google-cse-for-asp-net

What is the Google Custom Search Engine (CSE)? Well it is a service Google offers that lets you search a predefined list of websites from your own website. So if you ever wanted a professional search engine on your website to let users search your content, than here it is.

When you go to http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ (you need a Gmail login, I believe the sign-up is open else send me an e-mail for an invite) you should ‘create a Custom Search Engine’ fill-out the forms and when you finalized the setup of your CSE you should go to the ‘Code’ page and copy the values of ‘cx’ and ‘cof’ from the javascript listed in the Search box code textbox.

When you have a website not build in ASP.Net you would just simply copy and paste this javascript completely in your search page, but because you cannot have nested

tags on an ASP.Net page you get into trouble. Now for that I created a solution that I like to share with you.

A user control that can be placed on any ASP.Net page to integrate the Google Custom Search Engine into your ASP.Net website.

This ASP.Net user control is all you need to place on your ASP.Net page just copy the 'cx' and 'cof' values in the control declaration, and you have your own Google Custom Search Engine on your website. For an example on how this looks like please go to my search page (http://nijhof.com/Pages/Search.aspx).

Please go to http://nijhof.com/Pages/SourceCode/GoogleSearchControl.aspx for a complete description of the code and how to use it.

-Mark