Now available with Google Apps: Google Custom Search

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Custom Search
These days, content is being created faster than ever. In fact, the data equivalent of 250,000 years of DVD-quality video is created every two days, which is more than the entire amount of digital information that was created from the birth of the world up to 2003. Users are faced with the challenge of wading through all of this data to find the information they are looking for, and businesses are faced with the challenge of making this easy to do for their customers and employees. Most businesses consolidate their information on a public-facing website, internal micro-sites, product blogs and customer portals to help visitors surface relevant content. But even with this type of organization and structure, information can still be difficult to locate. That’s why we are pleased to introduce Google Apps customers to a product that will make finding easy for their employees and for their customers: Google Custom Search.

Google Custom Search brings the power, speed and relevance of Google.com to any website through a hosted search bar.


Custom Search allows visitors to your site to scour your web pages in fractions of a second with the same speed and familiarity that they are used to when performing a search on Google.com. The technology behind Google Custom Search powers the built-in search capabilities of Google Sites and Blogger, so if you organize your web content using these tools then you’re already using it. For other websites you create, set-up takes only a few minutes and adding the search box is as easy as pasting a few lines of pre-generated code to the HTML of the page where you want the search box to appear. Just like Google Apps, with Google Custom Search there’s no hardware or software to maintain or upgrade - it gets better as Google gets better.

Google Custom Search will automatically display advertisements and allows you to monetize them using AdSense for search. If you prefer that ads not be displayed you can upgrade to Google Site Search.

Learn more and get started
Google Custom Search can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more detailed information, you can take a look at our Help Center or follow the latest news and updates on the Google Custom Search blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Custom Search at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Google Enterprise Search Team

Note: Google Custom Search may not be available in all areas.