Programmable Search Engine Blog
The latest news, updates and tips from the Programmable Search Engine team
It’s now easier to set up Google Analytics Site Search tracking for your Custom Search Engine
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Google Analytics
Site Search
reports provide extensive data on how people search your site once they are already on it. You can see initial searches, refinements, search trends, which pages they searched from, where they ended up, and conversion correlation. In the past we admit that setup was a little challenging, but we’re happy to announce that now we’ve made it easy to setup Site Search tracking directly from your Custom Search Engine.
If you are already a Google Analytics user (and your site has the Google Analytics
tracking code
on its pages), go to the Custom Search Engine
management page
, select your CSE’s control panel and click on Google Analytics from the left-hand menu. We’ll display a list of your Google Analytics web properties so you can select one and tell us the query and category parameters that you want to track.
Once you save your changes, we’ll generate a new code snippet. Copy it from the Get Code page, paste it into your site and setup is complete!
You can then access Site Search reports from the Content section of Google Analytics.
Happy analyzing! If needed, you can find help with setup
here
and an explanation of the differences between Google Analytics and Custom Search statistics
here
. Let us know what you think in our
discussion forum
.
Posted by: Zhong Wang, Software Engineer
Submit Pagemaps directly to Custom Search
Monday, September 19, 2011
Custom Search users have long been able to create
Richer Snippets
by adding
Pagemaps
to their webpages. Today we’re enabling direct submission of Pagemaps via either
Sitemaps
or
On-Demand Indexing requests
. This means you no longer have to modify your pages to expose Pagemaps, or wait for Google to crawl your site to process them. This saves time when you want to make a quick change to your metadata. If you have data you would like to be displayed on your site, such as reviews snippets, you can submit it directly to Google instead of putting it in publicly visible markup on your pages. For added security, you can even choose to add a
private key
to your Pagemap and we will only serve it in Custom Search results when that key is provided.
We hope you enjoy the added convenience these new submission options offer. Let us know what you think in our
discussion forum
.
Posted by: Rui Jiang, Software Engineer
Google-hosted Custom Search Engines now use the Element
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Two months ago we
announced
that all Google-hosted Custom Search Engines would be upgraded to use the
Element
. We’re happy to report that that transition is now complete for all Custom Search users. Those that visit the Control Panel will find better tools for customizing the presentation of their CSEs.
Moving to the Element enables us to quickly deliver
new features
that Custom Search users can easily turn on for their sites and we will soon upgrade all iframe results to use embedded Elements.
As always, we look forward to your
feedback
.
Posted by: Liang Ch'ng, Software Engineer
Rich results templates out-of-the-box
Monday, July 18, 2011
We’ve been hard at work making improvements to the
Google Custom Search Element
that will enhance the look and feel of search results when users type into your custom search query box. You’ll see some of the fruits of these labors starting today. We’ve just launched a set of templates that take advantage of
rich snippets
markup to provide customized results layouts for specific structured data. Your markup can enhance the
display
of structured information in addition to enabling the powerful metadata features, such as
Sort by Attribute
and
Restrict to Range
that we released
last year
.
For example, there’s a
Review
template that will show ratings and expand on-demand to display reviews within a result as shown in the screenshot below:
This specific treatment is used when you use
hreview
and
hreview-aggregate
Microformat markup on your pages. Template rendering changes are automatic if you use the Element.
Templates that we now support include:
People
,
Product
,
Recipe
,
Organization
,
Review
and
Review Aggregate
.
Try these out
at our demo search site. Here’s an example of a
Recipe
result, using a custom
theme
.
For more information on markup that you can use for Google.com and Custom Search, please refer to our
documentation
. Don’t forget that we also support
image thumbnails and actions
. Further, if you are marking up your pages, you can verify that we recognize the right attributes by using our
Rich Snippets Preview Tool
.
We are constantly adding support for additional markup
formats
, so stay tuned. We’re continuing to add innovative features to the Element to help you turbo-charge your Custom Search results presentation. As always, we look forward to your
feedback
.
Posted by: Edison Nica, Software Engineer
Improved On-Demand Indexing
Thursday, June 30, 2011
When we launched
On-Demand Indexing
in Custom Search, our goal was to make it possible for you to include your new and changed pages quickly in your website’s search results. Since then, we’ve improved indexing freshness and
doubled
On-Demand indexing quotas. Today, we’re happy to announce further improvements to On-Demand Indexing that make the process simpler and more flexible.
First, we’re providing a new
On-Demand Indexing API
, which will allow you to initiate indexing actions programmatically. Your content management systems can trigger these new APIs when new content is being published, so that changes on your website are reflected automatically in Custom Search results.
Previously, you needed to provide validated
Sitemaps
in
Webmaster Tools
and then select a Sitemap for On-Demand Indexing in the Custom Search control panel. Now, to make this process simpler, you can submit Sitemaps
directly
within the Custom Search control panel. At this time, we will only consider URLs that belong to the same host serving the Sitemap and for sites verified by the owner of the Custom Search engine.
The best improvement: we now allow you to
delete
URLs from inclusion in your search. If a page on your site has been deleted, or has content that is inappropriate and you want to eliminate it from search results right away, you can list the URL in your sitemap and mark it for deletion by using an “
expires
” tag. For more information on this, and the new On-Demand Indexing API, please refer to our
documentation
. Based on the type of search engine you own, you have certain quotas for URL indexing and removal. You should be able to verify your quota usage in the control panel.
We hope that these changes make it easier for you to control the search experience for your users. As always, we look forward to your
feedback
.
Posted by: Rui Jiang, Software Engineer
More Layout Options
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Ever since the launch of Custom Search, users have asked us to provide more flexible options to integrate search into their websites. Today, we’re launching a set of new layout options for your Custom Search experience. If you go to the
Look and feel
tab, you’ll see a set of new layouts that you can choose from, as shown in the screenshot below.
The
Two page
and
Results only
layouts give you more flexibility than the
Two column
layout, which still requires the search box and results to reside on the same web page.
All of the above layouts are powered by the Custom Search
Element
. The new
Google-hosted
layout also embeds the Element on a Google-hosted page. This is because the Element offers greater flexibility and interactivity, font control, better customization using
themes
and style sheets, out-of-box metadata support for
thumbnails and actions
, support for
client-side control
over results presentation, and a superior
mobile
experience for smart phones and tablets.
There are a couple of additional reasons why all the new layouts use the Element (and we’ll continue to deliver new functionality this way too). We want all Custom Search users to be able to easily turn on upcoming new features on for their site visitors. Consolidating to the Element also allows us deliver features faster.
Along with these new layouts, we are also officially phasing out results presentation via the
iframe
. If you host results in an
iframe
today, you will see this option marked deprecated in the
Look and Feel
tab in the control panel. We encourage you to migrate as soon as possible to one of the Element-based layouts. We plan to replace iframe results soon to use embedded Elements. This will happen first with
all existing
Google-hosted results pages, which currently embed
iframes
.
So stay tuned -- there are exciting new features coming to Custom Search. And as always, we welcome your
feedback
.
Posted by: Ying Huang and Liang Ch'ng, Software Engineers
Transferring ownership of your Site Search engine
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Many of you have requested a simpler process for transferring Google Site Search ownership to a different user. For instance, you may have created, developed and customized your website's search experience under your Google account, but want the long-term management of the search engine to be performed by someone else. In the past, you would have been required to manually export the configuration, import it into a new Site Search instance and then cancel the old instance.
Now, you can very easily transfer the ownership of a Site Search engine to a new user by simply specifying a different Google account email address in the
Business Settings
tab in the control panel.
Once you’ve provided the appropriate account information for the new administrator account, the following things happen:
A new Site Search engine is created with the identical configuration as your current Site Search engine.
The new Site Search engine is owned and can be administered by the new account owner.
Any unused query quota is transferred to the new Site Search engine.
The new Site Search engine will show the transfer history in the
Business settings
in the control panel
You can still continue to use the old engine, but ads may be displayed alongside search results and XML access is disabled.
Please note that either you or the new admin will also need to update the Search box code to represent the new Site Search engine ID. You can find this ID in the
Basics
tab in the control panel, marked “Search Engine unique ID”.
We hope this process makes it easier for you to transfer administration capabilities to the appropriate account owners in your organization. For more details, please refer to the articles on
transferring ownership
, and recommended
post-transfer actions
in the
help center
.
As always, we appreciate your feedback in the
user forum
.
Posted by: Yong Zhu, Software engineer
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