Create Google Custom Search for your government website

If you follow Google’s step by step custom search engine wizard you can have a search engine setup for free in a matter of minutes.

Your search engine can

• Index one web site, multiple web sites, or specific web pages from within a site
• Host the search box and results on your own web site; and
• Customize the colors and branding to match your existing web pages

Being a government agency you can opt to not have Google ads on the search results pages.

The Google Custom Search API Developer’s Guide documentation on Getting Started walks you through the creation of your first custom search engine.

The Western Australian government’s portal is using Google Custom Search

Screen shot showing the Western Australian Government's use of Google Custom Search

Experiment with Google Custom Search and see what you can do with it – you need a Google username and password to use it – if you don’t have one just set up a Gmail account and you are half way there.