How to Set up a Google Custom Search Engine (6:21)
Chris Beall: Hi this is Chris Beall. I am here to show you how to make a Google custom search engine. The reason we make Google custom search engines is because they are safe, relevant in their results and fast.
It is very simple to do. Just go to your Google homepage and the first thing you need to do is sign in. The sign in is right up here. You will need a Google account to sign in. Your Google account identifier is your e-mail address which is normally some name at gmail.com. If you don’t have an account what you need to do is click right here to create it.
Anyone can make a Google account and it is very easy. It takes about one or two minutes. Just enter your current e-mail address, choose a password and make sure the password is right by putting it in again. Check “remember me on this computer” if this is a private computer. Don’t do it on a computer at school that other people can get at. Then you can choose whether you want to “enable web history” to keep track of everything that’s been searched. Location is simple: this is called a CAPTCHA. It is used to make sure that other programs are not doing this and that it is a human being. Then you have to agree to the “Terms of Service.” If you want to read them you can read them right there along with the “Privacy Policy.” Click there and you are done.
With Google account in hand go ahead and “sign in.” Enter in your browser: for custom search engine. I will make it a little bit bigger so you can see it there. This should bring you to the Google custom search engine creation page. It will ask you to sign in again right over here.
It tells you a little something about Google custom search engines. It says here: our Google custom search engines will let you include one website or multiple websites. If you just want to search one or a few websites this is the tool. You can host the search box and the results on your own website or your blog. You can also customize the colors and the branding to match your existing webpages.
You will need to go ahead and “sign in” again the same way you did before. Now you are ready to create your custom search engine. Your search engine needs a name, description, some key words to help to remember the results, what language you’re going to do the search in and if you are going to search the sites only that you select, the entire web but emphasize those sites or the entire web.
My search engine is going to be called the Qlipboard Search Engine. All it is going to do is look for terms that are about qlipboard andqlipmedia. Its purpose, which I show in the description, is to find qlippits wherever they may be. I am going to set its keywords for emphasis to all of these words about qlippits and qlipmedia.
The language I want to search in is English. I have decided to search “the entire web. Normally for teaching you would want to search “only the sites that you select.”
The final step is to read and agree to the “Terms of Service” and press “next.”
Now I can test out my custom search engine. Given the terms that I was using, the simplest thing to do is to type “qlipboard” for me and see what comes up. It looks pretty good.
Now I am ready to put this custom search engine up on my search engine’s page. All I have to do is click “finish” and by default it will send me a confirmation e-mail.
Now it takes me to my custom search engine page right here and it shows me my search engines. There is my “Qlipboard Search Engine” and if I click on “homepage” it takes me right here: “Qlipboard Search Engine” and I am on its homepage and I am ready to search.
A very good thing to do at this point is to edit your profile so people know who the creator of this search engine was. If people have any questions about it then can get a hold of you. I have clicked “edit my profile” and I have put in my name, my nickname Qlipper, my site url: qlipmedia.com, where I am, what I am up to: “just an old software guy trying to make a difference”, and it’s nice to put an image in there. My image here represents something from my childhood. I grew up in the desert among the coyotes.
It is as easy as that. You get a custom search engine that gives you relevant results, safely searches only the sites you want and is really going to help you teach. I hope this works for you!