We have several important announcements that may affect your Custom Search Engine or may require you to make changes to your Custom Search Engine. Please read this post carefully.
Custom Search Engine (CSE) is a great way to build custom search experiences for your website visitors. The search space is evolving rapidly and we want to make sure that CSE continues to evolve to meet the needs of your users, whether they are visiting from desktop or mobile devices. In order for us to achieve this, we first need to clean up some older access points that cannot support the improvements we will be adding.
Beginning in April 2017, the following API access points, and some associated features, will no longer be available:
Feature | How to tell if you are using it | What to do instead |
V1 API and AutoCSE | Look for the javascript google.search.CustomSearchControl | Move to the current API. |
Look for an http request containing a ‘cref’ parameter | Use the CSE control panel to set your CSE configuration. | |
Webmasters that host annotation files on their website | Use the CSE control panel to input or upload your annotations. | |
Dynamically extracted links | An included or excluded site uses the “Dynamically extract links from this page” option | Use the CSE control panel to input or upload your annotations |
Autocomplete Removals | Search Features → Autocomplete → Custom Autocompletions → excluded or excluded patterns | There will no longer be a way to exclude certain autocompletions. |
Autocomplete Promotions | Search Features → Autocomplete → Custom Autocompletions → promotions | There will no longer be a way to show promotions inside autocompletions; however, normal promotions will continue to work. |
Ads UI style customization | Look for custom Ad Styles in the AdSense frontend under My Ads → Search Ads → Settings | The Ads UI will now be updated to use the styling of organic search results, which can be updated in the Look and Feel tab of the CSE control panel |
