Custom Search Engine improvements

Google have announced version 2 of the "custom search element" - this is the "thing" that lets you put a custom-search tool in your blog (and any other website).

Important features are:

• Search UI is rendered based on the settings stored on the Google CSE servers ... any configuration changes you make in the CSE control panel ...[are shown]  on your web pages the next time they reload. ...

• All element code is loaded asynchronously for reduced page load times.

• Client-side customization allows you to overwrite global CSE settings on a per-page basis ...

Faster load time is very welcome - I've been noticing that custom search gadgets take a long time to load, relative to other things on my blogs.

And the first feature seems very handy - it means not having to copy-and-paste new CSE code whenever you change a CSE using the control panel. But this has a price: the existing code (in the best option for Bloggers) had two parts - one for where the seach box goes, and one for where the search results go. In the new code, there are still these two parts, but each one has two sections: one section that needs to be added to the header and one to the place (usually a widget for Bloggers). That means:

• Four separate pieces of code to install
• Installing means editing the template as well as adding a gadget
• If you change your template, you need to remember to re-install the CSE code too. 

That said, I'm not sure if the first code sections need to go into the header, or whether they could beside the other parts, perhaps with a loss of speed - any advice is welcome.

Lastly, Google says that the existing CSE code will continue to be supported for now (although there's no way to get it from them any more, they are now only supplying the updated code) - but that this won't last forever.   So sooner or later, you will need to update any custom-search(es) on your blog.

Custom Search Engine ad block background color changes

Google's Custom Search Engine styles have been changed so the ad-blocks at the top/right of the search results have a different background colour. Ref:  http://googlecustomsearch.blogspot.ie/2012/06/ads-background-colors-in-custom-search.html

It looks like we cannot control this colour - it's been chosen to "contrast in a visually appealing way with the default [or user-selected] background color".

In at least one of my blogs, though, the contrast between the ad-background colour and the outer background color selected in blogger isn't quite so "appealing".   :-(

I'm still considering whether to change my outer background, or to experiment with different CSE custom styles to see if one is a better fit. Luckily most of my in-post features have been set up with CSS rules, so I can change them easily by adding a new CSS rule to my template.

Result-sorting and better filter queries in Google Custom Search Engines

Google's have added result-sorting and compact queries for filtering-by-attribute options to their Custom Search Engines (ref: Adding a custom search engine to your blog).

These are most relevant for people who use a CSE over their own blog/site, rather than over other sites which they don't control the markup.

Sorting:

If you have specificd PageMaps, rich-snippets or meta-tags for your posts, you can add them as an option that is available to people who use your custom-search-engine. Do this in CSE by

• Enable sorting (www.google.com/cse > Control Panel > Basics)
• Adding the key.

Compact-queries:

The language that is used to state a qeury against defined attributes now supports "and"-ing values together in a more compact way.

Google CSE API documentation upgrade

Google's custom search engine API is now fully documented  (announced here).

It won't mean anything if you just use a regular Google Custom Search on your blog, but for those who have coded their own special engines - or who would like to, this could be very good news.

They've also made the Help Centre prettier (like most of the Google tools are doing), and added more languages to it.

Custom Search can include images in results

Custom Search has a new option to have search results that are images.  

If you have existing Google custom search engines on your blog and want have the image search feature, you need to edit each CSE and

• turn the image-search-option on 
• generate the code
• re-install it into your blog.

I probably won't bother, as my blogs aren't image-intensive.   But I can see that this will be a big thing for some people.