Blog search and beyond

Since we launched the Custom Search AJAX gadget for Blogger on our experimental site, we've gotten some great feedback. Now, the tuned-up search gadget is available to all Blogger users. You can configure this gadget to help your readers search all the information that's relevant to your blog — your posts, webpages that you link to, and sites that you link to from the sidebar — all in one shot. When your readers search using this gadget, the results are displayed with the look and feel of your blog. And they show up inline, so readers don't have to leave your blog. After they're done, they can quickly dismiss the results and go back to reading your blog posts. Take a look at how S. Krishna's Books uses the gadget.


You can configure the gadget on your blog with just a few clicks:

• Edit your blog's layout, and click "Add a Gadget"
• Select and configure the search box gadget

The search box will then show up on the sidebar on your blog.


By default, the following 3 search tabs are configured:

• This blog: searches across your blog posts
• Linked from here: searches blog posts, webpages linked from your posts, blog lists, and link lists
• The web: searches across all pages on the web

The gadget also provides an option that lets you restrict search results to pages linked from a specific blog list or link list. For example, if you have many link lists on your sidebar, you can choose to surface only the most important ones in specific search tabs. "Linked from here" includes pages from all of them.

The goal of this gadget is to expand the search capabilities of your blog and give your readers a better search experience. If you're using it, we'd love to hear your feedback on other improvements we can make. Learn more at the Custom Search Blog.

Posted by Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager