Encoding Values

This page lists the encoding types that you can use for your search box and results page. Encoding tells computers how to store and transmit text over the network.

UTF-8, which is the default encoding type, works best in the vast majority of cases. In fact, many text issues in the results page can be resolved by keeping the UTF-8 value. The only time you need to change the encoding value for your results page and search box is when the hosting webpage is not in UTF-8. The encoding for Custom Search must match the encoding of your webpage.

You can define the encoding either in the control panel or the context file. In the Basics tab of the control panel, you select the language from the Search engine encoding drop-down. In the context file, you define the value of the encoding attribute of the CustomSearchEngine element, as in the following example:

<CustomSearchEngine volunteers="false"
                    language="en"
                    visible="false"
                    encoding="UTF-8">
</CustomSearchEngine>      

The following table lists the values you can use with the encoding attribute.

Note: If you do not specify an encoding type, Custom Search will use UTF-8 as the default value.

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