Friday, July 31, 2009

More transliteration languages for Custom Search



A few weeks ago, we announced support for transliteration in Custom Search in a bunch of languages, including Arabic and a set of Indic languages. The auto-transliteration feature allows your users to conveniently type in English, for example, and search in one of these languages.

Now, that list of transliteration languages in Custom Search has grown. We now support a dozen languages, including Urdu and Nepali.

The feature is very simple to use: you can turn transliteration on in the Language settings section of the Basics page on the Custom Search control panel.

Once you've enabled automatic transliteration, a language button next to the search box alerts your users. As a user types, the query is transliterated into the selected language in real-time, allowing the user to search in that language.

For more details, read our original transliteration blog post, or search on the Custom Search website!

Here's the current list of supported transliteration languages:
  • Arabic
  • Bengali
  • Gujarati
  • Hindi
  • Kannada
  • Malayalam
  • Marathi
  • Nepali
  • Punjabi
  • Tamil
  • Telugu
  • Urdu
Feel free to share your feedback on transliteration in our forum.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Better search on more websites



Earlier this year, we made it easier to add high quality search to your websites by delivering search functionality right to where many of you manage your sites online: your hoster's console. The Custom Search provisioning API allows partners, such as web hosters, to configure search boxes for your site without requiring you to come to Google. This also enabled Custom Search to be added to Google Services for Websites, an offering of useful website tools and services for partners.

Many hosters have enabled Webmaster Tools and Custom Search in their control panels; Aplus.net is the most recent addition to our list of partners that have integrated Custom Search into their service using Google Services for Websites. Aplus.net provides online business services and tools, such as web hosting, domain name registration, web design, and e-commerce services as well as dedicated servers and managed hosting solutions, to small- to medium-sized businesses.

Here's a screenshot of their integration. Websites can enable search with a couple of clicks!


Working with partners such as web hosting providers has made things a great deal easier for webmasters, making useful tools more accessible. Integrating with the right tools will help you analyze your website traffic and improve user retention; Custom Search is a critical element of this, helping people find the right information, products and services quickly.

We are looking forward to enabling more partners to integrate with these important webmaster services. As always, let us know how we can improve our products and services. If you are a web site hoster interested in incorporating Google webmaster services into your platform, check out Google Services for Websites.