We've posted a couple times about how the Custom Search Element can
help provide a more customized search experience for your users while
enabling you to earn money. Today we're excited to announce two new
features for the Custom Search Element that will enable you to further
customize your website search to the look and feel of your site: themes
and rich snippets.

Themes
You can now customize the layout and styles of your Custom Search
Element. To select a theme for your Custom Search Element, just go to
your Custom Search Engine account at
http://www.google.com/cse/manage/all and click Control panel. On the
Control panel page, in the left-hand menu, click Look and feel.

You can now choose from a number of layouts and color styles for your
Custom Search Element. You can also preview your selected theme. Here's
an example of the 'Shiny' theme:

If you'd like to tinker further with the look and feel of your Custom
Search Element and you're familiar with CSS and JavaScript, take a look
at this Custom Search Control documentation.

Rich snippets
Rich snippets are another new feature that allow you to customize the
actual Custom Search Element search results with additional relevant
content, like thumbnail images and actions. We like to think of rich
snippets as a way to add more flair to your Custom Search Element
search results.

Here's an example of search results from a Custom Search Element which
uses both themes and rich snippets. The thumbnail image next to each
search result shows rich snippets in action.

Rich snippets require you to mark up the page with metadata. For more
information, check out the Custom Search Developer's Guide.

If you have any feedback for us on either of these new features or on
the Custom Search Element itself, please leave a comment. We love
hearing what publishers have to say about Custom Search!

Posted by Christine Tsai, Google Web Elements team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/29/2009 11:07:00
AM