How do I add search to my site?

Official response from Matthew Pancione

August, 2015 update: Corey from Freshhold Consulting offered more detailed instructions on adding Google custom search in the designer blog.

You can embed Google Custom Search to allow users to search all the content on your website:

http://www.google.com/cse/

Make sure you paste the custom search embed code directly into the template of a page, not into the content editor.

Google will not index your site right away, so you should work to get some external links to your new nation from other sites or submit it to Google directly. Once Google and other search engines know your site exists, NationBuilder does provide a sitemap that will help the search engines index all of your public pages.

Specific information on how to set up search with the Pershing Forest theme is also available.

*On April 1st, 2017, Google will discontinue the sales of Google Site Search, the paid version of Custom Search Engine. All new purchases and renewals must take place before this date. Google Site Search will be completely shut down by April 1st, 2018. This note does not affect Custom Search Engine.

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Lorraine Fryer

Lorraine Fryer tagged this with Not helpful

posted 2019-01-07 09:43:22 -0800
Webmaster Tattersall

Webmaster Tattersall commented
It’s out of date and incomplete.
And it’s saying that NB has no intention of providing an inbuilt site search for visitors to its customers’ sites. That’s not helpful, on two counts.
First, it makes all of your customers do a whole lot if similar work when you could save that effort by doing it once.
Second, if pushes all of your customers and their members and casual visitors into the clutches of Google, who already have far too much information about us and far too few ethical guidelines.
posted 2018-06-04 21:12:07 -0700
Webmaster Tattersall

Webmaster Tattersall tagged this with Not helpful

posted 2018-06-04 21:12:07 -0700
Joseph Masongsong

Joseph Masongsong commented
Does NB work with Algolia, Swiftype, or CloudSearch? I have a client with search in their spec. GCS is not ideal because of the ads. I hope you guys make this feature STAT, its 2017 for crying out loud!
posted 2017-09-28 21:47:04 -0700
Joseph Masongsong

Joseph Masongsong tagged this with Not helpful

posted 2017-09-28 21:47:04 -0700
Malcolm Johnson

Malcolm Johnson commented
Well it does say “This product will be completely shut down by April 1st, 2018.”
posted 2017-03-23 16:13:28 -0700
Jeff Dunne

NationBuilder
NationBuilder employee

Jeff Dunne commented
Hey Malcolm, it’s worth mentioning that while Google is shutting down new signups for Google Site Search on April 1st and the product itself a year later, that Google Custom Search is still available. While there are some differences between the two, Google has not indicated that they have plans to stop offering Google Custom Search. https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/4541888
posted 2017-03-22 16:29:35 -0700
Taylor Pineiro

NationBuilder employee

Taylor Pineiro commented
Thanks for letting us know Malcolm! We’ll take a look.
posted 2017-03-22 16:01:26 -0700
Malcolm Johnson

Malcolm Johnson commented
Google is shutting this down as of April 1, 2017. It is completely shutting it down April 1, 2018.
posted 2017-03-22 15:58:18 -0700
Malcolm Johnson

Malcolm Johnson tagged this with Not helpful

posted 2017-03-22 15:58:18 -0700
Chris Heuberger

Chris Radish Lab
Certified Architect

Chris Heuberger commented
I’ll try that. Thanks for the quick response!
posted 2016-08-19 08:45:31 -0700
Jeff Dunne

NationBuilder
NationBuilder employee

Jeff Dunne commented
Hey Chris, sitemap.xml is generated dynamically according to your page publication statuses. It sounds like Google has old pages still indexed, so that’ll be something to take care of on their end: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en
posted 2016-08-18 16:01:18 -0700
Chris Heuberger

Chris Radish Lab
Certified Architect

Chris Heuberger commented
How does NationBuilder generate the sitemap.xml file that it provides to search engines? We’ve implemented search on a site but it’s returning hidden pages as well as pages from a previous version of the site that aren’t on our NationBuilder site.
posted 2016-08-18 12:20:41 -0700
Matthew Pancione

Matthew Pancione responded with completed

posted 2016-06-22 10:37:43 -0700
C.J. MinsterCheng

NationBuilder employee

C.J. MinsterCheng commented
Thanks for flagging your instructions! I edited the official answer to also include a link to your post.
posted 2015-08-21 10:03:30 -0700
Code Nation

Corey McCann
Certified Agency
Certified Architect
Certified Developer

Code Nation commented
Hey Tim – we just wrote a short piece on adding a google custom search page to your NB sites. The small snippet of code required to power the form can then be added anywhere across your site. The code and details can be found here: http://nationbuilder.com/implementing_a_custom_google_search_using_nationbuilder
posted 2015-08-21 00:23:45 -0700
Code Nation

Corey McCann
Certified Agency
Certified Architect
Certified Developer

Code Nation tagged this with Helpful

posted 2015-08-21 00:23:42 -0700
Taylor Pineiro

NationBuilder employee

Taylor Pineiro commented
Hi Tim – here is some documentation on how to add twitter to your sidebar: http://nationbuilder.com/how_can_i_display_my_latest_tweets

It’ll be the same place that you add the Google CSE.
posted 2015-07-01 21:22:23 -0700
Tim Meyer

Tim Meyer commented
could someone please assist me with a tutorial on how to add a Google CSE to the sidebar in the 2 column layout?
thank you
posted 2015-06-30 03:49:04 -0700
Patty Cardona

Patty Cardona commented
Hi Tony, you can search your membership by tags, names and by many other variables – all from your people section. Use the ‘tags’ tab to search by tags and the funnel icon to search by a specific criteria.
posted 2014-06-03 07:09:05 -0700
Tony Yustein

Tony Yustein commented
What about searching the membership based on tags, names or other variables?
posted 2014-06-02 14:16:35 -0700
Scott Payne

Scott Payne commented
Hi Brian, only public pages can be indexed by Google. The only way to have membership or logged in access-only pages indexed would be to remove that restriction and make them public pages.
posted 2014-04-04 05:16:35 -0700
Brian G. Rice

Brian G. Rice commented
Is Google able to index pages that are set to be viewed by only people who are logged in or members? Because if not, this is not a search solution that will work for my site.

Are there any other options?
posted 2014-03-30 22:14:11 -0700
Matthew Pancione

Matthew Pancione tagged this with Helpful

posted 2014-03-05 11:12:55 -0800
Matthew Pancione

Matthew Pancione tagged this with Helpful

posted 2014-03-04 10:34:42 -0800
Nick Vierros

Nick Vierros commented
Ridiculous that this is not a standard feature. There are a few more issues that Nation Builder is seriously lacking, like the ability to add post thumbnails or even completely delete a social media image!
posted 2013-12-05 02:16:01 -0800
Seth Eheart

Seth Eheart commented
This should be a standard module within the site.
posted 2013-10-30 08:31:15 -0700
josh cutler

josh cutler commented
This is a really basic feature and Nation builder does not offer it? I am surprised and disappointed.
posted 2013-10-15 06:58:51 -0700
Matthew Pancione

Matthew Pancione tagged this with Not helpful

posted 2013-10-15 06:56:50 -0700
Matthew Pancione

Matthew Pancione tagged this with Important

posted 2013-09-12 05:43:37 -0700