Google search box after 1st post

[neforum]

I've been displaying the Google search box on my search page for quite some time, but found that it doesn't contribute a lot to clicks or revenue (less than $1 per month), although the CTR is high. Now that I have the extreme styles mod installed I can do a lot more with placement, including putting code into the middle of threads. As ads are a bit obtrusive in threads (and I already have them top and bottom anyway) I've decided that the most useful resource will be a Google search box after the 1st post. This looks good, is not 'in your face', and opens a search in a new window, which can be left open for other searches if required.

This should ensure that the Search box gets a lot more impressions, and if the CTR stays high this could be a really useful contributor to my income from this site.

What do you think?

[PioneerGold]

I have never made any money with Google search. This includes with lots of impressions and clicks. The payout is too low!

Getting more people to use Google search doesn't necessarily mean significant $$$.

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[iskandar]

Yeah, tried it but it just sits there and do nothing. Thinking of removing it soon

[Worldwid]

I had it on my site for a day, I made about 1/10000 of what I made from ads, and then I removed it the next day

[david_sakh]

i think if you have poor/mediocre content, you'll see more impressions on the searchbar, what with people not having found what they were looking for.

[exaro]

I actually tried google search one day on a flash game listing site (haha) and I only had between 30 and 40 impressions with 3 clicks and made 5 dollars. But after that I had no clicks so it seemed to work for me but...only temporarily

[Mia]

While I will agree it does not make much, it pays the cable bill for me (without getting into how much it makes).

One of the things I found is that it is best to have a number of "Google" search sites in order to actually make money with it.

I have targeted searches for certain groups of people. For instance at our ISP we use the Search as a starting point for our users and have a "Google Search" called MiaSearch which links off our home page to here: http://mia.net/HTML/search.html

Gives it a Google look, and our users use it.

For one of our other sites we have an actual domain name of searching for McCoy Pottery called http://mccoysearch.com/ which again has a "Google" look and feel to it. We find a lot of people using it because they are usually searching our McCoy Pottery group of sites among other things. We've coded the search such that you can search for McCoy Pottery pieces in our auction site, discussions from our forums, archives from our mailing list, and of course the web site itself as well as our pottery store.

I've got about 6 Google Search sites in all and the combined nature of the sites and the groups of people they target actually convert. Again, not making hoards of money, but I've never been below $30/mo. from the start. I suppose if I spent more time with it I could be doing that or more per day.

As always YMMV.

[exaro]

That's a nice idea MIA, I might do something like that.

[vprp]

That is a great idea mia. Thanks for the idea!

[Mia]

Not a problem. Good luck!