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What I mean is you have no control over what is in the index, you can't get it to crawl new content at your demand etc and there is a link out.
So why use it? Why not just add AdSense ads to your internal search engine, which you can control?
Plus you have no control of what is in the index (new content etc) as I mentioned in the first post.
I have a couple of directories that have been a service to users for almost 10 years so I don't care if they search my directory or search Google. The AdSense revenue from this channel is almost nonexistent, but I feel that adding one more search tool adds value to the resource.
Anyway, this is exactly like the Google search box we have been able to use for over a year now, but the only difference is adding AdSense.
So why use it? Why not just add AdSense ads to your internal search engine, which you can control?
Not everyone has an internal search engine. And ensuring relevant ads are displayed for all searches isn't trivial. A better question might be to ask why most sites don't have an internal search engine. There's time, skill and cost associated with getting an internal search up and running period plus more of the same to make it AdSense-friendly. On top of that, being able to search the entire web will appeal to some users, even though they could simply go to their favorite SE instead. It's definitely not trivial to index and search billions of documents. AdSense is a cut/paste solution to monetizing content and this is more of the same.
1) Google SiteSearch was better than the other products.
2) The Google interface was familiar to my readers (a high percentage of whom come to my site from Google). Using Google SiteSearch provided a better user experience.
Since I'm already using Google SiteSearch, I'd be foolish not to use Google's AdSense search product, which lets me keep a portion of my site's search revenue instead of giving it all to Google.
Folks before implemented Google websearch when they were paying 2 cents per click. So why not now when Google has incorporated websearch with the Adsense program -- a revenue source that many have found to be extremely fruitful. So, it is but natural for people to try out Websearch and see if will also bring the kind of money that Adsense has given them.
As I said in my earlier post, using Websearch is simply a way to generate more revenues from your web properties.
Has G said that the revenue from the search ads will be higher than regular AdSense on internal site search engines or is it to be the same?
Has G said that the revenue from the search ads will be higher than regular AdSense on internal site search engines or is it to be the same?
I assumed it would be lower.
The best place to use it would be a site search on one of my larger sites, but unfortunatly Google is doing that thing where they only index the URL on about a quarter of the site (ex. no page title or blurb) on every single one of my big sites.
Now if were to every let me include search results on MY PAGE (instead on LARRY's PAGE :)), then I would be chomping at the bit!
In the case of Google Search Tool, the user has to make one additional step in order for me to make money.
1) First they do a search
2) Then they have to click on the ad on the SERP
On the other hand, with Google adsense, it's one step:
1) Click the ad
As an alternate case, if I use my own site search, I can put Google ads on MY page.
1) Click the ad
Additionally, if I use my own site search, I am allowed to link to my own search results (ex. search.asp?kword=widgets), and place google adsense on that page:
1) Click the ad
I just don't see the benefit here, but I am still waiting to see a good model for using this new feature.
No reason exists to use this over a good search with adsense in it.
Especially with all this talk of fees that no one really knows when they will creap up. The custimization of the search is awful in my opinion, as you can do nothing but have your logo on the search results page, which is on a google domain.
For people trying to build brand names this is an obvious loss, as it takes users away from your domain. On top of this it has that stupid little "Powered by Google" next to every search box. If i am advertising google, i want some earnings for every search for exposing my traffic to google, not be charged for searches.
I do not like how pages have to be in the google index in order to show up in your site serps. I have some pages i do not want general internet searches to find, but i do want internal searchers to find. This makes that impossible.
Although it is certainly to early to tell, the general consensus from people from friends of mine who have implemented this has been that EPC is VERY VERY VERY low, far lower than normal adsense EPC.
So now why would I,
1. send my traffic to google and let them try to take over more of internet users
2. Reduce the effectiveness of exposing visitors to my brandname and clutter my well designed pages with bad code that has a "powered by google" logo that matches nothing on my site and makes my site appear as if it was pasted together with pre made utilities.
3. Recieve less per click for using this service when my results with adsense are working wonderfuly.
For me, it does not add up. It will take some very positive results from other memebers here and other people before i would consider emailing google and letting them know i want to use it but i do not want that logo on each page.
I will be eager to hear of results from other publishers in the future.
On our travel content we didn't put SiteSearch yet but we will give it a try on some of our travel sites next week.
It is very simple.
I will support any product that will improve my chances of signing a personal cheque for a black 355 Ferrari Spider. ;)
Wooohh there PAL, i think you are speaking a little premature with that statement.
I want to see what these hidden fees are at the end of the month. I see no benefit of using this over my in house search with my own layout and adsense ads. The SERP is no different, with results and ads, but i have internal pages not in the google index that gets searched, the layout matches my site, and most importantly i am not pushing the google brandname, but my own.
If you wanted more revenue you should have set up a search with adsense a long time ago.
I am confused on this one.
"As an alternate case, if I use my own site search, I can put Google ads on MY page.
1) Click the ad"
If you use your own site search wouldn't they have to also search first? Or are you talking about providing a search link so that the search result gets crawled by a spider, indexed, and traffic directly to that search page?
Those are two main advantages over a search with adsense opposed to this new thing.
"First, if the search results are on my domain, I can place the ads wherever I want them."
That dosen't answer my question.
1. If someone uses you search they would HAVE to enter the words in the field. Get a result. Then click.
Still the same amount of steps.
2. I agree with your above statement completely.
"Second, I can indeed cache previous searches for indexing by Google, and then link directly to those search results on my site."
I see. So create about 700 different variations of keyword combinations in which the result is HEAVILY keyword weighted. Place links to these search results throughout your site gaining a bit of pagerank in these search results. Get decent rankings in google and boost the traffic. I know. I see it all of the time. Really it is no different than a dynamic page that can sort the information 10 different ways with each url being a seperate sorting method.
I agree that my own site search would take just as many steps and the Google site search, but there is more to consider in this case:
1) I can place ads wherever I want
2) I can link to search results
3) I can cache search results and get them indexed
4) The search results are on my site, making it possible for me to include other important html
1. Huge ads front and center, at top and bottom.
2. More advanced search algorithm then the one I use.
3. Takes the load off my server.
yoyo8, I definitely look forward to seeing some successful models implemented. And I look forward to a thread about "Getting the best results" with Site Search. I'm afraid it might be a rather short topic: Place a box on your site right in the center, just like Google. (joking)
I would think that would be the best way, but that would violate the TOS, as you have to have content on the page............!
Before this even started I saw little benefit in using something like this. A couple other disadvantages of the google site search are,
1. must wait until page is indexed by google until it will appear in site search. This can take days, weeks, or months. It truly is at the discretion of the speed of googlebot and how many backlinks you have.
2. brand name. Publishers are not building a brand name by placing a "powered by google" logo next to every search box, and sending users to another domain to view search results. To me that shows lack of energy on the part of publishers to create their own site search and provide for a better user experience. Some of those site searches that return 2 results and have 8 ads on the page are obnoxious to say the least. I am very disturbed that google would make search result pages into such a joke like that. This whole system is devaluing a good text based advertisement by putting 8 ads on a page with 2 page results.
3. Earnings. Initial reports state that earnings are much lower than people have expected, and certainly lower than most average EPC. Regular site search earnings are similar to regular adsense paying rates, it just depends on the words, etc.
This is a huge one for me,
SiteSearch DOES NOT display ads for every query, nor can you specify a alternate ad provider. If a term that is entered does not match any ads, you can not resort back to alternate ads or display an affiliate link, NOTHING!
Users make very strange searches alot of the time, and i would think a good portion of searches will not have targeted ads. First off, this may end up costing publishers at the end of the month, by incuring a search fee for an odd search term that has no ads. Publishers are forced to pay for this search, but no way exists to monetize the search that just cost you 1/2 cent (or whatever the price is). Handle 10,000 searches without ads in a day, thats 5,000 cents you are billed for with NO WAY TO MONETIZE THE SEARCH RESULTS.
This program has some real fundemental flaws in it, and i am worried that it will degrade the whole program into just another fly by night text ad service.
God Save Adsense.
[edited by: ChrisKud5 at 6:25 am (utc) on June 19, 2004]
(I LOVE Google and Adsense, just not too impressed with this yet. Hopefully, there is more to come)
We have an average of a few hundred thousand active pages in G and G indexed our website throughout all levels and their bots are on our sites throughout the day. Some of our new content sometimes just takes a takes a day or to be available in Google.
Another point for me was that our sites are in 8 languages including exotic ones such as Japanese, Thai, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic and Chinese on top of all our European languages and we faced some problems as some of the pages are in UTF-8 and some are not.
After Excite no longer made available the internal Search Engine we tried Aspseek which is an excellent internal search engine that can also fetch and indexes hundreds per pages a minute.
Our content is several million pages but it would bug down our second server and we don't want to take a third server yet.
I also don't think WebSearch will be used on our travel and hotel content that much but we will implement it on our web directory and our sitemap.
