Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I also added the site search feature. It works pretty well with the layout of my site. Anyone notice any measurable changes since adding this feature?
Any input will be appreciated.
The only bad news is that relatively few of my readers use internal search. They may use Google for searching the Web, but once they arrive on the site, they prefer navigation menus.
The income from search is far below AdSense,
but the space is also much smaller.
It basically pays for my hosting costs and my domain name costs. So, it isn't totally useless.
On my previous site design, I had the search placed at the top in its natural configuration (no moving the logo to the top or the search button to the bottom). That configuration was probably the best performing that I've tried when earnings are considered.
I've since redesigned my site and for nearly a week had it near the top left with the logo moved to the top. It was used much, much more. The trouble with that was that its CTR plummeted. Just late last night I moved it near the bottom left and its use has dropped to a more realistic level. I might add that my site has a far better internal search built in.
I have the Adsense Search box on my site more as a courtesy to my visitors and for their convenience than for any other reason. However, the earnings from it will usually buy a nice dinner for one at the end of the month.
I've been wanting to add the google's search too. I have a question about the internal search - how often do they crawl your site?
I mean, will it take weeks to update new information on the site? in that case the whole search thing is a hoax - because most people say the income itself is very low too ;-(
My site is a "news" site and thus will need updating almost daily.
R.
mertero, I have no concrete knowledge if having the search helps your site to get indexed. But, I have a suspicion that it does if you have it set to the 'site search' mode. It needs to have something to return when a site search is performed. Maybe someone else has that knowledge.
I do quite well with only 1 ad block and 1 search box on each page.
I've been wanting to add the google's search too. I have a question about the internal search - how often do they crawl your site?
The internal search produces the same results as if you went to google.com and typed in the search. So, the results are entirely dependant on googlebot going to your page.
In my experience Googlebot wont come to your site because you added the adsense for search. If googlebot hasn't been there, you won't get any results for an internal search.
I had a new site that was listed on google but only the root url was listed. Googlebot had not done a deepscan. Any internal searches produced no results. As a result I took off site search until the pages were indexed.
I have some sites that are indexed everyday now so the frequency of googlebots visits depends on the importance of your site.
Regarding placement of the search window: I've used a search window at the top of my pages, at the bottom, and on a separate "search" page that's linked from every page of my site. Location or visibility of the search window doesn't seem to make any difference in how often my readers do internal searches. Most of them don't use internal search, period. For my audience, at least, search is something you do when you're at Google, and menus are what you use after you arrive on a site.
I only added it to about 100 pages out of 15,000, so the math tells me that even at the small payout, it's a way to gain a little revenue from those who can't find what they are looking for on my site.
Googlebot may think that the site is not worth crawling but with visitors coming from other sources it also makes the Google site search less attractive. (Unless your only objective is revenue - I suppose.)
