Life doesn’t always demand stark choices. It’s not as if you can get only chocolate or vanilla ice cream. In fact, throw in strawberry, and you have Neapolitan, the ice cream for indecisive folks everywhere.
The same principle applies to AdSense for Search versus AdSense for Content on your site — there’s no reason you can’t have both. AdSense for Content works well in and around your articles and other printed content, and an AdSense for Search box at the beginning of the page (or end of the page or in a blank space on the page) works pretty well, too. The results from the search box can add to your AdSense income; although if I were you, I wouldn’t rely on the search box alone to generate income for your site.
My advice to you: Go with a combination of both content ads and the search box.
With that out of the way, it’s time to do some code slinging. I start out withb the AdSense for Search code, just because today is Tuesday. Keep in mind, though, that all the AdSense ad formats are created in about the same way. You work through the wizard, copy the text, and paste it into the HTML on your Web site. Pretty simple, in other words. You’ll probably spend more time debating
where to put your search box than you’ll spend actually dealing with the code.
To create a search box for your Web site:
1. Point your browser to
www.adsense.com, log on to your AdSense account, and click the AdSense Setup tab.2. In the Setup tab, select the AdSense for Search option.
Doing so calls up the AdSense for Search Wizard.
3. On the top of the first wizard page, as shown in Figure , select either the Google WebSearch option or the Google WebSearch + SiteSearch option.
WebSearch allows visitors to search the Web for additional information whereas WebSearch + SiteSearch allows users to search up to three Web sites that you specify in addition to the whole Web.
4. If you select WebSearch + SiteSearch, a new form appears in the wizard, as shown in Figure Fill in the Web addresses of the sites you wish to allow visitors to search in the appropriate text boxes.
If you select WebSearch, you can skip to Step 5.In most cases, those sites will be your own sites, but you can select anyb sites you like. You also don’t have to enter three sites — one or two are fine if that’s your preference.
5. Scroll down to the middle of the page, as shown in Figure , and then choose your search box style. Each of the options has a preview that appears when you select that option. You can choose to move the Google logo above the search box, or to remove it completely and place it on the search button. Another available option is to move the search button down below the text field of the search box
If you choose the SiteSearch option, enter the Web sites to be searched
6. From the drop-down menus at the bottom of the wizard page, select the default language for search results.
There are 30 — count ’em, 30 — options besides English.
7. Choose the type of page encoding that your Web site uses from the options in the drop-down menu provided.
8. In the final drop-down menu on the wizard page, select the country you’re in so Google knows which domain to search from. After you make your selection, click the Continue button
.