Hi Michelle.
Also I remember someone telling me that you can make sure your competition doesn't show up in option #1.
How do you do that?
Here's a link that will tell you how to do this: https://www.google.com/adsense/urlfilter
Unfortunately you need to know who your competition is before you can block them, but you can start with the web address's of your biggest competitors and add to the list as you get to know who else is competing for the same business.
Select AdSense for search to provide web and (optionally) site search to your users. Results pages are monetized with targeted Google ads.
Is the 2nd one just a search bar & when someone uses it & then clicks on a site from that search you get paid?
From the google page: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=9879&topic=144
AdSense for search is for publishers who wish to provide web search for their users, directly from any web page. AdSense for search results pages use Google's search to provide relevant results, and the search results pages are customizable to fit with your site's theme. In addition, results pages are monetized with Google ads that are targeted to the user's query - providing useful information for the user, and a new revenue stream for publishers.
This is howI understand this works:
Adsense: Random slected keywords are used to generate adds.
Adsense Search: The adds that are generated are based on the search terms used.
The advantage of using the Adsense Search facility is that the adds are going to be in relation to the content your users are searching for.
This can be useful as sometimes the google adsense progam scans for key words but can not read them in the context that they were meant, as such google adsense can associate a key word with a completely wrong product.
Example: My Aunt is studying for a European Driving Licence.
There is no context, so you and the google bot would be forgiven for assuming I am referring to some kind of Automotive licence rather than a computer course offered throughout the UK and other parts of europe.
As such the adsense adds may contain adds for driver tuition.
If that page went on to say something like:
...so I needed to install a dual boot system so that I could have Ubuntu for my use and Windows for my Aunts course.
If someone searched for dual boot on this fictional site, google would find dual boot on this page, and would associate an add for this search - this would produce an add for something like VMware - a product that allows you to run many OS's at the same time - This product is very useful for people with multi boot systems. Using the Adsense Search facility has generated an add that is genuinely useful to the readers of that content.
Ok, so that may have been a little over the top, but hopefully it is understandable.
Steveneven
