Ok to remove the Search Box?

[malasorte]

When I applied for my AdSense account I also "subscribed" to a search box. The search box is performing very poorly, do you think it's ok to get it off my site and to remain only with the text ads? Is there any violation of the TOS in this?

[loganz]

you are free to remove it.

[wizarddave]

Yeah, does anybody make any kind of money from AdSense for Search? I'd be interested to hear how you are if you are... Mine have never made more than pennies...

[tebrino]

If they allowed better customisation options, I would probably use it. This way is very difficult to fit it in any page design except to those which look similar to Google home page.

[Tropical Island]

Had it on and then removed it for bad performance.

Replaced it with an AdLinks block and a small ad.

Instead of under $20 I'm now getting more than $300 per month just from this one change. AdLinks has been very successful in the way I use it. This has increased the total income to over 4 figures a month which is beyond my wildest expectations.

[OptiRex]

Someone at the Googleplex really needs to knock heads together!

The search box is potentially the best earner for publishers and, therefore, Google...they've really not wrapped their heads around the presentation and application of this incredibly powerful tool/program/offering/facility...

It really amazes me that they cannot see the simplicity of the BOX...possibly that IS the problem.

[dcheney]

I too use the G search box - and while I don't make much from it, the users consistantly praise it. So it stays :-)

[TheDonster]

The Google search box is definitely overdue for a makeover! It's ironic that the company that shot to the top of the search engine world has such limited features for publishers in terms of search functions. This has been a pet peeve of mine since I started AS and I know the AdSense Advisor has recommended changes to their team. I used to have Free Find search which had a great feature of allowing the publisher to ask the spider to re-crawl your index at any time. Also with that engine, you could pre-load search terms. Let's say your site is about widgets, but you know your visitor may be interested in blue widgets. Simply load a hyperlink saying Search for Blue Widgets? and voila! Another feature we could definitely use is the images search. I have a lot of traffic from Google's images. I would love to be able to preload a search box that offers my visitors the option of searching my site for images only. The potential is definitely there.