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Web Search

The Global Marketing and Communications Digital team manages the Northwestern University web search using Google CSE. If you are a university webmaster/developer seeking information on the internal search engine, refer to information for webmasters. Not finding answers to your questions? Please send questions to search-help@northwestern.edu.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality of a web page in order to help users find your content through search engines such as Google. For content best practices and tips on how to write for search engines, refer to web writing guidelines on the Brand Tools site. Web developers may be interested in technical best practices for SEO.

Tips for Using Northwestern's Internal Search

Google CSE crawls public content, indexing keywords and phrases. Only Northwestern subdomains are included (with a few exceptions). For best results, enter a query that is specific. For example, instead of a general term such as "annual report," narrow your search by including the name of the department that generated the report. You can wrap a phrase in quotation marks to find an exact match.