Programmable Search Engine Blog
The latest news, updates and tips from the Programmable Search Engine team
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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