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 Chapter 2, 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 Chapter 5 — 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 Chapter 5.) Doing so calls up the first screen of
a wizard 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.
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 8-1) 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 8-2 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.
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 8-1) 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 chapter.) 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,
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.
• 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,
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,
3. Click the Control Panel link.
The Control Panel page appears,
4. Click the Make Money link at the top of the Control Panel page
5. In the new page that appears select the I
Already Have an AdSense Account radio button.
The Existing AdSense User form appears,
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.
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, select how you
want the Google custom search box to appear on your page and then
click the Save Changes button.
4. In the next section, , 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,
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.
You also have the option to link your logo to a specific Web site. For
example, if you want your logo to appear on the search results page and
to link back to your main Web site, then enter the main URL for your
Web site in the Link Logo to URL text box.
6. When you’ve entered the logo and link information, click the Save
Changes button.
The small sample display above the logo and link text boxes displays
your logo if you choose to use this option.
Although all three of these customization options are on one page, you don’t
have to change them all at the same time. You can change any single option
on the page without affecting the other options. If you want to change the
colors, but leave the logo you already have in place, or even leave it off completely,
adjust your color settings and click the Save Changes button, and only
the changes you actually want will take effect.