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On the 26th of November we put Google Custom Search on our site.
The day after and all days following traffic dropped off noticeably. This could just be pure coincidence, but it seems odd to have affected the traffic for a whole month.
Does anyone know whether there is a known affect from putting Google Custom Search within your site?
Does anyone know whether there is a known affect from putting a Google search within your site?
No. There is no evidence to say Google will penalize a website if it has Google Custom Search on it. The ranking drop might have happened due to other reasons. You have to check all the recent OFF page activities of your website.
I know a person who reported that adding Google Custom Search negatively impacted his traffic as it resulted in more people leaving his site by clicking the outbound links and ads. Look at Google Analytics, visitor flow to see what is happening in your case.
