Migrate from Custom Search Site Restricted JSON API

If you use the Custom Search Site Restricted JSON API of Programmable Search Engine, you can create and deploy Google-quality, site-restricted search in minutes, using Vertex AI Search. To deploy your app, you can use the search widget by copying code from the Google Cloud console directly into a web page—no coding required. Or you can implement a traditional API deployment to have control over how search functionality looks on your website. For more information about using the API, see the REST tab of Get search results for an app with website data and the servingConfigs.search method in the REST reference.

In additional to the standard short snippets that Vertex AI Search returns with search results, you can add advanced features to your search. These include generated summaries of search results, search with follow-ups for context-aware search that allows follow-up questions, and extractive answers (Preview) for extracted text returned with each search result. Getting these advanced features for your web search requires domain verification and incurs additional indexing costs. For more information, see the Vertex AI Search and Conversation pricing page.

Set up Vertex AI Search

To set up Vertex AI Search, follow these steps:

  1. Get ready to create a search app:

    1. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select the project that you've been using for the Custom Search Site Restricted JSON API.

    2. Turn on Vertex AI Search and Conversation.

  2. Create a search app:

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Search and Conversation page.

      Search and Conversation

    2. Click New app.

    3. On the Create app page, select Search.

    4. Make sure Enterprise edition features is turned on. This is required for website search. For more information, see Enterprise edition features.

    5. Turn off Advanced LLM features. Turning this off gives you functionality similar to the Custom Search Site Restricted JSON API of Programmable Search Engine. Turn this off if you don't need search summarization or search with follow-ups. For more information, see Advanced LLM features.

    6. In the Engine name field, enter a name for your engine.

    7. Select global (Global) as the location for your app, and then click Continue.

    8. On the Data stores page, click Create new data store.

    9. In the Select a data source pane, select Public web content crawler.

    10. Turn off Advanced website indexing indexing. Turning this off gives you functionality similar to the Custom Search Site Restricted JSON API of Programmable Search Engine. Turn this off if you don't need search summarization or search with follow-ups, or if you don't own the domain(s) that you specify. For more information, see Advanced website indexing.

    11. In the Specify the websites for your data store pane, in the Sites to include field, enter the websites that you want to search, and then click Continue.

    12. In the Configure your data store pane, enter a display name for your data store, and then click Create.

    13. On the Data stores page, select your new data store, and then click Create.

  3. Deploy your search app: