November 16, 2007
Search for Ads, by Google
Here's something really odd I've just noticed on an instructional/lesson video site - TVLesson (I was checking it out to see whether I should add it to the How Do I...? instructional search engine...) - "Search for ads by Google":
Here's a sample results listing for a search on "education":
Looking at the HTML source of gf the TV lesson page on which the "View ads about" dialogue appears, it looks as if the adsearch box is being served by Google...
Apparently, this feature has been around for ages, and is explained on the Google Adsense blog as follows:
When I view my link unit, all I get is a small search box with the phrase "View ads about" next to it.We say: You might see this happen If there is not enough text-based content on your site for us to determine its meaning, or if there is a limited inventory of ad topics relating to the content of your site. Users can then enter their own search terms into this box to view ads related to their query, and you'll receive earnings for clicks to these ads. A suggestion - you might try adding more text-based content (i.e., sentences and paragraphs) to your site to help us determine relevant topics to display.
Presumably, if enough people put in similar adsearch words, the Goog will use that information to start serving ads in the normal way. Posted by ajh59 at November 16, 2007 10:15 AM