Earlier, I noted that the old, simple Google search:
<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search" >
<input name="q" type="text"/>
<input type="submit" value="Search with Google"/>
<input name="sitesearch" value="http://bililite.nfshost.com/blog" type="hidden"/>
</form>is deprecated and doesn't work from Google's mobile site. Google does have an API for custom searches that has all sorts of fancy parameters to manipulate, but it requires signing up for a key and constructing the search ahead of time. However, some experimentation shows that not including a key brings back the old, simple search query (with a new URL and some new parameters), so we're back in business:
<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/cse" >
<input name="q" type="text"/>
<input type="submit" value="Search with Google"/>
<input name="as_sitesearch" value="http://bililite.nfshost.com/blog" type="hidden"/>
</form>And there's all sorts of interesting things hidden in there, like sorting by date (Google tries to guess that, but doesn't do so well):
<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/cse" >
<input name="q" type="text"/>
<input type="submit" value="Search with Google"/>
<input name="as_sitesearch" value="http://bililite.nfshost.com/blog" type="hidden"/>
<input name="sort" value="date:d" type="hidden"/>
</form>And the entire Web Search API is deprecated, so I'll have to change the googleSearch widget to use the JSON Custom Search API eventually.
Overall, sweet. At least until Google changes things again.
Addendum: it looks as though the mobile site does require the cx parameter to limit the search to a specific site. Oh, well. It's not that hard to create a custom search.
Nick Lachey says:
Nice post. I found this blog with with best practices for creating a search form that is quick and easy to use http://blog.caspio.com/web-database/7-tips-for-creating-user-friendly-search-forms/
January 11, 2012, 7:04 am