Websearch - you guys weren't kidding

Vast difference in earnings vs. on-page ads

[androidtech]

Finally got the chance to implement WebSearch on a page that gets decent traffic. The stories I read on the WebSearch threads were right on the money. The earnings are tiny compared to AdSense regular ad clicks.

Anybody actually so happy with their WebSearch earnings that they're dancing? :)

Curiosity question. Has anybody seen their WebSearch CPM earnings ramp up over time? I'm wondering if it's a SmartPricing thing and if your EPC/CPM can improve if Google deems your site "WebSearch" worthy.

Thanks.

[webmastertexas]

same here, not much earning. But It's useful in that I can give my readers a powerful search engine to not only search my site for free, but the net. You can't beat that kind of convenience.

[europeforvisitors]

The good news: My Websearch CTR and CPM are fantastic. If my content ads did as well, I'd be a millionaire.

The bad news: Search represents only a tiny percentage of my site's traffic, so bottom-line search revenues are much lower than my earnings from content ads.

[Visit Thailand]

Like has been said before you can put AdSense on your internal search engine and unlike what some might say it is not so difficult to set up and maintain an internal search engine for your site.

[europeforvisitors]

Yes, but whether it's worth the bother will vary from site to site.

[brianng]

I have a question, do I have to put the search box on an english site or I can put it on any site I own that using a language not support by google?

[birdstuff]

But It's useful in that I can give my readers a powerful search engine to not only search my site for free, but the net.

I (and presumably my visitors) prefer to have my site search actually search the entire site, not just the pages that Google has decided to index.

[Nikke]

I kind of use both. First an internal on-site search, on the result page there is a Google box for other searches.

Only, I would _really_ want to pre populate that box with the term used for the first search...

[europeforvisitors]

I (and presumably my visitors) prefer to have my site search actually search the entire site, not just the pages that Google has decided to index.

If Google isn't crawling and indexing your entire site, wouldn't it be more productive to figure out why and fix the problem?

[birdstuff]

If Google isn't crawling and indexing your entire site, wouldn't it be more productive to figure out why and fix the problem?

There is no problem to fix. Google crawls and indexes new pages within a day or two, but I add 20-30 new pages a day and they aren't indexed right away. I want my new pages to be searchable immediately after they go live, especially since it's so easy to do.

Using my own site search script in conjunction with the regular AdSense code on the results pages gives me the best of both worlds: no delay and top dollar for clicks.

Many other webmasters have sites with low PR homepages meaning that the sites get crawled at longer intervals. The wait for them to get new pages indexed could be weeks.

I simply can't see any benefits at all to using WebSearch when my way works so much better overall.

[europeforvisitors]

I simply can't see any benefits at all to using WebSearch when my way works so much better overall.

IMHO, it's always a mistake to assume that what's best for your site is the best solution for other publishers.

On my site, for example, search doesn't represent more than a fraction of 1% of traffic. So it costs me virtually nothing to offer readers the same familiar search tool--Google--that they used to reach my pages. If I had more search traffic, I might have to weigh the trade-off between usability and revenue, but since virtually all of my traffic is on editorial pages, I can use the tool that's best for my few readers who conduct online searches within the site.

[sean]

IMHO, it's always a mistake to assume that what's best for your site is the best solution for other publishers.

True. For example, contrary to EFV, my experience is that another site search tool is better for my visitors than Google, and the difference in earnings is far from insignificant. YMMV

[europeforvisitors]

Different strokes for different folks. Google is by far my biggest source of referrals (other than my own pages), so I can be sure that my readers are comfortable with it.

[birdstuff]

IMHO, it's always a mistake to assume that what's best for your site is the best solution for other publishers.

I can't disagree with that, but after trying WebSearch on over 30 different sites on widely varying topics I haven't found even one where WebSearch even comes close to matching the performance of a generic site search script in conjunction with regular AdSense code.

EFV, it's apparent that the use of WebSearch on your excellent site is vastly outperfoming the norm. I honestly believe that's exactly what it's doing and the majority of responses in this forum seem to bear that out.

If you go back and read all of the threads on this topic I think you'll see that the bad reports on WebSearch vastly outnumber the good.

[webmastertexas]

There is no problem to fix. Google crawls and indexes new pages within a day or two, but I add 20-30 new pages a day and they aren't indexed right away. I want my new pages to be searchable immediately after they go live, especially since it's so easy to do.

That would most certainly be a problem. Fortunately I don't have that problem. :)

[birdstuff]

That would most certainly be a problem. Fortunately I don't have that problem. :)

Are you saying that your new pages are crawled and indexed immediately when they're uploaded to your server? If so, I would love to know your secret. If not, there is no problem.

[webmastertexas]

Are you saying that your new pages are crawled and indexed immediately when they're uploaded to your server? If so, I would love to know your secret. If not, there is no problem.

It means I don't add 20-30 pages a day (as you do). So the lag time of 2-3 days to index the whole site again (and all new pages) do not impact on my visitors' searching ability. Also, because all new entries are kept prominently displayed on the main/front page for a least 2 weeks (sometimes a month) after being added, they're easy to find, so no need to search for them. I guess our sites just work differently.

[morpheus83]

What I had noticed during the first 15 days of September when earnings were down 30 %. Seach revenue was constant, maybe google has different terms for earnings from search.