ohh okay. There's a clue. Overwrite the gsearch on your server with this one:

Edit:removed, fixed in v1.2.2

and anyone else that was having a problem with different characters or the page being broken, use the above gsearch file.

Great, tpearl. This one is working. :up:
What was it? May be it?s to early, but what have you changed in the file? I?m to blind to see it.

It was the actual encoding on the file. I will be updating the package shortly.

Now is one month since I installed this mod, and I'd like to share my experience with it.

I don't have a big forum, at the moment I have about 5,500 pageviews a day, so you could have some idea about impact of this mod for your sites.

Anyway, the moment I installed it, the mod raised GCS pageviews. Before I had maybe 1, up to 10 GCS pageviews per day. Now I have abot 200 GCS pageviews per day.

Also, this means much bigger impact on clicks on ads there. In average I have about 10% clicks per pageviews, which is excellent. But you need to know, at least for my site, clicks in GCS are worth much less money. Anyway, I make about 20% of my income through GCS right now.

As Google shows both clicks (for content and for search) together, it looks like I have much more clicks with much less money for each click, but in total, I make more money.

Of course, I couldn't guarantee that same statistics would apply for your site too, but I think you certainly should see increase in your income, number of clicks (and probably, because of worth of search clicks, less money per click).

All in all, great mod, I voted for it as a mod of the month and it leads at the moment quite deservingly. :up:

Thanks for sharing your experience and I'm glad its working well for you :)

Well, thank you for your mod. :up:

It certainly makes us see more money with it. :D Great idea, that also works superbly. :)

Alan, that?s nice to hear and I have similar numbers. GCS and this mod are both implemented for 6 days now, I started using GCS with this mod. My forums have about 25.000 PI/d and a CTR at about 1,5%.

I was worried that this GCS-Link-Placement in the first post stands in direct competition with the placements Leaderboard_top and in_first_post, which are generating about 65% of the overall revenue.
In fact this mod has an impact on both placements in terms of clicks.

The following 3 screenshots should give an overview, how my site performs regarding display ad-units. Implementation of this GCS-Mod was July, 14th. (Monday):

Revenue (by placement violet: first_post, brown: leaderboard_top):

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/07/28.png


Clicks (by placement violet: first_post, brown: leaderboard_top):

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/07/29.png


AdRequests (by placement violet: first_post, brown: leaderboard_top):

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/07/30.png

So, as you can see, there is an untypical drop at the end of this week. No wonder, the weather in my site-reach area has changed from rainy and cloudy to super sunny. Like always, this has an impact on visitor numbers. Therefor I make the most of my income by Ads, I pray for arctic temperatures and cats n dogs for all of em, while sitting in my beach chair at the bahamas resorts, enjoying my 5th caipirinha. You know what I?m talking about - guess we all share the same dream, somehow ;)
But back to topic.


Google Custom Search - CPC

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/07/31.png

Google Custom Search - Clicks (orange colour)

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/07/32.png
The generated clicks indeed are concurrent to my main ad-placements. In total the GCS clicks are stealing 25% of the Ad-clicks from both other concurrent placements.
That?s a large number and I wasn't expecting this.

In total this Mod is deflecting only 4% of all AI's to the GCS-page - generating a CTR of 9,59% there. That sounds pretty darn good, but you have to take in account, that GCS-Ads are paid with only up to 1/3rd of the concurrent placements. On my site GCS has just been implemented and as you can tell by the graphs, CPC seems to raise as a result of gaining more adviters using the GCS placements on my site during the last days via GoogleAdWords.

At the moment I can see a decreasing overall revenue of 15%. This is a result mainly due the unwelcomed good weather (estimated on empiric stats: ~ -10%). So there is a 5% off left, that is related directly to the GCS on my site. Depending on how the CPC evolves in the upcoming weeks, I?ld expect an increasing overall revenue, but at least at the same level as before GCS started on my site.

At one glance:
This mod has the potential to increase your revenue, even if you can?t expect it to be significant from the start. You have to weight between the facts of another Ad-Placement that visitors don?t feel happy with and a potential revenue increase. But especially for sites not using display ads like leaderboard_top or in_first_post, this should be an unintrusive way to make some money out of your foums.

I will keep this mod on my site and watch closely, how things evolve. Hopefully I can give you a feedback in the near future, that shows more significant stats. I?m very positive, that this mod in fact helps increasing your revenue and I say "Thanks, tpearl!" for this mod. Keep up the good work :up:

Thanks for sharing your results Marv. I would revisit those stats in 3 weeks and compare the previous month. :) I encountered something similar, but since the ads on the search results paid out more, it made more sense and was more profitable in the long run.

That?s my conclusing, tpearl. I?ve just started working with GCS, so I guess the CPC should reach educated levels, soon ;)