What the poop? Okay, the desired search results can be found, but wouldn't it rock if those results showed up more like this?...
The above image is using Google custom search results. It looks sweet, and since the results are integrated into the site design, it doesn't confuse anyone doing a search.
I rank the Google custom search as one of the best, free ways to improve a user's experience and improve your (or a client's) site. It has an "Wow" factor with clients that is huge, yet it is free and really simple to do.
It only took me about twenty minutes to make a custom search engine that searches SEOmoz and displays the results within their own very spiffy layout. It is really that simple. You can make money with it too!
Google took the lead when they created the ability to seamlessly integrate search results into a website's design. I have not seen as many people as I expected to take advantage of it; I do not know if the reason for this is because people don't know about it, or if they just don't want to figure it out.

If you want to make your site searchable like this, here is how to do so:
1) Create a search results page for your site.
Make a copy of a webpage within your site that has the desired design elements on it and then name it "searchresults.html" (or whatever you want). For the above example using SEOmoz, I copied their "services page" and just called it "seomoz.html". This new page will be where your search engine results will be displayed by Google, and when we create our new search engine we will be asked to enter a URL where we want our results displayed. It is easier to make this page first and have it live on your server. More on this later...
2) Create the search engine. (Don't worry, it is super duperly easy.)
Go to the Google Coop page and click the "Create a Search Engine" button.
You will be asked to sign in to your Google account. If you do not have a Google account, follow the instructions to create one. Once you are logged in, you will see a page with a form on it...
Here is what all the fields are and what I suggest you put it them:
Search engine name: This name used to be displayed in the search results but isn't any more, so you can name it whatever you want. I named it "SEOmoz example," but a good name for yours would be "yourdomainname".
Search engine description: Since we are making this search engine for a site search, let's describe it as "yourdomainname site search."
Search engine keywords: Oddly, you must do this or else it won't let you go to the next step, so for the SEOmoz example, I just put "seo." Just put a couple of your keywords there.
Choose your language from the drop down menu.
Now we scroll down the page where we have some more settings to set.
Sites to search: Put the url of your site here. For the SEOmoz example I put "http://www.seomoz.org."
Pay attention to the next setting!!!!!
How to search these sites: Choose "Search only these sites" <--- Very important for your site search
Advertising status: You can choose to display ads or not here; for simplicity's sake I chose not to display ads for this example.
Check that terms of service box (if you have read and agree to them, of course).
Press next.
Okay, even though you didn't realize it, you are already done creating your search engine. You rock!
This page allows us to test it to see if it works the way we want to. For the SEOmoz test, I put "Rand Fishkin" into the above search box and hit the "search" button and this is what I saw...


In addition to being both handsome and wonderful, I am also now the creator of a search engine that works.
I know it works because I got results about my search query and they are all from SEOmoz.org (if you get results from other sources than your website, you didn't follow my instructions and are bad and you will have to go back and choose "Search only these sites" on the first form).
Okay, the search engine works. What is the next step to get it onto our website?
Click the "finish" button on the bottom of the page you are now on. You will be taken to a new screen called "My search engines"...

3) Customize your search engine using the control panel.
You can now choose what to do with your new search engine. To continue making our site search, we must click on the "control panel" link to go tweak some settings.
The control panel looks like this:
It sorta looks like the first screen we were on, but now there are some options along the top which I have circled above.
Now we are going to click on the "code" link. You will see...

Ignore what you see and scroll down the page all the way until you see...
Click the little + (plus sign) thing next to "Search box and search results code for your website." It should look like this when you do....
Okay, now you are in the right place, and this is where we get some code to integrate our search results into our website.
We have to choose a search box. For purposes of this example, I chose the "watermark" search box (it seems the least obtrusive to me). On your web pages, this search box looks like this:
Choose your search box, then hit "save changes."
Now it asks us to enter a url where we want our search results to be displayed on. This is where that page we made in Step One comes in. If you made a page called "searchresults.html," then you would put "http://www.yourdomain.com/searchresults.html" in this field. For my SEOmoz search engine, I put "http://www.feedthebot.com/seomoz.html" because that is the page I made for this example.
press "save changes" after you enter the URL.
Scrolling down a little, you will see two windows with code in them:
You now have done everything you need to do on the "Google side" of things (but keep the page up, because you will need the codes in those windows in a minute). Now you have to do stuff on your web page.

4) Making your Search results page.
As I told you in step one, you have to create a page for your search results. When I was looking through the SEOmoz website, I noticed that with very little changing, their "services" page could become a "search results" page. This is how I came to that decision...
Okay, so I took their "services" page and saved it as "searchresults.html."
I then made the cosmetic changes necessary to make this page a search results page; specifically, I changed the place where it says "Our Services" and wrote instead "Search Results." I then took all of the content that starts with "Basics about our Services" and deleted it all, leaving the divisions the way I found them.
I then copied and pasted the code found on the Google page; specifically, the code that they have cryptically labeled "Place this code in the page where you'd like your search engine results to appear" (the code from the lower window).
Okay, our search results page is done. You may have to do some tinkering, but basically, it really is as simple as copying and pasting that code into the place you want the results to appear.

5) Insert the search box into your website.
We are pretty much finished. We just have to enter the search box somewhere (or many somewheres) on our website. To insert it, you basically have to decide where you want it. To keep things simple here, let's just say you want it on a search page, if you have something like, "Hey! Wanna search my site?", then you would put the code from the first window (cryptically labeled "Put this code in the page where you want your search box to appear") next to it. It would now look like this:
Hey!, wanna search our site? Go fer it.
Okay, now you are done.
For my SEOmoz example, when I search for "Rand Fishkin" I see ...

Purrrfect. Love it. There are many things that you can do to further customize your search engine (change colors, put ads on it, etc.) But for now, I am spent.
My name is Patrick Sexton, my site is feedthebot.com, which describes the Google webmaster guidelines in simple terms.
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DINESHTue (5/8/07) at 08:19 PM
Great guide mate, I've always wanted to do this for my site but haven't had the chance to do so. I may try this out over the weekend
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DINESHhttp://dinesh-manu.blogspot.com
Wed (5/9/07) at 02:52 PM
Really informative article you've got here. Thanks for helping us search-wannabe's out.
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DINESHhttp://dinesh-manu.blogspot.com
Wed (5/9/07) at 08:38 PM
Nice rundown on creating a custom search engine. I remember when it first came out I was going to experiment with it. I chose to use the ads, but I remember getting a message that seemed to intrusive to me about the Google Co-op team giving access to something on my AdSense account I didn't like. it was probably nothing other than me not taking the time to really read the message, but it kept me from experimenting further.
You may have convinced me to get back in there and try again.
Custom search seems like a great way to create a vertical niche search engine.
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[DINESH]Wed (5/9/07) at 11:16 PM
I use it as for my "ask google" feature on feedthebot. The ask google thing just searches all the Google official sources, it works great.
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DINESH
Mon (5/14/07) at 11:07 AM
Terrific post - loved that you showed the images to help us understand the process.
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DINESHWed (5/23/07) at 04:46 AM
awsome!! really going to try this one on my site!!!
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DINESH
Wed (5/23/07) at 02:03 PM
I also like the illustrations. Too bad that SEOMoz did not implement it to this day (it has been 2 weeks and takes no hour to do :) ).
I implemented it on my site right when it came out. I used other services before like Swiki which allowed customization of THEIR pages and never worked 100% well for me. Google did it right, you have YOUR pages and Google adjusts to that.
The Yahoo Search is making the same mistake Swiki did. At least they reduced the amount of ads. When they launched it did they had ads all over that it took me a sec to find the search results for my site :)
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DINESH
Thu (5/24/07) at 05:05 AM
That is an excellent and useful article. Like your website by the way. I only have one question. How do you make the decision to post high quality original content on someone elses site instead of your own? Was it a calculated decision? Did it just seem like a good idea at the time, or are just a really helpful person like that?
Seriously I know of the potential benefits of creating content for other sites, but how do you decide what to use where? And will you have similar content on your site also?
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DINESH
Thu (5/24/07) at 08:14 AM
Hi DINESH
SEOMoz.org has a lot of traffic, quality traffic. If you provide quality content in form of good and helpful comments or even a full post at Youmoz, people will take notice, become interested and check out your site as well.
Building credibility and getting noticed!
Those are the reasons for giving away good content for free to highly targeted and highly trafficed websites you do not own.
The same rule can be applied as for what content and information you should make available for free on your own website and what not.
If you feel that you are giving out too much for free, you are on the right track. :)
I guess Pattrick would attest to that.
Cheers!DINESH
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DINESHTue (5/29/07) at 03:09 PM
I was just looking for this information the other day and couldn't find it. Sure enough I came across this today on StumbleUpon.
Spent about ten minutes and put it on my site. Works great! Thanks!
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faultyvaluesystem
Mon (8/20/07) at 02:51 PM
Great article. I tried to place a custom search engine on my site but I didn't know what I was doing. I googled it and came upon this site. I'm glad I did. I will try implementing it again by the examples you have so graciously displayed here. Thank you, thank you.
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DINESH
Sun (9/30/07) at 06:11 AM
yes, thanks for the article. I do already have a google search box, including my own site on it, but I can't do it for a word press blog. Can't change the search box already there. Any ideas? I've tried putting the text into a widget but it won't work. It reverts to the original search box.
Hope you don't tell me to change the code in my index.php page.
Also Google does not like a url with a forward slash in it like www.ozwebhub.com/blog
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drummerboy9000
Thu (1/3/08) at 12:25 PM
I almost added this to my site. The two reasons I didn't are
a. I don't like the Google logo on all my pages
b. My site is a commercial one, so the Google ads would not look very well and might steal part of my business.
Of course I could pay to not have those ads. Hmm...
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http://dinesh-manu.blogspot.com
Wed (1/23/08) at 02:35 PM
Ad display requirement is new. Not sure when this was added, but you now have to pay $100/year for the business "non-ad" edition. Stinks, but Google IS a business.
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DINESHThu (1/3/08) at 02:31 PM
An alternative would be our hosted site search solution. It has the following advantages compared to Google custom search.
1) Search result doesn't have JiansNet logo/branding
2) Crawl/Index more often than Google, so, your new pages would be searchable sooner
3) You can customize the search result template totally
4) We are dedicated to hosted site search solution, unlike google, they are just taking their main web search index and their search is as good as what they have for the general web search.
More details, please take a look at www.JiansNet.com
Jian
www.JiansNet.com
Quality Site Search at Affordable Price
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Awahl
Wed (2/27/08) at 07:55 PM
Very helpful, but I can't seem to get my results to stay in the page where I want the results. I tried frames and iframes and it will appear briefly and then pop to a new window leaving the rest of my site behind. Any suggestions to the not bright people such as myself. My site is greaterozarkshba.com
If someone has a site I can take a look at it would make my week.
Thanks!
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jestep
Mon (7/21/08) at 06:52 PM
If you are subscribed to the business version, here's a free script to integrate it into your website. http://www.ecommerce-blog.org/archives/adding-google-business-search-to-your-ecommerce-website/ Edited by jestep on Mon (7/21/08) at 06:53 PM
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