I have looked over the T&C and Guidelines or whatever they're called and didn't see an answer to my question, specifically. What I am wondering is can I offer a google search box, and offer a revenue share just for searching through that box? I would not be saying "search and click the ads," just saying, Hey, use this search box for your everyday internet searches and I'll pay you x amount per search. Technically, I figure this would be allowed because I am not encouraging ad clicks, or guaranteeing myself any revenue, but rather saying to use the search box as like, their homepage or whatever. Also, I was wondering if I would be able track what is being searched. Like, on my reports for analytics or adsense if there were 4 searches performed will I see "flu symptoms, chevy cars, how to tie a knot, myspace layouts"... Andddd, my last question, can you put up a new search box for every page you have a search on? That way you can see which search boxes are performing the best (at different locations on the page or whatever). I tried posting this in the Compliance section but after a day, no luck from there... so I'll try here.
I've seen this done before. Can't see how it can be that profitable tbh. Search doesnt make that much anyway, let alone if your sharing it.
Well, for the idea I have I think it would work (in terms of profit, that may prove to be the 2nd most important thing when it's all said and done), but only if I can monitor each individual search box that I make.
I don't think Google will allow you to do that... the only way to earn from adsense search is when the user clicks the search ads, so if you pay them money when they click on the premium ads, I guess they'll see it as a violation of the T&C. About the second, yes, you can see the queries in Advanced Reports, "Top queries data" type. And the third, you can assign channels to each search box, so you can generate reports for those channels individually.
I'm sure that some of the "big players" would disagree with you. The usual eCPM for search is a lot higher than Adsense for Content. If you use it as your website search, and your website gets a lot of visitors, I'm sure that you can make some nice money from it.
Yep totally agree here - search definitely does make money, and usually much more than content ads. Not sure what your idea is surrounding this (or if its against the Adsense T&C's), but I do believe you could do something surrounding this.
I was talking from my own experience. One ad unit vs a search box the ad unit always make more. But sure, if you've got google search on a site getting a lot visitors you're going to do nicely with it.
Well, I did not want to encourage clicking on the ads after searching, just searching only. The clicking of the ads will take care of itself because people naturally click on the ads because the "sponsored links" or whatever it says isn't even noticed most of the time. People read titles and go from there. I am not saying "click on the ads after your search and you get 50%"... I would simply be saying "pretend this page is your search engine and have at it, and I will provide you funding for doing so." Make sense to anyone? Basically there is no guarantee of income from this, because if it doesn't create any revenue, I still have to keep my promise to pay the people searching. It's just.. an idea I had.
I guess then it comes on how the payment works. If you pay them a fixed amount per month ($5), i guess then it may not break the rules. However, you're only get paid for premium clicks, so if you pay them a percentage of that, a number of users will try to take advantage by clicking a lot, and you'll get banned. What you can do is to submit your idea to the Adsense support team, as specific as possible, and see what they say. Still, keep in mind that you (usually) get banned only once.