Would a search form work as an inbound link?

[shrirch]

I have just finished work on a site which lists virtually all known widgets and has a comprehensive set of reviews. I make my money by affiliate fees if / when people hitting the site click on a link to buy.

My question to everyone is, if I developed a search form, which allows people to search through about 30 thousand widgets, with no banners or advertising being thrown around, would they be interested?

Would the form count as inbound links?

[chris_f]

shrirch,

Spider's/Bot's cannot fill out forms so I doubt they will count as links.

Chris

[trismegisto]

Hi shrirch

if I developed a search form, which allows people to search through about 30 thousand widgets…
Would the form count as inbound links?

I don’t quite understand you here, i think you mean the SERP’s links that show when you searched something, but as chris_f said: “Spider's/Bot's cannot fill out forms…”. For that SERP’s to show, you would need a user searching for a widget, spiders will not search anything.

Following your same logic, you could build a page showing “the most searched widgets”, those inbound links should count. But then, you will have to evaluate if this is relevant for the user.

Are we on the same channel?

Hope it helps

[shrirch]

Probably be a simple form, with a link below it saying.. "Click here for advanced options".