Custom Search

The Custom Search allows you to create a search that is restricted to a specific section of your website. The results displayed will be only part of your sites content. You are able to define which part of your site is included in the Custom Search. Some of the reasons to use the custom search is to make it easier for people to find certain subjects quickly on your site.

Custom Search Example

The Custom Search Example searches the "Asset" folder and below. Or the URL:
http://ucanr.org/sites/sb3help/Assets/

Custom Search Asset

Creating a custom search is really quite easy. The process involves 2 steps the second step may be more involved if you don't know the page URL that you'd like to search. I'll show you an easy way to find the URL.

The two steps to creating a custom search are:

Create a Custom Search Asset
Enter the "Search URL"

That's It! Now a little more detail on each...

Creating a Custom Search Asset

Create a new Asset. Then from the Asset Type drop down choose "Custom Asset".

Entering the "Search URL"

The Search URL is the address of the web page for which you'd like to narrow the searches results to a specific sub-folder of pages.

Custom Search Asset

Some examples of web addresses are:

The Custom Search uses the web page address to limit the results to pages in that folder or results from pages in sub folders. So for the URL:

http://ucanr.org/sites/sb3help/Assets/

The Custom Search will return results from pages in the folders:

The Custom Search will NOT return result from:

As these are not in the Search URL folder (http://ucanr.org/sites/sb3help/Assets/)

Finding the correct URL for your Custom Search

If you're not familiar with your web site, it's folders, or URL's then let me show you an easy way to get the URL for a specific section you'd like to use for a Custom Search.

The first step is to open a browser and go to that page. In the image below you'll see that I'm browsing to the "Assets" section of the help site.

Browsing to the desired section of my site.

After I'm at the desired location. The URL of my current page is displayed in the "Address Bar" at the top of the browser window.

URL can be found in the Address Bar

I then copy the URL and paste it into the "Search URL" on the Custom Search Asset.

About the Search

The search itself is Google's Custom Search Engine. This is a handy extension of their regular Google search. If Google has not indexed the section of the site your adding as a custom search then you may get results back from all of ANR's websites. If this is the case it's good to double check the URL to make sure it's correct. After that please be patient and check the Custom Search every few days as we cannot control when Google will index new content on your website.

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