revenue stream back to your pockets. If yours is a site that’s hundreds of pages deep, such a search capability for both the site and the Web is essential. Even if you have a smaller site though, search is an important element. Users may come to your site and find only part of what they’re looking for. How will they find the rest of it? Whether it’s on your site or not, you need to provide visitors with a way to find what they’re looking for.
AdSense for Search gives you the search capabilities you need, but you have to use it well. You have to work through a few things, including figuring out how your revenues will be made and what kind of search options will be best for the visitors who come to your site. You also have to think about whether it’s worth customizing your search box. (Hey, adding your own logo is a
nice touch!) All these options make creating your search box a little more involved than creating ads for content — the stuff I cover in next webpages but I walk you through the rough parts.
Searching for Revenues When it comes to searches that really turn up results, Google is the King of the Hill. A dozen or so other search engines are out there, and some of them even offer search capabilities for Web sites and enterprises; but none of them match the power of Google and none of them have gained the confidence of users like Google has. Google’s known for results, and that’s why using
AdSense for Search makes so much sense.
If you’ve had a Web site for any amount of time, you’ve probably already discovered that you must have search capabilities on your site. Whether those search capabilities are only for your Web site or are for the entire Web is a decision that’s best based on the amount of content you have on your site, but it’s probably no secret to you that users want search capabilities. In fact,
you may have already added Google Search to your Web site, using either Google’s free search capabilities or the Google Custom Search Engine. So, if you’ve already added Google Search to your site or you’ve strongly considered doing so, why not go the extra mile and add a search capability that makes you a little bit of money? Admittedly, AdSense for Search probably
won’t ever make you as much money as AdSense for Content, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying. Why let even a little bit of potential coin surf away from your site untapped?
Here’s how it works: A visitor to your site types a search query into your AdSense-enabled Google search box in hopes of finding something either on the Web as a whole or just on your Web site. You don’t get paid just because the visitor used the search box on your Web site. Instead, you get paid if that visitor clicks one of the ads in the search results that are shown from the search box that you put on your page. It’s a secondary-click revenue stream, which means that, with AdSense for Search, the revenues are admittedly a little harder to get to. Visitors must first use the search box and then click through an ad for you to get paid.
Just because it’s not a direct click doesn’t mean you should ignore the potential of this AdSense approach. The fact is that every site has visitors that won’t find exactly what they’re looking for. If they found your site with a search engine, they’ll likely go back to that search engine and refine their search term. If they found your site directly and it doesn’t contain what they
want, they’ll probably surf away to search for what they want. Also, if you already have search capabilities on your site, visitors who use those capabilities are already seeing the ads that are shown in the search results. You’re just not getting paid for them. If you have the capability
anyway, you should at least be able to collect revenue from increasing Google’s confidence level.
Besides, if the visitor will leave your site anyway to search for the information she’s looking for, why not give her the option of searching from your site? The visitor benefits in time saved, and you benefit in the possible revenue stream.
Plenty of options for the types of search you can allow are available, too. Users can
* Conduct a site search
* Conduct a Web search
* Conduct a targeted search
* See results returned on your Web site
* See results returned on the Google site
It’s not just plain vanilla search, in other words. You can really punch up your search capabilities so that your site visitors can search with style and find what they’re looking for. You can even direct the search so that users aren’t pulling information from your competition. Search in Style AdSense for Search is a capability that’s automatically enabled if you’re registered with AdSense at all. So, if you’ve created AdSense ads for your Web site content before now, you won’t have any problems creating your first AdSense search box. (If you haven’t created an AdSense ad or even created your AdSense account, flip to previous webpages, where I cover all the details you
need for getting your ads off the ground.) It should only take a few minutes to create a search box for your Web site. I spell out the basics of setting up a search box in previous webpages — you know,
logging on to your AdSense account, clicking the AdSense Setup tab, and then making your way through the AdSense for Search Wizard to generate the HTML code for your Web site — but I want to show you some of the tweaks available to you. For that, make your way to the AdSense Setup tab and click the AdSense for Search button. (If you need to refresh your memory
on how to do that, check out previous webpages.) Doing so calls up the first screen of a wizard (as shown in Figure H1) that walks you through customizing your search box. (Note that AdSense likes to keep things as simple as possible, so the customization page for search boxes is very similar to the content ad customization page.) With the first screen up and ready on your monitor,
you’re ready to tweak your search box however you want to. The next few sections show you how.
Figure H1
Web and site searches
The first decision you have to make when it comes to designing your search box is whether to allow your users to search only the Web as a whole or to allow them to search the Web as well as your site or other sites that you choose. If your site is relatively small (under a couple dozen pages), there’s probably no sense in having a site search capability unless there are other,
specific sites that you want search results drawn from. This is a function that works well if you have multiple Web sites and want to keep your sites in front of your site visitors as much as possible. If you have a single site, with just a few pages, it’s not quite as useful.
The more pages you have, the more difficult it is for your site visitors to find what they’re looking for, so you should definitely include site search capabilities in the mix. The search boxes look a little different, depending on the capabilities that you allow.
The top section of the first screen of the AdSense for Search Wizard (refer to Figure H1) is where you set up your Search Type options. Selecting the Google WebSearch radio button sets up the Web only search, whereas selecting the Google WebSearch + SiteSearch radio button lets you specify three specific sites to search. (You enter the URLs for your three sites in the text fields provided.)
Figure H2
Figure H2 shows the AdSense example for a search box that searches the Web as well as Web sites that you specify. You can enter URLs for up to three different Web sites that visitors can then search either individually or as part of a larger search.
Figure H3
Figure H3 shows the AdSense example for a search box that allows visitors to search only the Web. Which type of search is more effective for your site is determined by the site content and by what you hope to accomplish with an AdSense search box. If you have multiple sites, you can keep them in front of your site visitors even if your visitors don’t find what they need on the current site. Use AdSense search to provide for as many of your site visitors’ needs as possible even if your sites won’t answer their questions. The middle and bottom sections of the AdSense for Search Wizard’s first screen (refer to Figure H1) let you customize the appearance of the search box itself as well as set a few other preferences. Neat stuff that I cover in sufficient
detail — but not now. (I lead you back to the wizard in the “Creating an AdSense Search Box section,” later in this webpages.) Right now I want to introduce you to a more high-powered way to customize your search engine with the Google Custom Search Engine page.
Creating customized searches One other option for creating a search box for your Web site is to create a customized search engine. This isn’t exactly a feature of AdSense, but instead
is a separate Google capability that works with AdSense so that you can monetize the search capabilities that you give to users while directing it much more specifically.
A custom search engine is a creator-defined search capability, so you can specify which Web sites (or even which pages) you want to allow your visitors to search. The really cool thing about a custom search engine is that you can have more than the three sites that AdSense makes available for searches with an AdSense-specific search box. So if you want to allow your visitors to search 7, 15, or even 50 specific sites, a custom search engine is the way to go. Before you can connect custom search capabilities to your AdSense account, you must first create a custom search engine. Here’s how:
1. Point your browser to www.google.com/coop/cse. The Google Custom Search Engine page appears.
2. Click the Create Custom Search Engine button.
3. In the new page that appears, enter your username and password in the space provided and then click Sign In. You can use the same username and password you use for your
AdSense account.
4. In the new page that appears, enter the setup information for your search engine, as shown in Figure H4. This information includes
• A name and description for your search engine.
• Keywords that define the topic of your search engine.
• The main language for your search engine.
• Your choice on the scope of the search. You can limit the search to specific sites or you can also set up your search so that it either searches the whole Web or the whole Web with emphasis on the sites that you specify.
If you’ve decided to specify certain sites to be included in your search parameters, you can list the specific URLs you want to allow in the text box provided. Go ahead and choose as many sites
as you like. You’re allowed up to 5,000 specific sites, which are also called annotations.
• The specific edition of the customized search engine you want to use. The standard edition is free but requires that you allow ads to be shown. The business edition allows you to create a customized search engine with no ads.
Figure H4
• An I Have Read and Agree to the Terms of Service check box. (Okay, it doesn’t sound much like setting anything up, but if you don’t select this check box, you’re stuck in an eternal loop you’ll never break out of.)
5. After you fill in all the requested information — and agree to the terms of service — click the Next button.
6. On the second page of the wizard, test your search engine by running a test query. The results from the test are shown on the page, as shown in Figure H5.
7. After you test it, you can select the Send Confirmation Email To . . . check box near the bottom of the page to have a confirmation message sent to your Inbox. The confirmation message provides links to additional information and capabilities, such as managing your custom search engine. This isn’t a required option, but I suggest that you select it for at least the first
search engine that you create.
8. Click Finish to be taken to your main Google Custom Search Engine page. Google Custom Search Engine is a beta program, which means it’s still in the testing phases even though it’s available to the general public. Beta programs sometimes have glitches or bugs and don’t work exactly as they should, so keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary and expect changes in the future. After the program’s been sufficiently tested and improved, it comes
out of beta testing and becomes a general release program, which means that the glitches and bugs are less likely to occur and updates to the program happen less often and on more regular schedules.
Now you have a custom search engine. Just because you have it doesn’t mean that you’ll start earning money from it, though. You still need to connect your Custom Search Engine account to your AdSense account before you can get paid for the ads that appear on the search results page.
1. Point your browser to www.google.com/coop/cse. The Google Custom Search Engine page appears.
2. Click the Manage Your Existing Search Engines link. If you’re not automatically logged in to your account, you may be prompted for your username and password. If needed, enter your e-mail address and password in the spaces provided and click Log In. You’ll be taken to the Manage Search Engines page, as shown in Figure H6.
Figure H5
Figure H6
3. Click the Control Panel link. The Control Panel page appears, as shown in Figure H7.
4. Click the Make Money link at the top of the Control Panel page (also shown in Figure H7).
5. In the new page that appears (as shown in Figure H8), select the I Already Have an AdSense Account radio button. The Existing AdSense User form appears, as shown in Figure H9.
By the way, I’m assuming here that you do have an AdSense account. If you don’t, choose the I am a New AdSense User option, which takes you to set up an AdSense account.
Figure H7
Figure H8
Figure H9
6. Fill in the information requested to link your AdSense account and then click the Submit button. It’s simple information: e-mail address, zip code, phone number, and a
drop-down menu from which you can select your location. If all the information matches, you receive a confirmation letting you know the two accounts are now connected. Being connected simply means that your search box not only appears on your page but also sends information
about ads that appear in search results to your AdSense account. That means that when your visitors use your custom search box to search for something and then click an ad while they’re viewing the search results, you get paid for it just as if you were using an AdSense for Search box.
Now, you may be wondering why in the world you’d go to all this trouble to add a customized search engine to your Web site when AdSense has similar controls built into the AdSense for Search capability. The answer is: It’s all about control. You can use the AdSense for Search Wizard to customize your search engine — specifying whether users can search the Web or other sites, for example, or customizing the appearance of the search engine that you make available from your site. Those capabilities are limited with AdSense though. (You can only specify
up to three sites for customized searches, for example.) If you really want to make an impact with your search engine capabilities, using a Google Custom Search Engine is the way to go. You can add more Web sites to the SiteSearch capabilities, and you can further customize the
search engine to reflect your style and the design of your Web site.
Many companies or Web site owners that have a large number of pages or a complex forum system use the Google Custom Search Engine because it makes their site and their site capabilities more valuable to site users. It’s really your call though. If there’s no added value in creating a custom engine, don’t put the time into it. I’m always an advocate for anything that adds value to site visitors because those visitors really do remember (and revisit) the
sites that they find most useful. So, that’s it. Now you have a custom search engine connected to your AdSense account, providing an additional revenue stream — and you know what makes it valuable to you! You can also go back into your Custom Search Engine account at any time and tweak the search engine you created by changing the Web sites that it searches or even the look of the search engine.
To change the way your custom search engine looks, try this:
1. Log in to your custom search engine Control Panel, as outlined in the previous steps, and then click the Control Panel link for the search engine that you want to customize. Doing so opens the Control Panel page for that search engine.
2. On the Control Panel page, select the Look and Feel link to be taken to the Customize Your Search Box page. On this page, you have several options for changing the appearance of
your search box, including different logo configurations and color options.
3. In the first section of the page, as shown in Figure H10, select how you want the Google custom search box to appear on your page and then click the Save Changes button.
Figure H10
Figure H11
4. In the next section, as shown in Figure H11, customize the colors of the border, title, background, text, links, visited links, and cached links and then click the Save Changes button.
You can do this by choosing the desired colors from the Color Picker — the small colored boxes next to each option — or by entering the hexadecimal numbers that represent the colors.
The results of the changes you make are displayed in the sample above the color options.
5. To add your personalized logo, enter the URL for the logo in the Image URL text box, as shown in Figure H12. If you don’t know what the URL is, you can open another browser window
and go to your Web site. Then right-click the logo of your site and select Copy Image Location, flip back to the Google Custom Search Engine customization page, and paste the URL into the text box provided.
Figure H12
The results of the changes you make are displayed in the sample above
the color options.
5. To add your personalized logo, enter the URL for the logo in the Image URL text box, as shown in Figure H12. If you don’t know what the URL is, you can open another browser window
and go to your Web site. Then right-click the logo of your site and select Copy Image Location, flip back to the Google Custom Search Engine customization page, and paste the URL into the text box provided. not too tough — I’d say it’s fifth-grade-science-project easy — and should take you less time than brewing your first cup of coffee in the morning (unless you
have a Bunn Coffee Maker — those take like three minutes, so you’d have to hurry to beat one). Here’s how it’s done:
1. Point your browser to www.adsense.com, log on to your AdSense account, and then click the AdSense Setup tab.
2. On the Setup tab, select the AdSense for Search option. Doing so calls up the AdSense for Search Wizard (refer to Figure H1).
3. In the Search Type section of page, select the radio button corresponding to the type of search you want the search box to perform: Google WebSearch or Google WebSearch + SiteSearch.
4. In the Search Box Style section of the page, use the options to customize the look of your search box. As Figure H13 shows, you have two options for logo styles and several
different combinations of styles that can change the look of your search box.
Your options include
• Google Logo: If you select the Logo Above Text Box check box, the Google logo appears above the search box. If you leave this box deselected, the Google logo appears to the left of the text box.
• “Google Search” on Button: Selecting this option ditches the Google logo and just puts the Google name on the search button.
• Search Button Below Text Box: If you select this check box, the Search button (the thing a user clicks to start a search) appears under the search box. Otherwise, the button appears to the right of the search box.
Figure H13
• Background color and text color: Here you can use a drop-down menu to select the color that you want to use as your search box background — your choices here are white, black, or gray — as well as specify if you want the text to be black or white.
• Text box length: Here you can choose the number of characters that you want to allow in the search box. The default is 31 characters, but you can change that to whatever length suits you.
5. In the More Options section, select the main language for your search box from the drop-down menu. This setting refers to the language of your Web site. Visitors can choose
to search in their own native language if it’s different than the one you select, but you still have to make a choice from more than 30 selections available in the drop-down menu.
6. Still in the More Options section of the page, choose the site encoding you’ll use for your Web page from the Your Site Encoding drop-down menu. Site encoding here refers to the computer language or code that your site is created in. (Even if you’re using HTML, there are several versions of it.) The default is set to West European Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1). If you don’t
know what the encoding for your site is, leave the default in place.
7. Select the country your domain is registered in from the Country drop-down menu and then click Continue to go to the second page of the wizard.
The second page, as shown in Figure H14, is where you customize the look of your search results page.
8. In the second page of the wizard, select the color template you want to use for the search results page from the drop-down menu at the center-right. You have six palettes to choose from, but keep in mind that you can skip the palettes and just enter hexadecimal numbers for custom colors in the appropriate text boxes — Border, Title, Background, for example —
to precisely match your Web site. (next webpage has more on hexadecimal numbers and how you can use them to match the colors of your search box to the colors on your Web site.)
9. To add your own corporate logo to your search results page, enter the
URL where the logo is located in the Logo Image URL text box. Note: If you want your logo to appear above the search box, select the Above Search Box check box. Otherwise, the logo appears to the left of the box.
Figure H14
10. (Optional) Add a Logo Destination URL. The Logo Destination URL is optional, but should you decide to use it, this will link your logo back to a Web page that you specify. That can be
the main page of your Web site or any other page that you choose.
11. In the More Options section of the screen, as shown in Figure H15, select where you want the search results to appear.
Your choices here are
• On Google, in the Same Window: Opening search results on Google in the same window replaces your Web page with the Google page. It’s streamlined — no additional windows are opened — but it also leads visitors away from your Web site. The concern with leading visitors away is that they won’t click back and you’ll lose them completely. The tradeoff is that opening the results on Google’s pages gives your site visitors confidence that their search is being done by the best search engine on the Web.
• On Google, in a New Window: Opening search results in a new window is an excellent way to ensure that your site remains open for users and that the user also feels the confidence that comes with seeing Google-logoed pages. A second window (or tab, if you’re
using a Web browser that supports tabbed browsing) opens with the search results, but your Web site also remains open. When users finish browsing search results, they can close the window in which the search results are displayed, but your Web site will still be open.
That’s no guarantee that the visitor will continue surfing your site — he could close your site, too — but it does leave the possibility that he’ll continue surfing through your pages.
• On Your Own Web Site: Opening search results on your Web site keeps the user on your site, but also strips away some of the confidence that comes with Google search results. The search results are stylized to match your site, but still contain the Google logo.
They’re just not actual Google pages, which could erode user confidence some.
Figure H15
12. If you want to enable site-flavored searches, select the Customize the Type of Search Results I Get to My Site Content check box. Site-flavored search is a progressive technology — meaning that the results get more accurate over time — that pulls search results that are related to the content of your Web site. In the beginning, search results are more general, but over time the results become more refined and better related to your site content.
13. If you want to use the SafeSearch option, select the Use SafeSearch check box.
SafeSearch filters out nearly all the adult content (such as pornography) from search results.
14. Select a Custom Channel for tracking earning results from the dropdown menu of custom channels that you’ve created. Remember, channels are basically a tagging method that allows you to track specific ads or groups of ads.
15. Select Continue to generate the search box code, as shown in Figure H16, for pasting into your Web site.
Figure H16
Keep in mind when you’re customizing the search results page that you definitely
don’t want to go crazy with all the colors. The last thing you want to do is create a kaleidoscope that gives your site visitors headaches.
A better option is to stick to standard design principles and have a single color for the background — preferably one that matches the background of your Web site — and then use no more than three colors in the foreground.
For example, if you have a basic white background for your Web site, that counts as one color.
Then, you can style your text in black, links that haven’t been clicked as blue, and links that have been clicked as red. Including the white background, you have four total colors. Four colors won’t jar the user, and your search results will still look very professional. After you generate the code for your search box, copy and paste the code onto your Web page in the same way that you copy and paste AdSense for Content code. It may take a little tweaking to get the search box in exactly the spot you want it, but you can move it around with your HTML editor to
ensure that it appears in the proper place. One thing you should know about designing your search box is that with the customization that’s available, you can change the look of the search box completely. You should not, however, change the color of the search button. Because it’s Google and people trust Google, they’ll recognize the gray search button, and they’re more likely to use it. If you change the search button, visitors could mistake your search box for something belonging to some other search company, and their confidence in finding what they’re looking for
might not be as high. Adding search capabilities through AdSense makes sense whether you have a site of 5 pages or 500. Users may come to your site and find everything they need, but if they don’t, they’ll go somewhere to search out the answers they seek. Give them a search box linked directly from your site, and you’ll not only help them out, but you might gain a little financial reward in the process.
