Create a Student-Friendly Google Search Engine

By Alix E. Peshette

Cross-posted from The Impetuous Geek

The web is an expansive collection of the good, the bad and the ugly. Wouldn’t it be great if our students could search online in a safe environment? What if teachers could focus student searches towards specific resources? Sounds complicated and full of java scripts and html?

Welcome to the happy collision of Web 2.0 tools and Google! The Google Custom Search Engine option turns out to be surprisingly easy to set up to search only selected web sites.

Start by finding the sites you want your students to visit. Save or bookmark the URL addresses. Next get a Gmail account if you don’t have one – go to Google.com and click Gmail. Once you have an account – sign in.

Click More at the top of the Google page and then click “even more” to go to the list of Google Products. Click on Custom Search to start the process which takes you to a page where you click the big blue Create a Custom Search Engine button.

Name the search engine and in the next field, put in a short description. Jump down to the keyword field to add words that will direct the search. My example is based on finding copyright free music loops.

What do you want to search? Click the radio button for “Only the sites I select. Select some sites.

Bring up that list of URL addresses you saved and copy them into this field, one address per line. Check the terms box and click next.

On the next page, click the option for “Host the results on a Google page.” Yes, there will some Google advertising, but it will be minimal. While you are on this page, copy and paste the code into a word document for future use.

An email will be generated and sent to your Gmail account with the URL and instructions on how to access the custom search engine. Click and go visit your new custom search engine.