Using AdSense "Search" to attract traffic to site?

Why else would someone do this?

[farmboy]

In checking the queries from searches made on one of my sites lately, I've noticed a few search "terms" that make no sense considering the topic of the site and the typical visitor to the site.

The search "term" is actually a web destination - "www.example.com" for example. I've visited a couple of the sites and they appear to spammy fake-news type sites.

I'm wondering if someone is entering those search terms so the AdSense publisher will see them and visit the site, just like I did?

Is it possible for someone to set up some type of automated process to find sites with AdSense/Google search boxes and initiate a search on a particular term, with hopes of having lots of AdSense publishers visit the site?

FarmBoy

[vincevincevince]

Interesting hypothesis. Perhaps it's not specific to Google's search products and is yet another incarnation of log spam.

[piatkow]

There really are a significant minority of users who seem not to know that they can type a URL in the address bar. Instead they open a bookmarked search engine and enter the url as a search!

I don't understand it but I get a decent number of legitimate looking hits on my site by this route.

[vincevincevince]

piatkow... I've seen them do it. They normally have so many toolbars installed that when they look for the URL box they have only got a 1 in 10 chance of success.

Add to this the fact that URL searches in engines tend to work (i.e. get you to where you want to go), and the behaviour is self reinforcing.

[farmboy]

There really are a significant minority of users who seem not to know that they can type a URL in the address bar. Instead they open a bookmarked search engine and enter the url as a search!

That could be the case here, but I only recently added AdSense Search to this site. I wouldn't think there are many people with the site bookmarked for future search purposes.

Also, the sites I've seen are spammy news sites, not something a person would remember and would want to re-visit by specifically searching for the URL.

FarmBoy