Using Paid XML Search Feeds
A popular question I seem to spend a lot of time answering on the forums such as WebMasterWorld is “How do I get paid results on my site?”, or questions around this topic such as “Who is the best PPC search provider?” or “I’ve seen sites advertising in Google where they just list other search results, how does that work?”.
A lot of people running content sites think the only revenue options are Adsense or affiliate programs. Although both can do a great job in monetising content, if you’re looking to truly round out your revenue streams you really should be looking at paid search feeds as well.
An example of a paid search feed is shown in the screen shot here. This is from one of our sites. A user has gone to the site and done a web search for the term “wine rack”. As you can see 10 results have been returned, just like if you’d done a search on Google, Yahoo or MSN.
These results are actually provided via XML from Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) and are paid results backfilled where necessary with organic results.
They work much in the same way as Adsense for Search, however are much more powerful in a number of ways. Some of these are:
- Since they are delivered via XML they can be customised to fit in with the look and feel of your site exactly, as seen in this example.
- You can see up your own additional tracking on the serve URLs to track multiple variables, such as keyword/key phrase searched and clicked on, position on that click, as well as a myriad of bits of information about the user. At it’s simplest this can be done through a free tool such as Google Analytics by tagging the paid URLs as outbound links using javascript.
- As well as searches done via search boxes, you can hardcode links to particular searches on the site with many providers. If you go to www.interwine.co.uk you can see some of these “featured” links on the Top 10 box on the right. These link directly to paid results that are particularly relevant or useful for your visitors.
- You can use a feed to show “Sponsored Results” at the top of your own site search. If you go to InterWine.co.uk and do a site search, you will see a Sponsored Results box above the internal search results.
- Unlike Adsense you can choose to open results in a new window, leaving your site in the background for when they finish with the advertisers site.
I’ll take in details about some of the larger providers such as YSM in future posts as well as information about getting a feed. If you’re a large content provider and you’re only relying on Adsense and/or Adsense for Search for your revenue streams, you may well be missing out on a very valuable source of extra income.
Hi,
First of all I would like to say that this is a great blog with great content. Keep up the good work.
I am really looking forward your post about how to get a xml feed. I have checked out your site (intersites.co.uk) and it looks amazing.
Hi David, thanks for the kind words. I have been very busy the last week or so, but will be talking in more detail about XML feeds very soon, so stay tuned. As always if you have specific questions, just use the contact form or add a comment.
Hi Wavey,
I must say that your blog has original content that is not found anywhere else on the web. I deal directly with many companies utilizing YSM xml feeds. YSM is the best revenue source especially when maintaining a high TQ score. Although I believe direct landers are on their way out and sites monetized with content are the future, but this industry will always be around. The most important thing with a YSM feed is to make sure you are purchasing traffic from reliable sources that have high standards for quality. I use click forensics to score traffic before I sell it to an advertiser, giving an advertiser the TQ score they are looking for.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I will be returning to look at future posts.