What is the best way to use this function? Currently not alot of my pages are indexed, not really sure why, but they aren't. I was wondering if it would be wise to take off the option to search my site, and just let them search the web? Do you earn money when they click a link like that? Also, that would kind of be encouraging the competition of my site. What would you do in this situation?
You get paid only when they click on the "sponsored links" section of your SERPs. Most people use it purely as a search function for the users. Profit from search clicks are neglible for just about everyone.
Actually, people sometimes like saerching the web. Not just your site. And yea, give it some time before Google crawls your site. Have you tried Google Sitemap? It works for me!
Place a search box + bookmark this page JS and you can actually get repeat visitors. Not only that, search box CTRs are through the roof! I got an amount over 300% on one particular site, emailed Google, and they said it was okay. It seems a lot of people will click, go back, click again, go back in order to find what they want.
Alright, I guess I should do the bookmark thing! Also, it seems that last night about half of my page got indexed =) So I'm pretty excited to see what the rest of today brings!
I placed a search box on 3 of my sites today having never bothered with them before. They look good to me, after 3 hours I have a search eCPM of over $100, early days but this looks like it could add a decent percentage to my daily earnings. The CPC I am getting is much higher than I expected aswell after reading various other posts about how low they tend to be for search......
Using search box is a waste of time and space imo, a good blended ad can make you much more money... everybody knows google or yahoo, they are searching there.. Art, that 300% CTR was made by your friends? It seems impossible to me .. or maybe one visitor made 3 clicks for you... anyway the chances are sooo low..
i disagree , a search gives your users a better experience, allowing them more freedom - also you profit it from it.
better freedom? hmm, actually I use firefox with google toolbar, and I search with that toolbar even if I`m not on a site, just open firefox.. well this is more freedom imo if you make good money with the search box, congrats
See: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html It helps Google know what pages are at your site and may help it to get indexed faster. It will not help the actual ranking, just the indexing.
Don't think of the search box as a pure monetization option. WAIT, think of it AS a pure monetization option: You're giving people the option to set your page as their home, AND if they want to leave your site, they can perform a related search in your search box, giving you more revenue. Now imagine if this visitor does this regularly... In the longterm, search boxes will and do add up. People are silly if they're thinking "it's just a few searches and a few dollars", but every dollar adds up to that $5000 etc.