Adding Google Search To Your Blog To Harness Google’s Power And Make Money! - Bloggy Tutorials #2

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This is the second edition of the bloggy tutorials. The first one was about Gmail. Enjoy!

The search functionality of your blog is one of the most important functions, and probably the most used tool by your readership.

However, the traditional search function of blogging software like WordPress and Blogger isn’t very powerful, and basic, at best. And inaccurate too, especially if your blog has too many pages.

Why Use Google Search?

First of all, you’ll be hooking your blog with the most powerful search engine in the world, and use its sophisticated search algorithm, to power your blog’s search.

Second of all, there’s even an option to monetise your search pages, using Adsense, so you can earn money!

The money is the secondary benefit. The primary benefit is that you get to use Google’s power to make your blog better.

What’s Wrong with Traditional WordPress Search?

Some people may ask, what’s wrong with the traditional WordPress search function? Well, as I said above, as your blog grows, search results tend to become inaccurate, and less precise. But by harnessing Google’s massive search power, you can ensure to the point and accurate results

So, let’s start!

Step 1: Create Your Search Engine

First, you create your custom search engine. Head over to the Custom Search Engine page. Click the ‘Create a Custom Search Engine’ button.

You’ll be taken to a page with several options. Fill out the name and description of your search engine. Fill out some keywords too. Do this part carefully, and choose targeted keywords, as this will determine the content or subject of your search engine, and these keywords help make search results accurate:

Next, you select exactly what areas you want to search. Since you want to exclusively search your blog, select ‘Only the sites I select’. And specify the site, as so:

Next, you select the ‘edition’. The standard edition includes ads on it, but if you’re non-profit or educational or government institution, you can select the checkbox too:

Then, press ‘Next’. You’ll be taken to a page which will allow you to test out your new search engine. Just type in some keywords and test it out!

After this, click ‘Finish’, and then you’ll be taken to a configuration page, where you can configure everything about your search engine, from colours to making money!

Step 2: Configuration

Now, after clicking ‘Finish’, you’ll be taken to your search engine page, where you can mange all your search engines:

Click on ‘control panel’, next to the name of the search engine you just created.

Now there are loads of options you can configure, but we need the ‘Look and feel’ one. Click on the ‘Look and feel’ tab near the top, and you arrive here:

Here, you can configure how your search results page and the search form works and looks like, and even add a logo, for branding.

Don’t close this page, for you’ll return to it after you complete step 3.

Step 3: Creating A Place On Your WordPress Blog

Before you go on, you must create a place for the results on your own blog. I’m assuming you use WordPress. The procedure might be very similar for other platforms too.

In your WordPress admin area, go to the ‘New Page’ option. In the dialog box, type in something like ‘Search Results’ and save the page. Also, copy the URL of the page:

Note that URL, you’ll need it later.

Don’t close this page. You’ll have to return to it after you complete step 4

Step 4: The Code

Now, go back to the manage search engines page. Click on the ‘Code’ tab at the top. Here is where you get the code to place in your ‘Search Results’ page.

First, you choose the hosting options. Since you want to self-host the search results page, choose the second option. Choose the ‘iframe’ option.

Also, in the ‘Specify search results details’ area, paste the URL of your search results page, as shown in the above image.

After you do that, scroll down a little, where you see the code for your search box:

Copy and paste this where you want your search box to go. (You can change the appearance of your search box too, using CSS).

Now, if you scroll down a little, you can get the code to put in your Search Results page:

Copy and paste this code into the Search Results page that you had kept open:

Now, publish that page. Go to where your search box is, and do a test search, to see if your newly integrated search engine really works:

Your search engine is done! In the next step, you learn to configure AdSense to work with your search engine, to earn you money.

Step 5: Configuring AdSense With Your Search Engine

In your manage search engines page, click the ‘Make money’ tab at the top. I assume you already have an AdSense account. Click on ‘I already have an AdSense Account’ and fill up your information, like so:

And you’re done:

That’s it! You’ve added ads to your search engine. Working with My Ads is great help on the AdSense Help Center, which explains how to configure ads, increase performance, among other helpful tips. Refer to that.

Optional Step: Creating a Custom Channel For Your Ads

You can also give your search engine ads a dedicated channel, so you can easily organize income coming in from different sources in your AdSense account. On the same tab(’Make money’), after you configure your AdSense account, scroll down the page to the ‘Create a Custom Channel’:

Enter a descriptive name for your channel in the Channel Name textbox and hit ‘Submit’. That’s all you need to do!

Your Thoughts

Have you been using a Google Custom Search Engine on your blog? Is it good enough to replace the traditional WordPress search function, for you? We would love to hear!

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