BEYOND BASIC ADS Catch Fickle Visitors with the Google Search Box

BEYOND BASIC ADS

Catch Fickle Visitors With The Google Search Box

Finding Money With Search

What happens when your visitors can't find what they want on your website? They might be bored, probably they're hungry for more or they might want to refine their search. If you have a Google Search Box, you can now retain these 'quitters' — and make money from ads they click from their search results! The Google Search Box isn't just an added convenience for your visitors — it can actually make you money! When your users enter a search term, you’ll receive a commission for any ad they click on the results page.

If your AdSense ads are being ignored then, add a link at the bottom of the AdSense ads, inviting visitors to try Google search. A simple note should do the trick. Try something like: "Can't find what you're looking for? Try Google Search!"

A Google Search box allows your visitors to specify their exact search terms, thereby "pulling" more relevant ads to your page. Using the Search feature, you can pull up on-demand AdSense ads at the top of the search results. At the bottom of the Google text ads, place a link to the Google Search bar, inviting readers to Search for better-targeted content and offers. When visitors click an ad, YOU get paid! You can invite users to search within the website or the entire web. As far as possible, use a staid gray button for the Google search feature. It looks more believable — and legitimate! Note that Google has not played around with its own search buttons, although the logo itself has undergone many theme-based transformations. The "Search" feature is an important part of content-rich websites. On my website above, users are invited to search different threads within the website 'by keyword' and 'by username' creating a good potential to merge in a Google search box. Google Search Boxes are getting increasingly popular with Internet Forums, enabling users to pull up relevant text ads "on demand"!

Learn How To Add Google Search To Your Web Page

Adding Google Search to your Web page is very easy. This Step-by-Step Tutorial shows you how:

1. Log in to your AdSense Account and click the "Account Information" tab.

2. From the Account Information Page, click on "Products" and then the "Edit Information" button to Subscribe to AdSense for Search.

3. Click the "Search Settings" tab to specify your search preferences and results. Paste the html code on your web page and start turning those clicks into AdSense cash!

How to… Add Google "AdSense for Search" to your Web Page!

 Showing Your Results On Your Site

One of the decisions you’ll have to make when you put an AdSense search box on your site is where to bring up the results page. You have three choices:

● On a Google page in the same window;

● On a Google page in a new window;

● On a page on your website.

Clearly, the last option is the best. You’ll be given two codes: one for the search box and one for the results. You’ll need to paste the search box code in the appropriate location on your Web page. The search results code goes on a page that you’ll have to create specially to hold the results. Not only will you be able to offer your users a search option and earn from the ads that appear on that page, you’ll also be able to show your own internal links and AdSense ads to keep them on your site.

Fig. 8.2 Users have to scroll past an entire screen of ads and links to reach the search results at WorldVillage.com.

Flavoring Your Search Results

Another easy decision is whether or not to “site-flavor” your search. This is a real no-brainer. Site-flavoring lets Google figure out what your site is about so that searches made from it are better targeted. So if you have a site about music, someone tossing “bass” into your search box is more likely to get results about guitars than singing fish. That’s an option you’ll definitely want to switch on!

To Search Or Not To Search

Putting a Google search box on your site brings advantages and disadvantages. The big plus is that all the ads the user sees are going to be relevant. The user chooses the keyword so the results are going to be right in line with what the user wants. On the other hand, that means you’ve got no control over the keywords they choose so you can’t try to promote high-paying keywords. You have to take what you’re given. You could have a high click-through rate but low revenues (although there’s still no guarantee that the user will click on an ad rather than an unpaid listing on the search results page.) But your users will leave your site at some point anyway. Why shouldn’t you try to make money when they do click away? Even if Search doesn’t bring you huge amounts of money, you should still use it as an added revenue source and to bring extra functionality to your users. I look at it this way. If a visitor doesn’t find what they want on my site, I’d prefer that they leave some change in the “tip jar” on the way out the door!

Home Page Searching

One way to increase your revenues from searching is to encourage your users to use your site as their home page. Many users have Google as their home page. If you’re offering the same service as Google, using their search box and delivering their results, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be searching from your page — and giving you revenue from the ads.

Just encourage your users, especially users with Google as their home page, to switch to you, and you’ll be able to make the most of your search function and your ads.

Customizing Your Search

Google lets you customize the search box to match your site in the same way that you can customize your ad units. But a different principle applies here that applies to your ads: you want your search box to look like a search box. You can certainly make the box look like part of your site so that it looks attractive but as I said, keep the button grey. People trust Google to deliver results that they want. If the search box reminds them of Google, they’re more likely to use it than go to Google.com and search from there.

Google’s Custom Search Engine

One of the things I love most about Google is that they’re always improving their services and coming up with new ways of earning money through websites. I’ve never been very enthusiastic about Google’s Search boxes. I’ve always seen them more of an added functionality for my users than a way of earning extra revenue. Google’s Custom Search Engines though change all that. These let you do all sorts of things. Perhaps the most important is that they limit the scope of a user’s search to sites that you’ve selected. What’s the advantage of that? Enter any keyword into a Google search box and only a fraction of the results are going to be relevant. Google might be a very powerful search engine, but to get the information you need, you’ll still have to filter out the sites with poor content, little information and ads instead of text. A custom search engine lets you do the filtering for your users so that they don’t have to do it themselves. Not only will they then be less likely to leave your site for another through your search box without leaving something in the tip jar, they might even come back to your site every time they want to search for information on your topic.

It also means that you can send users to other sites you own instead of watching them surf off across the Internet. You can even format your search results page to match the look of your website, invite your readers to submit sites that they find useful, and decide where on the results page to put the ads. (Top and right works best.) Fin