AdSense for Search quit working in June

No changes made, impressions zero since

[AndyA]

I'm wondering if I've missed a notice about a change in AdSense for Search. This past June, my statistics for search started showing - No data available - for search. I hadn't changed anything, and don't get that many clicks, so I made a note to check later to see what was going on. I've had no impressions and no clicks ever since.

I'm finally getting around to it, and when you do a search on my site, you are redirected to the correct page on my site where the results and ads should display, but nothing appears. No search results, no ads, nothing.

I'm using the custom search box with the transparent "Google Custom Search" text in the box.

I made sure the channel for search was listed in my account, and generated new code and put on my site. Same thing, I get no results. The search channel is showing a status of "New" in the channel listings.

I've noticed the code generated now isn't the same as the code that's on my site, but it doesn't matter as the new code isn't doing anything either. I did notice the new code has XHTML closing brackets " / >" instead of just ">". The pages I have search on are HTML pages, not XHTML and I'm wondering if that's the problem.

Did I miss a notice that AdSense for Search was changing? If not, any ideas how to fix since Google doesn't have any support for things like this?

Thanks in advance.

[netmeg]

I've been using the same AdSense for Search code for years and it's still working fine. I suspect that something is broken on your site. The XHTML tags shouldn't make a difference. I wonder if somehow you have an extra line break or something in the code, or something else on a page that's somehow interfering.

Try placing your search box on a completely blank test page, with nothing else on it, and see if it works.

[icedowl]

I'm thinking it's a reporting problem. I have nothing reported for September as far as queries go, although I know there have been a few searches made (some of them my own for testing) as I recently updated my search code along with a site redesign. There are results for August. Also, I have my results displayed on google and not on my own site.

[AndyA]

I've done some additional research, and none of the AdSense for Search boxes on my site return results. I have one channel for all of them, it shows no data available.

The search boxes are on different pages, with different content on each page, so I don't see any consistent issues on my site. I created blank pages and tried them as well...nothing.

Seems this has to be on Google's end. Fat chance of getting any response from them, but I'll try. I'm going to have to remove the search boxes from my site because I don't like having things that don't work available to site visitors.

[AndyA]

Does anyone know how to contact Google? This problem doesn't fit in with the limited number of things they'll accept being contacted about. It doesn't involve payments, closing accounts, or invalid clicks, so according to the information they provide, the answer is provided in the help documents.

No, Google. It. Is. Not.

If anyone has any ideas of how to contact them, I'd appreciate it. They have quite a few topics in their AdSense forum about search results not showing up, so I'm not the only one. Some of the topics go back months or longer as well.

[thelostagency]

I know they did an update how old is your code I know its painful but have you tried replacing the code?

ive got it on several of my sites and its working fine

[netmeg]

Yea, I've got over a hundred of them, and mine are all working; I just checked.

You could try going to the Google forum.

[rocker]

Just checked and mine is working fine.

[Sally Stitts]

Just wondering. Have you folks seen this, from the AdSense Blog on July 28th -
[adsense.blogspot.com...]

It doesn't say specifically when the old code won't work anymore, but it does say that it won't work after "a few more months".

I liked the way the old code worked, and I do NOT like the way the new code doesn't work. So, I removed most of my search boxes. I will be removing them all. It paid peanuts anyway, and it was only there as a convenience for my visitors.

I will NOT be implementing the new code, because I can no longer get the 2 radio buttons which say "Search this site only", and "Search the Internet". I feel that was an excellent option, but it is no longer available. Plus, every time I tried to use the new code, it didn't work properly. Besides, for most folks, the Google Search bookmark is just a click away at all times, anyway.

There is also the issue with the extra domain lookup, which impacts page load speed. Google is adamant about reducing page load time, so this is a secondary advantage of dropping search boxes. And then there is the other extra domain lookup with Google Analytics, but that is another story.

[Lame_Wolf]

The old code still works.

[AndyA]

Bumping this hoping someone might have additional suggestions. I've created two new pages, a search box page and a results page. The only thing between the body tags on both pages is the Google AdSense search code.

When making a search, I get the correct redirect to the new search results page, but no results show, just a totally blank page. Yesterday, I went into advanced settings and added search suggestions to the search box, which is now working correctly.

Any ideas? The codes on both pages are exactly as Google generated them, and since there's literally NOTHING ELSE on either the search box or search results pages, there's nothing to interfere with the code.

I've tested with both IE and Firefox, no results with either.

I see no way to contact AdSense directly about this, and a message posted in their forums hasn't helped either. Any suggestions would be appreciated, I'm running out of time to work on this and I'm about ready to just pull the code from all my pages, although that will cut off a source of income.

Thanks in advance.

[AndyA]

UPDATE:

I've been fooling with this on and off over the last few days, and this morning decided to change the results page to show search results on Google, instead of on my site.

That worked.

So I'm going to guess that means the problem is either something else on the results page is interfering with the Google custom search script, or something on my server is preventing the results from loading. Or...would this not involve my server, since the redirect is working and everything else on the page is loading properly?

What confuses me is the test pages I created, which have nothing on them except for the Google code, didn't work, so I don't see how there could be a conflict.

Any ideas on what to look for? I'd like the search results to display on my site, like they used to. Thanks.