Google Search instead of CMSMS Search?

[sonictrip]

Hi,

A client im doing a site for wants to use the Google Search function on their website instead of the builtin CMSMS Search. What changes do i need to make to the search code to turn it into a Google Search box?

Also, are there any advantages from doing this? They think it might be better for the Google Analytics program to be using a Google Search, is this true?

[nivekiam]

What changes do i need to make to the search code to turn it into a Google Search box?

I would probably just replace the {search} tag the template with the code needed to have the google search box.

They think it might be better for the Google Analytics program to be using a Google Search, is this true?

Why?

[sonictrip]

Why?

God only knows why... i think because they are using the Google Analytics program, they think that a Google Search will be able to keep track of changes to the Analytics program better than the CMSMS search function (They're marketing people, what do you expect...!) lol

Can you explain to me why you think this wouldnt make a difference? Coz i'd love to be able to give them a good reason to leave it as is... cheers!

[faglork]

Well, it depends.

If this is a low-traffic site, user searches might show up in google analytics if done via Google search.

Unfortunately, the CMSMS search module does offer NO stats at all, so this might be a try to get at least a bit of search stats.
This is one of my "most wanted" feature requests ... it would be a real killer feature.

Cheers,
Alex

[nivekiam]

I see.  That makes sense if they want to see what people are searching for.  But even if using the CMSms search functionality, those searches do show up in your web logs.  So creating a tool or script to parse those and find those strings shouldn't be too hard or adding a bit of functionality to something like Awstats or your analyizing package shouldn't be to hard depending on the package.  I think something like that wasn't too difficult in Awstats the last time I looked, but that was several releases and years ago so I might be confusing that with something else.