Show Thread Enhancements - "See More" Google Custom Search (Lite) - Increase Adsense revenue!

ForumSetup.net?s ?See More? Google Custom Search will allow visitors to easily find similar content on your site and increase your Adsense revenue! Many sites that have this modification installed have also reported a bump in pages per visitor and a decreased bounce rate as well!

How does it do this? A ?See More? link is inserted in the first post of a thread. If a user is coming from a search engine, the keyword they used to search will be used to link to a Google Custom Search to find more similar content on your site. If the modification cannot get the keyword or a user is browsing your site, the title of the thread will be used instead. The free version of Google Custom Search inserts relevant ads, increasing your Adsense revenue at the same time.

Features:

• Displays search results within your site (does not go to Google)
• Statistics in Google Analytics
• Customize the See More font and link
• Change ?See More? text to whatever you want
• Change the HTML around the See More link
• Option to show popular queries & the time period they are from

Pro only features:

• Option to show the See More link to members or specific usergroups
• Turn off showing the thread title as the See More link
• Choose from 4 different locations for the link (before/after first post, before/after signature)
• Replace the default vBulletin search box with Google Custom Search
• Option to show the replaced search box to members or specific usergroups
• Removes link to ForumSetup.net in footer

Case Studies & Reviews

Case Study: cellphoneforums.net
Cell Phone Forums saw a number of different positive metrics immediately after installing See More Google Custom Search. The See More link is set to display just below the first post content and thread titles are turned on.

• Bounce Rate decreased by 5.5%
• Pages/Session increased 12%
• Avg. Session Duration increased 10%
• Search page RPM: $15.88
• Adsense revenue: 64% increase

Case Study: nikonites.com
Nikonites also did well and saw better numbers with See More Google Custom Search installed.

• Bounce Rate decreased by 2%
• Search page RPM: $9.39
• Adsense revenue: 23% increase

Review: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....2&postcount=89
Review 2: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....1&postcount=86

Results will vary depending on site traffic and subject matter.

Installation

Google Custom Search Setup

1. First, you'll need to set things up with Google Custom Search if you haven't already. We are already assuming you have a Google Adsense account setup and it is linked with Custom Search
2. Go to https://www.google.com/cse/create/new
3. Enter all information and click Create
4. Under "Edit search engine" go to "Look and feel"
5. Click "Full width" and click Save
6. Go to "Setup"
7. Click the "Make money" tab, and make sure "Search Engine Monetization" is on and your AdSense account is hooked up
8. On the "Basics" tab under the Details section click - "Search engine ID"
9. Take note of your Search Engine ID

See More install & setup

1. Once you download the package, unzip it
2. Upload gsearch.php to your forum root
3. Install the product xml under the admincp. Plugins & Projects > Manage Products > Add/Import Product (at the bottom)
4. Go to Settings > Options > "See More" Google Custom Search
5. Insert your pub id as noted in the last step of the previous section
6. If you wish to change how the results page looks the template is named see_more_gsearch
7. That's it!

Release Log

• 6/18/14 - 1.0 - Initial Release
• 6/20/14 - 1.0.1 - corrected issue with Google ID verification
• 6/28/14 - 1.2.1 - Added option to display popular queries on search results page & choose the period of time they are from ? Caching of search page template ? Fixed validation error with Google Search ID - Fixed an issue where links were not appearing for some setups ? Removed search page centering ? Added support for different character encoding.
• 7/24/14 - 1.2.2 - Fixed character encoding issue - Added Who's Online location
• 9/16/13 - 1.2.3 - Fixed another character encoding issue - Added mobile style support

The lite version adds a link to ForumSetup.net to the footer of the search results page and thread pages. The pro version does not have this and adds some other features. To learn more, please see this page.

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by Marv

May be you got me wrong, tpearl. The search results from the custom search are perfect. The issue is only appearing in the header and in the footer. Parts, which are inlcuded by global.php.
My forum is using 8859-1. In the see-more-link the charset "8859-1" is referenced and thats working. But only for the custom search results - not for the part coming from global.php.

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

Edit:removed, fixed in v1.2.2

[tpearl5]

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

[Marv]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

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

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.

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by Marv

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.

[Alan_SP]

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:

[tpearl5]

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

[Alan_SP]

Well, thank you for your mod. :up:

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

[Marv]

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):




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




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



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



Google Custom Search - Clicks (orange colour)


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:

[tpearl5]

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.

[Marv]

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