Google-powered search engine for web sites

The other day I received this letter from AdSense:

Programmable Search Engine revenue sharing changes start April 30th, 2021

Beginning April 30th, 2021, we will discontinue revenue sharing on the following search engines:

•

The public URL - a link provided for a Google hosted public page for your engine that hosts both the search box and the search results

•

The Google hosted layout, in which only the search results are displayed on a Google-hosted webpage

Search engines that fall into the two above categories will continue to show ads, but no revenue will be shared.

What does this mean for me?

•

To continue sharing revenue, you’ll need to use the Search Element deployed on your own site, which will continue to allow for monetization.

What should I do next?

•

Please review the developer site for more information.

Do you understand something? I did not understand anything, especially this text is difficult to perceive in a localized version.

The bottom line is that in the search results on your site, ads will still appear, but Google will take all the money for this ad.

“The Google hosted layout” - what is it? I suspect this is the layer on top of the site that the search results are showing, or am I wrong?

The links lead to pages with technical documentation, which does not increase the clarity of the question – does this mean that the "Search engine" blocks made in the AdSense dashboard will no longer make money for the site owners? Or does this not apply to these blocks?

From the documentation and from the AdSense dashboard, links lead to https://cse.google.com/cse/all, sometimes to https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/cse – both show the same thing.

The string “Programmable Search Engine” from the letter and the subdomain programmablesearchengine.google.com hint that these are related things.

On the Programmable Search Engine settings tab, you can see the line “Edition - Standard with revenue sharing”.

And you can also see “Public URL” there – yeah, the first paragraph of the letter “The public URL” refers to this, that is, if you search on a page like https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=d95930401ffbc147a, then there will be advertising, but you will not be given money for it.

If you click on the “Get code” button, then the code is approximately the following:

<script async src="https://cse.google.com/cse.js?cx=d95930401ffbc147a"></script>
<div class="gcse-search"></div>

Does this apply to “The Google hosted layout, in which only the search results are displayed on a Google-hosted webpage” or not ?!

Technically, an overlay could very well be a “Google-hosted webpage”, that is, a page loaded from Google that is displayed on top of your site. Even an ordinary search block on a site, from a technical point of view, can be a page hosted on Google, which was asynchronously loaded and displayed on your site.

In general, the sent letter is a clear example of how not to make notifications, since nothing is clear from such messages anyway.

Or vice versa – this is an example of how to make a notification, if you want no one to understand anything …

After all, I managed to figure out what “Google-Hosted” is.

The search box is placed on one of your webpages. The search results are displayed on a Google-hosted webpage, which can be opened either in the same window or in a new window.

This means that the upcoming changes will not affect the Search engine blocks created in the AdSense dashboard.

So, they will no longer share the profit if:

Search form and results are placed on the Google page
The search form are placed on the site, and the search results on the Google page

The ability to set up custom Google searches on your site has been available for at least a decade. Including displaying ads. But now there is a special block in AdSense called “Search engine”.

What is the profitability of search pages

Approximately 1 person out of 100 visitors to the site will search for something on it. About 1 out of 100 people looking for something will click on the ad. On my sites, search results pages bring in several times less than regular pages. That is, Programmable Search will generate some tangible income only if you have really large volumes of traffic.

But this search has other advantages as well:

you can set up a search for several sites at once – that is, if a user entered a query that is answered not on this one, but on your other site, he will see it in the search results
using search, you can promote pages (make them appear in any results), for example, with CPA or others

In any case, the site needs a search. And the Google search engine is very good, well, plus some kind of earnings.

Using it is nowhere easier – create a block, add the code to the site in the widgets and you're done! If you previously (many years ago) set up the code for search when you gave two snippets of code – one for the form and the other for the results – now you don't need it by default. By default, the results are shown directly in the widget itself.

How to create a Google site search form

In AdSense, go to Ads → Overview → By ad unit. And select “Search engine”.

On the page that opens:

Enter the name.
List the sites you want to search (one on each line).
Enter a search string to see examples of results.
Click Create button.

When entering a list of sites, the following help is given:

Specify a list of sites to search, one per line. You can add any of the following:

Individual pages: www.example.com/page.html
Entire site: www.example.com/*
Parts of site: www.example.com/docs/* or www.example.com/docs/
Entire domain: *.example.com

If you follow these tips, you might think that you must specify “*.suay.site” to enter a domain, but in fact, “suay.site” also works (that is, both options do not work, but how to fix it – see below ).

Everything is ready – copy the code and paste it into the website widget.

We check the search on the site and… nothing was found.

Why nothing was found in the Search engine ad unit

Go back to the ad review and press the edit button.

The Programmable Search Engine editor will open.

Scroll down the page that opens until you see the “Sites to search” section.

We click on each site and instead of “Include just this specific page or URL pattern I have entered”, switch to “Include all pages whose address contains this URL”.

There is no need to change the code – it remains the same.

We check - now everything works.

Why does the "Search engine" block not show ads?

To answer this question, you need to go to Setup → Ads, there you will see:

Note: in order to ensure a high quality experience for our advertisers, we are reviewing Programmable Search Engine ad traffic quality. It may take several weeks for revenue sharing to begin.

That is, there may be no advertisements for the first few weeks – nothing can be done, you have to wait.

By the way, check that “Search Engine Monetization” is enabled in the same place.

How to Change the Design of the Adsense Search Engine Ad Block

By default, search results are shown below the input form, stretching into a long “sausage”. You can change that. To do this, on the “Programmable Search Engine” edit page, go to the “Look and feel” tab and select the desired search results design.

On the Suay.site, I chose the “Overlay” option, that is, search results are shown in a large area that overlaps the page content.

When adding sites or changing the design, the ad unit code does not need to be changed.

How to promote pages through website search

On the Programmable Search Edit page, go to the Search Features tab and move the Enable promotions slider to the On position.

Add the pages you want to promote.

What does “Programmable Search Engine revenue sharing changes start April 30th, 2021” mean?

Search engine ad: why nothing was found and why it doesn’t show ads