Use Google Custom Search Engine in GeneratePress WordPress Theme

There are two reasons why you may want to replace the default WordPress search to Google Custom Search Engine in GeneratePress Theme.

• You need a client-side solution for a Static WordPress site.
• You want to improve the search experience by displaying highly relevant results.
  

Steps for adding Google Custom Search

• Add a new page with Title “Search Results” and permalink “search” in your WordPress.
• Noindex Search Results page following instructions from your SEO plugin.

• add below CSE code in the Text mode to display Search box and results.

<gcse:search enablehistory="false"></gcse:search>

• Sign in to CSE website
• Add a new Search Engine

• Provide the URL of site in the wildcard format to display it in the Search results
• Take care of www or non-www as per your canonical 😉

• Congratulations! You’ve successfully created your Custom search engine.
• Go to Control Panel

• Go to “Look and Feel”
• Select Two Pages layout
• 💾 Save & Get code

Configure Search URL Parameters

• In Search Results Details, set Search Results page URL and Query parameter.

• Click Save & Get Code button. You will see Search Results code.  Ignore the Div part, we have already added in first step. Just copy the JavaScript. We are going to use it with Hook.

Setup code inside WordPress

• Enable Elements module which is available in the GeneratePress Premium.

• Create a new Hook

• Name it ‘Custom Search Engine (English)’ and paste the JS that you copied in step 7.

• Place the JS code that you copied in step 9. from Google Custom Search Engine. I have added preload part myself for loading JS quickly in the browser. Make sure to replace the publisher ID.

<link rel="preload" href="https://cse.google.com/cse.js?cx=partner-pub-XXXXXXXXXXX:YYYYYYYY" as="script">
<script async src="https://cse.google.com/cse.js?cx=partner-pub-XXXXXXXXXXX:YYYYYYYY"></script>

• Use wp_head hook with highest priority value 0 to ensure script get placed at the top section of head in the HTML.
• Concerning performance, we can set Display Rules to load this JS only on WordPress Search Results page where it is actually required and non-other page.

Hide Advertisement of Google Custom Search Results

• Similarly, using a new Hook  add below inline CSS for good design of Search Results page. It will hide annoying advt as well in the free version.

<style>
/* Google search results */
.gs-webResult {
border: 0px solid #eee;
padding: 1em;
}
/* Do no display the count of search results */
.gsc-result-info {
display: none;
}
/* Hide the Google branding in search results */
.gcsc-branding {
display: none;
}
/* Hide the thumbnail images in search results */
.gsc-thumbnail {
display: none;
}
/* Hide the snippets in Google search results */
.gs-snippet {
font-size: 16px;
}
/* Change the font size of the title of search results */
.gs-title a {
font-size: 18px !important;
text-decoration: none !important;
}
.gs-webResult div.gs-visibleUrl-long {
font-size: 16px !important;
}
/* Change the font size of snippets inside search results */
.gs-title b, .gs-snippet b {
font-weight: normal;
}
/* Highlight the pagination buttons at the bottom of search results */
.gsc-cursor-page {
font-size: 1.3em;
padding: 4px 8px;
border: 2px solid #ccc;
}
.gsc-adBlockVertical, .gsc-adBlock {
/* this hides both the top and right ad blocks*/
display: none !important;
}
.gsc-thinWrapper {
/* this gives you use of the whole block, as opposed to 69% google gives*/
width: 100%;
}
.gsc-result-info-container {
display: none;
}
td.gsc-twiddleRegionCell.gsc-twiddle-opened {
display: none;
}
td.gsc-configLabelCell {
display: none;
}
.gsc-above-wrapper-area {
border-bottom: 0px solid #E9E9E9!important;
padding: 0px!important;
}
.gsc-resultsRoot.gsc-tabData.gsc-tabdActive table {
margin-bottom: 0px !important;
}
.gsc-resultsRoot.gsc-tabData.gsc-tabdActive tbody {
border-bottom: 0px solid #ddd !important;
}
.gsc-result .gs-title {
height: 1.5em !important;
}
.gs-webResult.gs-result a.gs-title:link, .gs-webResult.gs-result a.gs-title:link b, .gs-imageResult a.gs-title:link, .gs-imageResult a.gs-title:link b {
border-bottom: 0px solid #4199FB;
}
.gs-webResult {
border: 0px solid #eee !important;
padding: 0em !important;
}
.cse .gsc-control-cse, .gsc-control-cse {
margin-top: 18px !important;
}
div.gcsc-branding {
display: none;
}
.cse .gsc-control-cse, .gsc-control-cse {
padding-top: 0 !important;
padding-bottom: 30px !important;
}
.gsc-webResult .gsc-result {
padding: 0px 0 10px 0 !important;
}
table.gsc-search-box td {
border: 0px !important;
}
.gsc-input-box table {
margin: 0px ;
}
.gcsc-find-more-on-google {
display: none !important;
}
.gsib_a {
padding: 9px 9px 9px 9px !important;
}
.cse .gsc-search-button-v2, .gsc-search-button-v2 {
border-color: #da0000 !important;
background-color: #da0000 !important;
padding: 10px 19px 10px 19px !important;
}
button.gsc-search-button.gsc-search-button-v2 svg {
width: 18px;
height: 13px;
}
.gsc-input-box {
padding-top: 0px !important;
padding-bottom: 0px !important;
}
.cse .gsc-control-cse, .gsc-control-cse {
padding: inherit !important;
}
</style>

We know WordPress display search results at https://www.gulshankumar.net/?s=query

Therefore, it is important to change action path for Search box and Yoast added JSON-LD markup for the Site Search. You should place below snippet using Code Snippet plugin.

// Change Search path in the GeneratePress Theme
add_filter( 'generate_navigation_search_output', function() {
printf( 
'<form method="get" class="search-form navigation-search" action="%1$s">
<input type="search" placeholder=" Search" class="search-field" value="%2$s" name="q" title="%3$s" />
</form>', 
esc_url( home_url( '/search/' ) ), 
esc_attr( get_search_query() ), 
esc_attr_x( 'Search', 'label', 'generatepress' ) 
); 
} );
// Other theme? Use Real Time Find and Replace Plugin

Correct JSON path

// For Yoast SEO
function yst_change_json_ld_search_url() {
return trailingslashit( home_url() ) . 'search/?q={search_term_string}';
}
add_filter( 'wpseo_json_ld_search_url', 'yst_change_json_ld_search_url' );

// For Rankmath
function gk_change_json_ld_search_url() {
return trailingslashit( home_url() ) . 'search/?q={search_term_string}';
}
add_filter( 'rank_math/json_ld/search_url', 'gk_change_json_ld_search_url' );

Display the Page Title and Heading as per Search Query

Thanks to James Hibbard who provided me below snippet which is based on URLSearchParams. This should work for all modern browsers.

Make sure to place script with wp_footer hook using GeneratePress Elements specifically for ‘Search Results’ page that we created in first step.

<script>
const queryString = window.location.search;
const urlParams = new URLSearchParams(queryString);
const searchTerm = urlParams.get('q');
if (searchTerm) {
    const heading = document.querySelector('h1');
    const title = document.querySelector('title');
    heading.textContent = `Search Results for ${searchTerm}`;
    title.textContent = `Search Results for ${searchTerm}`;
}
</script>

Now you can see Search Query in Title and Heading.

FAQs

Thanks for reading.