Google search box : cheap and tacky.

Very low eCPM, I ended up removing it.

[fischermx]

Hi,

I added a google adsense search box to my site a week ago, with the hope of help those people who didn't find anything in my site that liked them and still making a few cents.
The problem was what a few "cents"!
See, while my overall site eCPM is arround $30.00, the eCPM on the search box was never further than $6.00-$9.00!
I analyzed the queries by my user and they are really very much like my content, so, I guess those had to get very similar ads, so I have no idea why it could have such low eCPM.
With all this, today I looked my site and the google search box appeared a bit too much tacky to be there, and make my site look amateurish, so I removed it.

[larryhatch]

For those of us unclear on the concept, can somebody give the URL to some harmless
generic site with the cheap tacky G search box? I just wanna have a look at it.
A capsule description of how it works and what it pays would be nice too. -Larry

[annej]

I am actually using the free Google search that Google has available for anyone. I like the fact that the adwords ads are in a column to the right rather than at the top. I do notice that they are putting some at the top now which wasn't the case when I put in the search box some time back.

The BIG PROBLEM with the AdSense search box is that there are so many ads at the top on a small screen the viewer doesn't even see the results. As Adsense search didn't earn much and my goal was to offer a good search method for my visitors I only used the AdSense search a few days then went back to my old Google search. If top ads increase in this on the old search I may have to find another search method.

[kokaroach]

As for the Google search box, what I would like to see is something similar to what the Washington Post provides, as was mentioned by another poster in this thread.

It would be along the same lines as the new Adsense horizontal link units where it could fit into my pages as a "Search Bar" underneath the header, or at the bottom of the page near my lower horizontal menu. Maybe even an option of choosing several variations of "Search" buttons or layouts, like a "Google It" button. That way the logo is incorporated right into the search button.

The search results pages are another concern for me. If I could have my site search results pulled into a stripped down version of my own sites template, with the header and top navigation, and the same template width as the rest of my site (excluding side columns) or whatever that would be great.

If we could go into our adsense dashboard and basically 'build' the search box based on a few extra parameters set by Google, like width of the box, background color, maybe a choice of logos or search buttons, etc. with more flexibility, I'd put it on all my sites.

Main reason I'm not using it now is because it simply doesn't fit with my sites look and feel.

K

[frumau]

As far as I understand so far you CAN put google search on your site without the logo next to it. Just mention somewhere that searching on your site is powered by google. I will mention it on my main search page and I have google as text on the button just like webmasterworld has..

Jasper

[edited by: engine at 11:22 am (utc) on May 30, 2010]
[edit reason] no sig, thanks [/edit]