Today I have been experimenting with Google Custom Search Engine. As a teacher librarian and educator I thought it was about time that I learnt to build a search engine that is customised with content, or a collection of sites/pages, on a particular topic(s) for a class/year level. What I liked is that the search engine can be shared by a a link or by embedding it onto a class blog or wiki.
Building a customised search engine was EASY.
1. You need to have a Google Account and sign in.
2. Go to the Google Custom Search Engine page and click “Create a Custom Search Engine”.
3. Set up your search engine with the name and description of your search engine. Add the specific websites/web pages you want to include on your search engine. Then choose the standard free edition (you can remove the ads in preferences because you’re an educator). Agree to the terms and click next.
4. Select and/or customise the look of your search engine and road-test it. You can make changes to the websites/web pages if you wish.
5. Get the code for embedding your custom search engine into your blog, wiki or other website.
6. Alternatively, you can get your customised search engine’s unique URL.
7. Go to your “My search engines” page, where you can click the control panel button to further customise your search engine. In particular by clicking on “control panel”, then clicking “business settings” and under the “preferences” heading there’s an option to turn off advertising by checking the box “do not show ads on results pages”.
Yes, it’s that easy. Below is my brief, experimental custom search engine on volcanoes that I have embedded. What I like is that you can always go back and tweak your work.
In addition, custom search engines can be collaborative. Inside the control panel you can click on the “collaboration” link, where you can send invites to those who you would like to collaborate with on the search engine. Custom search engines enable staff within a particular faculty to contribute to its own unique search engine where students access only pre-selected and evaluated sites. Importantly students will be searching a limited number of websites that are highly relevant. This is very important for all students, in particular younger students in your classrooms.
