Do's & Don'ts using a Google Search Box

[Porkchop]

Is there a do's and don'ts list using Google search box

I know you are not suppose to bring attention to the ads so I assume the same goes for the seach box. Is it a no no to but a question near the search box like still need more info? or if it was something for a travel site put wan't to find out more about your destination? I have a feeling the answer is don't do it but I wanted to hear it here.

[Rodney]

A related question might be: If several people here said it was OK and you put it on your site and got banned for it, who would be at fault :)

For TOS questions, you may want to go directly to the source (Adsense Support) so you have the answer "from the horse's mouth" so to speak.

[must learn more]

Here is a 'Don't' .... its not TOS related but its a don't.....

Don't use the search box if your site is not completely indexed with Google. If you do, the non-indexed pages will not show up in the search. People will think your site does not have the info they are looking for and they will leave.

Use the search box only if you are completely indexed. (You know, to check you can use the site:www.yourdomain.com command in Google)

[NewSkool]

if it makes all big mighty google cash they dont care. thats the truth and im gonna explouit that my syself from now on.

[Rodney]

if it makes all big mighty google cash they dont care. thats the truth and im gonna explouit that my syself from now on.

Sounds like the prequel to an "i've been banned" thread.

I wouldn't make a sweeping judgement like that in regards to Adsense.

There have been plenty of cases posted here where people have earned lots of money only to have been banned for one reason or another (usually violating the TOS in some major way). If they were making lots, Google was making lots.

[david_uk]

Don't get too excited about the search box - any people report they just get pennies from it. I use a goog;e search on my site because it saves me having to re-index every time update the site, and visitors are used to Google searches and how to do them.

Why would you need to draw attention to a sarch box - we all know what they are, and by doing a search you are only getting money is they click on an ad that is diplayed. If they use the search facility and don't click an ad you don't get any money.

Drawing attention to ads is against the TOS, so don't do it on any page basically.

[david_uk]

Don't get too excited about the search box - many people report they just get pennies from it. I use a goog;e search on my site because it saves me having to re-index every time update the site, and visitors are used to Google searches and how to do them.

Why would you need to draw attention to a sarch box - we all know what they are, and by doing a search you are only getting money is they click on an ad that is diplayed. If they use the search facility and don't click an ad you don't get any money.

Drawing attention to ads is against the TOS, so don't do it on any page basically.

[youfoundjake]

A question about the cache of my site on google. I at one point had 90 pages cached, now its dropped down to the index page as the only cached page. How do I have control over how google caches my site. I set my sitemap to update montly, which hopefully implies that I'm not being greedy to get a fresh cache everyday. On the other hand, my default search option is to search google for the term and not for the term on my site since google is only caching the home page. So how would this fit in to the TOS?

[pldaniels]

I've just noticed something on a site where I frequent --- they have _two_ search facilities, one supposedly internal and one using google.

When I try to use the internal one it comes up "Nothing found", but then if you try the google one it comes up with results (which amusingly are located on the very site that you were searching). Could this be a deliberate ploy to drive people into using the google search? Do they actually make money from each search?

Paul.

[ronburk]

Could this be a deliberate ploy

It could be someone motivated to build a homegrown site search just to get at the data; the homegrown search just may not work, or work well yet (but may be gathering useful data already).

I would like to use Google's search on my site, but it appears that they only reveal a small amount of data about what's typed in. I really want access to the "long tail" of what people are searching for, not just the top 25 most popular queries.

[21_blue]

david_uk wrote:

don't do it

We have a "search our site" link on every page, and the link takes you to a page with the Google search on it. Surely you're not saying that's against the TOS?

[celgins]

Surely you're not saying that's against the TOS?

I certainly hope not. Thousands of sites have "Search Our Site" links which points to a page with a Google searchbox on it.

Plus, Google search can be setup as a "SiteSearch" and we surely can't expect users to know a search box is somewhere on the page. Most will look for a, "Search This Site" type of link.

[nickreynolds]

I was thinking about this too. I have a page where I explicitly say that if they want details of a provider of services in my niche from the directory part of my site to enter the postcode in the google searchbox. Maybe I shouldn't so I looked at TOS. It says "You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries, Referral Events, or impressions of or clicks on any Ad, Link, Search Result, or Referral Button"
So it says you shouldn't encourage people to click on a search RESULT. Do you think I'm in the clear?

[DXL]

I came across a site that was promoting "start pages". Basically they would create a page on their site with a particular movie or music artist theme, and the search bar would be in the middle of the screen with graphics surrounding it. They encouraged people to make an individual themed page on their site their homepage.

I emailed G with a link to the site to make sure I could do something similar, G wrote back saying that it was against their TOS to have pages designed exactly like that (yet whoever it is has continued to make pages, so I guess G didn't stop them).

I've tried to decide whether or not it would even be cost effective to do something like that, though (with a variation that's TOS compliant). Its clearly making those guys money if they keep doing it, but I'm not going to do it if it doesn't generate money.