Transitioning from a Google Stored CSE to a Linked CSE

If you want to change from having Google store your Custom Search Engine definition to storing it on your own web server with a Linked CSE, follow these steps:

1. From the control panel of your Custom Search Engine, go to the Advanced tab. In the "Download annotations" section, click "Download in XML format". Save the resulting file. We assume you call it myannos.xml.

2. From the "Download context" section, click "Download in XML format". Save the resulting file. We assume you call it mycontext.xml.

3. Put myannos.xml on your web server. How you do this varies with your hosting company and web server configuration, so please see that documentation if you are having problems. Your annotations file is now available at http://myserver.com/user/myannos.xml.

4. Edit mycontext.xml in your favourite text editor. Before the final </GoogleCustomisations> tag, insert:

   <Include type="Annotations" href="http://myserver.co.uk/user/myannos.xml"/>

5. Put mycontext.xml on your web server. It is now available at http://myserver.co.uk/user/mycontext.xml.

6. Your search box code will now need to change. Simply replace http://myserver.co.uk/user/mycontext.xml in this code with the actual location of your xml file.

   <!-- Google CSE Search Box Begins --> <!-- Use of this code assumes agreement with the Google Custom Search Terms of Service. --> <!-- The terms of service are available at http://www.google.com/cse/docs/tos.html --> <form id="cref" action="http://www.google.com/cse"> <input type="hidden" name="cref" value="http://myserver.com/user/mycontext.xml" /> <input type="text" name="q" size="40" /> <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" /> </form> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.co.uk/cse/brand?form=cref"></script> <!-- Google CSE Search Box Ends -->

   Note: You can also use a Linked CSE to host the search results on your site, but that requires another code snippet. See the Linked CSE documentation for more information.