How to add a Google Search Box to your WordPress Blog

Apr 06

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I wonder if you can make more money from clicks on sponsored ads using Google Search instead of just a regular Google Adsense box on your content website? Most of our AdSense money has been made through searches conducted on our online deals website.

When we use Google AdWords to run our Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads, we notice that when our ads run on a google search result page, we pay a lot more than when the ads get clicked from a content website. So, perhaps it works both ways. Maybe keyword bidding is more expensive when you are searching for something on Google than when the ad shows up on a website with that keyword.

So, now, we tidied up the appearance of our Google Search box on leadsearch.ca to test our theory. (LeadSearch.ca is our website to help friends find online deals). We used to display the search results on a separate page, but we did some research and found a quick and easy way to get your Google Search results embedded in your WordPress blog.

The Problem

Google AdSense lets you put a Google Search form on your website. Any sponsored ads that get clicked from a search result will bring you money.
You can set the search results page to open in the same window or a new window as your blog. But the problem with that is it takes your visitor away from your blog.
You can also set the search results page to open inside your webpage, but you can’t just add the google code to a WordPress page. (We tried tweaking a few things in our template, but couldn’t get it to work just right.)

The Solution

Then we discovered the MightySearch wordpress plugin that lets you put a Google Search box on your blog with minimal effort. (No technical hacking experience required.)

Upload and install the plugin to your WordPress blog.
In your MightySearch options menu, you insert your Google Search box code that you get from Google.
In a page, you simply insert the code: <–mightysearch–>

And that’s it. Check out our example: http://yourclassroom.ca/google. When you visit that page, you’ll see a Google Searchbox. When you enter a search term, the results are displayed in our blog and you’ll notice those money making Sponsored Ads are right at the top in a prime position.

Hints and Tips

Make the WordPress page first and name the post-slug something obvious like google-search or google. Then when you create your Google Search box in Google AdSense, you can identify where you want your results to show up: http://yourblog.com/google-search.
Don’t give your WordPress page a title. That way when the page results show, you’ll see just the Google Search bar and Google Search Results.
The minimum width of a Google Search Result is 500px. That means your content area of your blog has to be at least 500px wide. We’ve found that when we try to insert a Google Search Result in a template that isn’t wide enough, bad things happen to the layout. (Like our sidebars drop to the bottom of the template. I hate when that happens.)
Before we found the plugin, we tried adding the Google code directly to the template. We got it to work in some browsers, but not all. So far, the mightysearch plugin has worked everywhere we’ve tried it. Try looking for something on this page. If it doesn’t work, let us know.

Bottom Line: The MightySearch plugin was the easiest way we could put a Google Search Results page into our WordPress blog. You can set it up so there is a Google Search form at the top of the results page, or not.

Question: Do you have a Google Search widget on any of your blogs? Do you find they make money?