Programmable Search Element Paid API

The Programmable Search Element now offers a paid ads-free version. By enabling the Programmable Search Element Paid API your Programmable Search Element will continue to function exactly the same as the free ad-supported version, except that instead of ads being displayed along with search results you'll instead be charged a small fee for each search.

Note that our nonprofit, education, and government users can get an ads-free experience by following these instructions.

Prerequisites

Search engine configuration

Before using the Programmable Search Element Paid API you first need to create and configure your Programmable Search Engine. If you have not already created a Programmable Search Engine, you can start by visiting the Programmable Search Engine control panel.

Follow the tutorial to learn more about different configuration options.

API key

The Programmable Search Element API requires the use of an API key. Get a Key

Once you have a Programmable Search Element API key, you can add this key to your search engine using the Programmable Search Engine control panel. Navigate to the Ads section of your search engine's Overview page and paste your key in the "Paid Element API key" field. Congratulations, the Programmable Search Element API is now active for this search engine!

If at any point you wish to return to the free ad-supported search element, just delete the key from this field in the control panel.

Pricing

The Programmable Search Element API charges $5 per 1000 ad-free search element queries. Billing needs to be configured in the API Console. Quotas can be configured in the Cloud Platform Console to help limit maximum daily expenditures.

Note that new consumer projects will default to unlimited daily quota; we strongly recommend setting a daily quota that is sufficient for your traffic volume. Once the daily quota limit is reached all search element queries using the engine will be denied for the remainder of the day. Note also that per-minute and per-user per-minute quota controls are also available (with IP address being used to distinguish between users).

Monitoring

Two options are available for monitoring usage of the Programmable Search Element API. First, Cloud Platform Console's API Dashboard provides a variety of pre-built graphs for monitoring common metrics such as error rates and queries-per-second. Second, the Google Cloud Operations console provides powerful tools for building custom graphs and also for setting up alerting. See API Monitoring for more information.