5 Simple Reasons That I Like Google AdSense For Search – A Quick Review

I like Google’s “AdSense for Search” program for five reasons:

1. It offers my website visitors the best search experience. Most of the alternatives – like the built-in search engine for Wordpress blogs, for example – just aren’t as good at finding the right content.

2. I suspect it could help Google index my website. I have no proof of this, and frankly I’m guessing that there’s no connection between Google’s AdSense Search program and Google’s main search engine…but there could be, so why not.

3. I can track search queries. Google’s AdSense for Search offers a “top queries” report that shows what people search for when they use my site’s search box.

4. I can brand the results. I can either show results on a branded page with my logo, or I can show results on a page of my website. Either way, it makes users more comfortable to know they haven’t really left your site when they use your search engine.

5. It makes me a little moolah. Not much, mind you, but some. Over the last few months, my effective CPM (eCPM) on Adsense for Search has been between $20-$30. Now if I could get the standard content ads to that eCPM, I could retire…

How To Setup Google AdSense for Search

If you don’t already have one, it’s time to create an AdSense account. Next, click on “AdSense Setup” and you’ll see the “Get Ads” page. Find the listing for “AdSense for Search,” and when the new page loads, you’ll see “Wizard | Single Page” at the very top. Click on “Single Page”…and this is what you should see:

Selected Sites

Under “search type,” I’ve always chosen the “only sites I select” option because I’m using this to power search for my website only. So, after chosing that option, I would enter www.mysite.com in the “selected sites” box.

Optional Keywords

I suppose you don’t have to enter anything into the optional keywords box, but I would recommend it. Google is going to make up their own mind as to the topics and relevant keywords for your site, but adding some keywords here would certainly help Google eliminate any ambiguity. i.e., if your website is about art glass, it might be useful to enter various types of art glass types (plates, vases, paperweights, etc.).

Custom Channels

Custom channels are great for tracking revenue on particular portions of a website. For instance, you could use one search engine on the homepage, and another on all of your article pages to see where users are more likely to search. This can also be a sort of backwards analytics tool, as you can see where your users are more likely to resort to searching your site instead of hunting through your menus.

Look and Feel

I’m a big fan of the standard watermark option, but the downside is that it requires Javascript. For me personally, this is fine. However, for clients I’m reluctant to incorporate elements that require Javascript to function because about 5% of all internet user don’t have Javascript enabled. Keep in mind that the search box will function for users without Javascript enabled, it just won’t show Google’s watermark logo in the box.

Search Results Style

If you want to keep the user on your website, you’ll need to setup a search page and add some code to that page to make everything work. If you want to be lazy like me, just choose “open results on Google in the same window”, then place your logo on that page. In addition to being easy, I like this option because I think it’s more familiar to users to see search results on a clean, un-cluttered page (kind of like Google.com).

Ad Placement and Palette

I’m a bad marketing expert, because I’ve never ever bothered to test ad placement on Adsense for Search. I’ve just selected “top and right” because that’s what Google uses on Google.com. My thinking is that if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me…but testing would be wise if you have the time.

As for color pallete, if you’re opening the results on your website, then you’ll want to match the colors to your site. However, if you’re opening on a separate page, Google’s standard palette might be OK.

When you’re all done, you can name your creation and get the code. Google will spit out something like this:

<form id="cse-search-box" action="http://www.google.com/cse">
<div><input name="cx" type="hidden" value="partner-pub-xxxxxx" /> <input name="ie" type="hidden" value="ISO-8859-1" /> <input name="q" size="31" type="text" /> <input name="sa" type="submit" value="Search" /></div>
</form><script src="http://www.google.com/cse/brand?form=cse-search-box&amp;lang=en" type="text/javascript"></script>

Now all you have to do is integrate that into your website. Next week, I’ll show you how to modify this code to work with the typical search found on a WordPress-powered website.