Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I currently use a free search for my site, and have been using them for five years and am happy with the service they provide.
My reasons for not adding Google for search is that I don't want to be totally dependent upon them, though, in reality, my focus is to make income from adsense without doing anything else.
Maybe some of you will think this is stupid and obvious, but maybe I need a push over the edge.
Any ideas, suggestions, advice appreciated.
Do I need to give it time to index the site?
You seem to have plenty of reasons to not use it, and plenty to use the free search you mention.
From posters here, it sounds like the potential rewards are small.
- You don't get a lot of internal searches;
- Your site is crawled by Google frequently and you want to offer your users a familiar (read: Google) search experience;
- You don't want to waste time or resources on other search solutions.
If you get a large volume of internal searches, then you might be better off with in-house search results that carry AdSense ads.
(For what it's worth, I get extremely high CPMs and CTRs with AdSense for search, but because my internal search traffic isn't all that high, AdSense for Search doesn't make me a lot of money. But then, no other search solution would earn me much money, either, so it's no sacrifice for me to offer a familiar search tool--Google--to my readers.)
I would only like to add that you should not worry that adding Google for search is going to make you totally dependent on them. The bottom line is that unless your's is a website with a lot of internal search, you are simply not going to make a lot of money with Adsense for Search.
I went with Adsense for Search for 2 reasons.
-I had previously happily used Atomz for a number of years. However, they went to an advertising model for which I would receive no revenue - so why not use Google instead which at least provides me with a bit of income. In addition, Atomz had a 750 page limit on their service which I had just surpassed. Consequently, they were no longer indexing my whole site - not a problem with Google.
I make enough on Adsense for Search to cover my basic monthly costs (hosting and broadband connection). It is, however, only a tiny fraction of what I make on Adsense for Content.
If you are really happy with your existing search function, you may just wish to keep it.
it seems like it would be beneficial to them and to you.
I've been testing Adsense search and I've tried it for my site and it's horrible. Not picking up many, many pages.
Then your site has deeper problems with Google search if it is not picking up many of your pages. Google has no problem indexing my site at all.
I am clueless about this.I checked my code twice to make it sure,its correct.
I can't belive not a single person from 2500*3*30 vistors will use google search.
I used to get 1-2 clicks from there in a day with much lower traffic till 3 months back.
I wonder if Google search is recording its traffic?
It's now at about 0,5% of total Google income.
The eCPM of AdSense for search is even a little bit below the normal AdSense eCPM.
Special the EPC is here about 1/3 only.
Results so far:
I have the same amount of visitors using the search box on my front page (in the same location the Google search box used to be) and far fewer clicking on the AdSense ads (2 ads in a 468x60 header).
I assume, since I now control the layout of the search results, that their interest is in the search results returned for my pages. The ads are generic to my general site topic, not to the search term.
That is the HUGE difference. The AdSense ads used to relate to the search term... now they do not.
I am still happy with the resulting effect:
1. Users find the relevant pages on my site they are looking for and may still leave through a higher paying ad relevant to the page they visit as a result.
2. When I DO get a click on an AdSense ad at the top of the results page, it pays much better than before.
3. The money is coming out about equal, while keeping visitors on my site longer.
Previously: Decent usage of search box, HIGH CTR on resulting ads... but very LOW EPC.
Currently: Same usage of search box, LOW CTR on resulting ads... higher EPC.
I'm making at least the same amount of income with a much higher level of control.
I think Adsense for search works best when people who come to your site can't find what they are looking for. Which is perhaps a bad reflection on how you have put your site together. Those of you who have well constucted sites might have less requirement for search on your site. Just think about the purpose of search- to find things quickly that cannot be found by clicking hyperlinks. People like to search before drilling through navigation, so if you have a lot of pages, search is probably essential.
Try it for a while.
FearlessRick, do you have access to the statistics produced by your current site search tool? If so, compare the total searches to the number of visitors in that given period, you can then calculate a percentage of your visitors that use search on your site. If that number is significant (and it only has to be >5% to be significant) I'd go with Adense for search.
Initially I wouldn't expect the earnings to be great however it would allow every publisher to earn from ANY search term executed, however as users learned that one's site could be used as a portal page then I feel more would use it as their home page if there were three options:
1. Search this site
2. Search Google ads
3. Search Google results
EFV... you mention that you get very good results from adsense for search... what is the reason is that you do not provide the search box for your visitors on every page?
I used to have the search box on every page, but it didn't result in many internal searches, so I took it off and replaced it with a link that points to a search page. The search box just wasn't worth the screen real estate that it was occupying, even when it was at the top of the page and in the user's face (as it was a few years ago). Having a bold search link in my top navigation bar (as I did in much of 2003 and 2004) didn't accomplish much, either. So I moved the search link down to the bottom of the lefthand navbar, and I haven't noticed any big drop in search usage.
Maybe internal search works best on sites that appeal to Web-savvy techie types (as opposed to a site like mine that appeals to a broad spectrum of travelers). That's my guess, anyway. Before I launched my current travel site in fall, 2001, I was a "guide" at About.com for 4-1/2 years, and internal search never delivered many referrals there, either. My readers obviously don't mind searching Google (since I get a lot of referrals from Google), but once they're on the site, they'd rather browse with navigation menus and other internal links. (I get tons of internal referrals, but those referrals have never, ever come from search.)
The bottom line for me is that internal search just isn't that important to my readers, so I'm happy to turn the search chores over to Google instead of bothering with search scripts or free third-party services that have limits on the number of pages they'll crawl or that won't crawl my pages as often as Google does.
I just checked stats and saw a 3 cent click from my search results page... and I now see the algo has kicked-in to return AdSense ads based on the search term. UGH!
For the last 2 weeks it was basically displaying the same old decent paying (20 to 30 cents) widget ads for my widget site.
Now, if someone is searching for blue widgets on my site, Google returns ads all about the color blue.
Maybe that has been the problem all along?
Now... big question... am I allowed to non-deceptively populate my private search with some relevant suggestions for terms to search on? I'm thinking even a drop-down menu.
My site does have thousands of pages... and a search term could cross-reference many relevant pages that would not appear together in one single category.
For instance, let's say one category is "United States Fruit" and another is "European Fruit". They would be able to search for "apples" and both relevant apple pages would appear. My site navigation doesn't account for every combination, so site-search is important for some of my visitors.
I know we can't populate a Google search box... but can we populate a private one when there are AdSense ads on results pages?
The search box is on the same page as Adsense (is that what you mean?).
I thought it was just me. I am shocked at how low the clicks are paying on search. I use the feature as "search" for my site. I get few searchers, but a very high click through rate. But the clicks are pennies (literally).
