Chapter 1 understanding your deployment, Administration – Google Commerce Search Deployment Guide User Manual
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Chapter 1 Understanding Your Deployment
Google Commerce Search (GCS) is a hosted search product--a web service that can provide
search results on your web site. You have complete control over the look and feel of the user
interface, as well as the ability to pick and choose which features to enable. Because GCS is a
web service, and uses open, standard protocols (HTTP, XML, JSON), the end-user experience
can easily be customized to provide anything from basic search results to complex dynamic
user interfaces that allow users to really interact with many different search components.
Integrating Google Commerce Search with an existing site involves making some changes to
use GCS to handle all of your site-search requests, and possibly navigation or browsing too.
If GCS is replacing an existing search provider on your site, the basic integration process may
look something like this:
1. Modifying the existing product feed to add more custom item attributes (Merchant
Center).
2. Modifying the existing search box (html form) to point to new GCS script
(that is, /search.php).
3. Installing the new GCS search script/app.
Example code for php, java and .Net can be found here:
4. Modifying the output of new search results to match current site look and feel, typically
through CSS/stylesheet changes.
5. Applying business/merchandising rules by using the control panel.
6. Adding Query Suggestions/Search-as-you-type to search box, if desired.
Administration
There are two tools used for the administration of GCS:
●
●
Merchant Center
Merchant Center
(http://www.google.com/merchants)
is used to manage the feed process.
Before you can use GCS, you must feed your content to Google. Merchant Center provides
the tools to manage your feeds and view the raw data for your products. Merchant Center is
discussed in more detail in
.
Commerce Search Control Panel
The Commerce Search Control Panel
(http://www.google.com/cse/commercesearch/manage)
is used to control the search experience--basically anything that has to do with GCS search
results on your site. The control panel does not directly control the look and feel of your search
results, but it controls the merchandising features that affect those results. The Control Panel is
discussed in detail in
You can associate any email address with a Google account (google.com/account), and then
use that account to log in to Merchant Center or the GCS control panel. Merchant Center
currently has no way to delegate or add other accounts for login, so if multiple people do need
to access Merchant Center you will need to share those login credentials. The GCS control
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