Sherry Brott, CISD April, 2013

Google Custom Search for Teachers

Google Custom Search engines can be created to give your students access to specific

websites that you want them to search for projects, while still providing them with valuable

online search experience. The custom search engine can be accessed from a link to its own

public URL or from your own website or blog if you choose to embed it.

Steps for creating a Google Custom Search Engine

1. Go to http://www.google.com/cse/ and sign into your Google account.

a. If this is your first time to access Google Custom Search, you will need to provide

your first and last name to get started.

b. Thereafter, you will get this page when you are signed in.

This page will list all of the custom searches that you create. They can be edited

at any time.

Sherry Brott, CISD April, 2013

2. Creating a Custom Search Engine

a. Click the New search engine button.

b. Add the first site that you want to be searched.

c. Additional fields will open up as you add sites. Copy and paste the URLs for as

many additional sites that you want to include.

d. By default, the name of the search engine will be the domain of the first site you

listed. Click the Change the name button and give your cse a more descriptive

name.

e. Click the Create button.

3. Modify/customize your search engine.

a. On the resulting Setup page, you can change the name of the Custom Search,

add and delete sites to search, turn ON image search if students will be looking

for images, and get the URL and embed code for the custom search.

Sherry Brott, CISD April, 2013

b. On the right-hand side of the page, you can test out your custom search engine.

c. By clicking Look and feel on the left hand side of the page, you can choose

different layouts for both the web search and the image search on the Layout

tab, change the theme of your custom search engine on the Theme tab, and

even choose different text, background colors on the Customize tab.

d. If you do choose to customize your search engine, you will need to click the Save

button or the Save and Get Code button if you are going to embed your search

engine on a blog or website.