FAQ -- Silver/Gold Search

The first step of the Silver/Gold registration is to customize your search results page. The HTML text boxes for the header and footer of your search results gives you tremendous flexibility in tailoring the look and feel of the results to your web site including navigational elements, ad serving, or any other custom needs. A preview function is provided to ensure that your customizations are accurately reflected on your search results page.

If you have already registered, you can view the HTML to create your customized search box in two steps:

Log in to the Silver/Gold WebSearch service using your email and password.
Click on the "Edit Customizations" link.

2. Why can I see some customizations in the "preview" mode but not on live searches?

Your changes to the customization settings are sent to the live webservers approximately every hour (even though "preview" mode works in real-time). Please try again in an hour.

3. Why doesn't my logo appear correctly?

The most common reason a logo does not appear correctly is because the logo URL was incomplete or incorrect. First, please make sure that the URL for your logo is correct. An example of a correct URL is: http://www.google.com/Logo60wht.gif

A correct URL has the following properties:

The URL begins with http://
The URL refers to a graphic image (usually .gif or .jpg).

If you are sure that your logo URL is correct but the image does not appear correctly on the Google search results, it is possible that your web service provider is refusing to serve the image when it is placed on other web pages. This is typically the case for "free" web servers that make money by placing advertisements on your web pages. If this is happening to you, the only solution may be to move your image to another server.

4. How do I serve ads with search results?

The first step of the Silver/Gold registration provides you with 2 text boxes for header and footer HTML which you can edit to customize your results pages. You can simply insert the URL links to your ads in the header and footer HTML.

5. Can I serve keyword targeted ads?

Keyword targeting is currently not available for Silver/Gold users.

6. How can I include a left-hand or right-hand side navigation bar in the results page?

The first step of the Silver/Gold registration provides you with two text boxes for header and footer HTML which you can edit to customize your results pages. You can use these header and footer text boxes to wrap the search results in a table. Once you do that, simply insert the navigation bar or any other navigation element in the first cell of the table.

7. How can I make the search results appear in a new window?

To make the search results appear in a new window, you must add a TARGET field to the HTML which creates the search box. There are two places to add the TARGET field:

In the FORM tag - this sets the TARGET when the user clicks on the search button.
In the Google logo anchor - this sets the TARGET when the user clicks on the Google logo.

Here is example HTML which has been edited to include the TARGET fields:

 <center> <FORM method=GET action=http://www.google.com/custom TARGET=_blank > <TABLE bgcolor=#FFFFFF><tr><td> <A HREF=http://www.google.com/custom TARGET=_blank> <IMG SRC=http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif border=0 ALT=Google align=absmiddle></A> <INPUT TYPE=text name=q size=31 maxlength=255 value=""> <INPUT type=submit name=btnG VALUE="Google Search"> <INPUT type=hidden name=cof VALUE="T:white;LW:400; L:http://google.com/logos/Logo_40blk.gif;LC:#FFC0FF; LH:100;BGC:purple;AH:center;GL:1;GALT:yellow;AWFID:5e296cf425978c37;"> </td></tr></TABLE> </FORM> </center>

8. When using frames, how do I set the target of the search results?

The TARGET field is set in two places. See Question 7 to see where to set the TARGET fields.

The value of the TARGET field can be the name of any other frame or window, or one of these special names:

_blank: The results are loaded in a new, unnamed window.
_parent: The results are loaded into the parent of the current frame.
_top: The results are loaded into the full window (canceling all other frames).

9. Who hosts the search pages?

The search box itself will reside on your web site. The search results page will be served by Google with the customized look and feel as specified by you.

10. How do I create a link back to my web page from the search results page?

The first step of the Silver/Gold registration provides you with two text boxes for header and footer HTML which you can edit to customize your results pages. You can use these header and footer text boxes to insert a link to your home page or any other navigational elements.

11. Can I customize the user interface language?

Yes. The user interface can be customized to any language supported by Google. Currently, Google offers Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish.

12. Do I have to complete the technical and accounting contact information?

These fields are optional and provided for your convenience in case these contacts are different people within your organization.

13. Can I make changes to the terms and conditions in the Service Agreement?

The terms and conditions of the Service Agreement are non-negotiable.

14. I just entered the wrong address. How can I go back and change it?

You can change your address at any time by logging on to your account using the main Silver/Gold web page, and choosing "edit registration info" from your account information page.

15. Instead of using credit cards, can I send a check or use any other form of payment?

We currently support only credit card transactions in our Silver/Gold program.

16. Are my credit card transactions secure?

Your credit card number is sent over the Internet encrypted with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), an encrypted communications protocol. SSL is the industry standard for processing payments in a secure manner and is used by all leading Internet merchants. Additionally, we don't save your credit card number after we've charged your credit card: we simply discard the credit card number after your payment has been processed.

17. I have received an error message during the payment process. What do I need to do now?

Please send an email to sgsupport@google.com including the exact details of the error message you received before you proceed further. Please DO NOT include your credit card number in this email message.

Silver/Gold SiteSearch Answers

1. What is the difference between the SiteSearch and WebSearch service?

Google's WebSearch service searches the Internet to return the best search results for a specific query. Google's SiteSearch service searches only the specific domain(s) that you listed. You can give your users the option to toggle between these different search options.

2. Can I add Silver/Gold SiteSearch without having Silver/Gold WebSearch on my site?

At this time, Silver/Gold SiteSearch is only available with Silver/Gold WebSearch.

3. Google's SiteSearch doesn't appear to have indexed all of the pages on my site. Why?

If a page is not appearing in the results of your Silver/Gold SiteSearch there could be a number of reasons. First, it could be that Google didn't crawl that page yet. Google refreshes its index frequently, however it may not have reached that page. Second, the page may have Javascript, frames, or store information in a database. This makes it difficult or impossible for the Google crawler to visit and index the information on that page.

4. How does Google's Silver/Gold SiteSearch work?

Google's Silver/Gold SiteSearch creates sub-indexes of Google's large Internet index for the domains you specified. Google then searches for your query term over those restricted pages. To conduct a search over any specific domain, users should use the following syntax: your query site:www.selecteddomain.com.

5. I have Google's Silver/Gold WebSearch service now. How do I add Google's SiteSearch service?

To add Google's SiteSearch, log into your Silver/Gold WebSearch account at http://services.google.com/websearch/pro_intro. You will be given the option of changing any of your customizations and choosing if you would like the option of Silver/Gold SiteSearch in addition to Silver/Gold WebSearch.

6. How many domains can I search over?

You can give your users the option of searching over many different domains. Each of these options will appear separately below the search box after the option to search the Internet. In order to list all of these domains, you need to separate domains with a semi-colon.

7. Is there a charge for SiteSearch with the Silver/Gold service?

No, there is no additional charge for adding SiteSearch to the Silver/Gold WebSearch service. However, the SiteSearch queries do count toward the total number of queries used.

8. My site isn't launched yet. Will the SiteSearch feature work?

No, in order for the SiteSearch feature to work Google needs to have already crawled your page. Once your site launches and Google visits your site, the SiteSearch feature will be functional.

9. Will Google's SiteSearch work on our intranet?

No, Google's SiteSearch service only crawls and indexes publicly available pages on the Internet.

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