sites your would like to search

To start you go to www.google.com/cse/

You’ll be presented with a very clean looking 3-part form with the steps of

  1. Naming, Describing, & Specifying Sites
  2. Testing it
  3. Getting the code
This is all you need to fill out to create your search engine

 

For adding a CSE to a blog or website that searches that website it’s even easier.  You just go here (http://www.google.com/cse/tools/create_onthefly), copy the code, paste in the HTML, and BAM… you’re done.  From there of course you can further customize it.

The best resource I found was their GSE for Educators Guide

So again you can just create you’re own engine that you can use and share with others that would look like this…

Or embed it in your site/blog

Another good example of a website that uses a GSE is www.american.edu  if you search anything you will notice on the results page the Google logo.

Something that I feel is interesting though is customizing the google search engine in a reverse engineering way- which can be especially usefully for searching for something just once.  The infographic below explains in detail below- click on it to receive more information.

Despite the annoyance caused by the length of the infographic I feel like these skills are good to know.

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