When Google introduced AdSense for search (AFS) it allowed many web masters to have a new income source by giving all there search data over to Google. I was one of these webmasters at first… We implemented it on nextpimp and we were making about 200$ a day or so from AFS. Then when we started playing with PPC and affilaite marketing in late 2005/early 2006 I decided to take our own internal search data and see what was actually being searched for.
Just to give you some idea here is a screen shot of all searches done on Nextpimp last month (August)
So as you can see I record search terms and the hit (how many times they were searched for).
In August alone we had over 1.2 million UNIQUE searches for ringtones. This gives us an amazing amount of data to work with on our own ppc campaigns. Also we have all the data 0-second… we are not buying some tier3 list that is 2 months old and everyone and there mom has.
So are you selling yourself short on searches done on your website?
- Comment Likes 
- Comment Dislikes
October 22, 2009 at 11:23 am
Hence, regardless of where Mr. ,
October 28, 2007 at 1:22 pm
it is indeed very beneficial to find out what our visitors are searching for in order to do a good ppc campaign to bring in correctly visitors. i didnt realize about this. this is nice tips for me. what i’ve been thinking is just to provide a way of search for visitors since i dont provide internal site search myself.
September 17, 2007 at 8:00 am
Yeah i have been searching and going through my stats as well.
September 10, 2007 at 5:00 am
Adsense for search never payed me much so i removed it .But there are few sites like seodigger.com which will manage to show all our google search results to everyone in world which i dont like .
September 9, 2007 at 8:22 am
Doesn’t Google give you access to this kinda of thing if you use their search? If they don’t, they should!!
September 9, 2007 at 5:17 am
You are right dude. I think a better strategy is to first use a PHP script to capture wat the user has entered in the search form, store the data and then redirect the user to google adsense for search . Will that be possible ????????????????
September 9, 2007 at 12:05 am
That is some interesting data. Something to think about..
September 6, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I can’t believe you got sued by nextel.
September 6, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I just read nextel’s complaint, bummer! what was the outcome?
September 6, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Trading $200 from Adsense to try your own thing? Well you must have been making more than $200 elsewhere, cause I personally would have stayed with it, and maybe try some internal advertising on the side.
September 6, 2007 at 12:55 pm
yup one of my first dealings with a federal court.
btw why so anonymous?
September 6, 2007 at 12:38 pm
What is the deal with this?
http://www.chillingeffects.org/acpa/notice.cgi?NoticeID=2322
Were you sued by Nextel?
September 5, 2007 at 7:27 pm
A rapper?
September 5, 2007 at 2:05 pm
So you opted to go with your own search engine so you could track the search engine data and in turn use it to help with your PPC campaigns for ringtons? (Just trying to clear it up)
September 5, 2007 at 11:46 am
Very good write up.
September 5, 2007 at 5:13 am
Yes precisely.
September 5, 2007 at 5:12 am
Wow, I can only imagine the chunk of change it is making all up!
September 5, 2007 at 4:25 am
If I were to guess … 20-30k a day, judging by alexa
September 5, 2007 at 4:23 am
Apparently everyone wants to know
September 5, 2007 at 4:07 am
Who would ?
September 5, 2007 at 4:06 am
I recently added an AFS, because the “optimization team” recommended it, but it is displayed only when the user finds nothing with the internal search engine.
September 4, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Wow I never really thought about it that way…
September 4, 2007 at 11:23 pm
No sir.. I opted for my own search engine – check it out by clicking on my name :p
September 4, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Wow, yeh that is a good point. But I think maybe this point.. maybe only applies to ‘big’ sites with huge volumes of traffic like nextpimp. I think with adsense you would be selling yourself short, but maybe adsense is best on the way up until you get enough traffic to systimatically analyse large amounts of data for affiliate purposes.
September 4, 2007 at 8:36 pm
lol true, most people would take the $200 and think nothing more of it. I think Shoe makes a good point though.
I guess the best of both worlds would be if you could modify AFS and collect the data as well as the cash:)
September 4, 2007 at 8:35 pm
I am not sure how do you sell it to Google.
September 4, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Even so, some webmasters wouldn’t mind an extra $xxx per month, even if it equaled a few cents per search.
September 4, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I still don’t think I could have given up $200/day of easy AdSense money.
September 4, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Young desperado straight out the grotto
I’m so bad my shadow chooses not to follow
September 4, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Darn, you blew my whole secret strategy of bidding on single letters, I was killing it by advertising make money online stuff with the letter m, now I’ll probably have to drop down to k to compete
September 4, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Sweet new look. Let me know if you need someone to test pages / features for you.
September 4, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I think AdSense for search is good for only big content sites
September 4, 2007 at 2:05 pm
A guy that is searched for a lot on nextpimp
September 4, 2007 at 1:07 pm
This is definitely something to think about.
Thanks..
September 4, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Anyone can do a good job for a week… or a month… but working with someone for years is what it takes before I will recommend them to someone else. People invest a lot of money in these services and I don’t want my name associated with someone I have not built up an enormous amount of faith with.
September 4, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Gopi the guy who knows how to do everything but does nothing!
September 4, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Anyone know of a good freeware search program to use for a website? One that keeps a log of searches? Or do I have to pay to have one coded? Thanks
September 4, 2007 at 12:18 pm
hmmmm, $200 a day plus data. Sounds good. And Id imagine you would be more then $200 a day since that figure was from a while ago.
September 4, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Maybe a feature he needs to implement?
September 4, 2007 at 12:17 pm
mmmmmmm, I love data. Can never have too much. $200 a day is enough for most people that they would never mess with it.
September 4, 2007 at 12:08 pm
i find it amazing that more than a million people searched your site for single characters like “r” or “o” last month.
maybe these people are trying to get a listing of all artists that start with that letter. your results currently don’t do that. hmmmmmm
September 4, 2007 at 11:59 am
Great information here.
Thanks for the screenshot too
September 4, 2007 at 11:51 am
lollerskates
September 4, 2007 at 11:18 am
Just one question. Who the hell is “lil wayne”??
September 4, 2007 at 11:16 am
I’d definitely like to hear more about that
September 4, 2007 at 10:51 am
Shoe – I don’t use AFS much as it doesn’t seem worth it. But after reading a lot of your posts, I sometimes think that maybe you could set up in competition with Google, and probably do a better job.
September 4, 2007 at 10:49 am
With a few hacks (without modifying the AFS code) its still possible to collect all search data!.
September 4, 2007 at 10:49 am
How much traffic does NextPimp get?
September 4, 2007 at 10:35 am
Most don’t have that kind of data. What about sites with much less?
September 4, 2007 at 10:12 am
Great!I never think of this technique.Quite amazing when you want exactly your readers search for and use the priceless search query data for PPC campaign
September 4, 2007 at 10:07 am
When you have a huge userbase, those stats are priceless. I think a lot of small time folks use AFS because it’s easy and wouldn’t have enough data to make it worth their while to build track something like that… then again, until you throw it up there you never know.
September 4, 2007 at 10:05 am
Many organizations are clamming that SEO is the future of internet marketing, Do you think that is true? Could you please at least give me three reason WHY?
Also what does it take for you to reccoment a service or product , Thanks
September 4, 2007 at 10:04 am
I have to reread this article. I was blinded by your stats the first time around…
September 4, 2007 at 10:00 am
any data you can pull and store yourself is of great value… I personally would only US AFS if i was doing more of an arbi site and want to monetize the most form a visitor.
September 4, 2007 at 9:56 am
Sounds very similar to real estate, I guess because it kind of is, in a lot of senses. Interesting stuff, Shoe.
September 4, 2007 at 9:52 am
Thanks Shoe, I implemented this tip after hearing it once on your radio show (I think) and it’s been awesome. One thing people can do too if they don’t want to implement their own search, is use Google Custom Search and pull the search keyword from Google’s query string. Then you can log searches while still using Googles search w/ adsense.
September 4, 2007 at 9:50 am
Ive never used AFS cause I never though it made sense, people dont search on your sites search to find things in google they are looking for things on your site.
September 4, 2007 at 9:25 am
This is invaluable. I am working on doing this more and more. This alone can really make or break an online marketer.
September 4, 2007 at 9:18 am
Very interesting statistics. I think that we are selling ourselves short by using AFS – but opted to use it because it was the only solution out there that we were able to find.
Since growing, it’s becoming more and more apparent that AFS is chump change.