Search Box and Targeted Ad

Allowed together?

[euripydes]

I've read the Adsense ToS and I think this is okay, but I'd appreciate other people's input.

I'm trying out the Chitika eMiniMall on my website. This is contextually targetted, so I've removed Adsense from those pages. I THINK I'm still allowed to use the Google search box, but I've taken it off for the moment, just in case. Anyone had any experience of this?

If no-one else knows this one either, I'll email Support and report back. (I hate unanswered questions.)

[jenkers]

I think you'll find that in the last Adsense TOS update they changed it from not being allowed to run competing contextual ad services on the same page to not actually being allowed to run them on the site at all. Jenstar did a very excellent summary of the changes - if you have a nosey for posts started by Jenstar that mention the TOS you'll probably find it fairly easily.

Of course - you could also wade through the TOS themselves.

[euripydes]

My reply from AdSense support confirmed that you are allowed to run other contextual search services on the same site (but not on the same page, obviously). What killed it for eMiniMalls was something I never even considered: You aren't allowed to add other internet search services to a site running AdSense for search. As eMiniMalls incorporates a price-comparator search box, that makes it a no-no.

Shame, I thought it looked very promising.

[VenkatKolluri]

Web publishers interested in using eMiniMalls shopping units along with Google AdSense can choose to:

1. Manually override the backend contextual targeting engine by specifying a query of their choice. To specify your own query, please add this line to the code:
ch_query = "canon powershot a95"; // Replace with product name of your choice.

That way our system will not do any content sensing and it is no different from an affiliate product that you would choose.

Here is a post in webmastersworld long back where this issue was handled (See max_mm's comment at the bottom: [webmasterworld.com...] .

2. The search box function can be turned off. When you do this, no search tab will be displayed. To do this, please add the following line to the code:
ch_nosearch = 1;

-Venkat
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Venkat Kolluri
Chitika, Inc.
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