Bing - How they make money...

I just published a new blog post, on my blog soswitcher.blogspot.com, about Microsofts new search engine Bing, & the clever way they are moving traffic to higher paying search result pages.

Good One Switcher...

What is new exactly here? You're talking (and doing it) about something that we know we're not allowed to do as per AdSense's TOS. It is not allowed to link to search results, be it embed in our blog page or not, re-read AdSense Tos if you don't believe me, it's written.
I know because me too I wanted to do a tag cloud with most searched for terms and link each term directly to an adsense search result pages, hehehe, but that's not allowed and I don't want to compromise my adsense account or even just have my domain name banned from using adsense, so I don't do it.

SheToldMe.com,

Yep, you are correct.
I searched for a 1/2 hour looking for anything in the TOS, & did find that we are NOT allowed to hard code search strings to move users to search pages (that sucks!).
I changed everything related to adsense & this post here, & on my blog post.
That's a pain to, I had some plans for a new gadget, Oh well, live & learn.
Here is what I found in the Adsense TOS:

Product-Specific Policies
AdSense for content: Up to three ad units and three link units may be placed on each page.
AdSense for search: A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed per page. Also, a single link unit or a search box, but no other Google ads, may be placed on pages with AdSense for search results. Queries must originate from users inputting data directly into the search box and cannot be modified. This includes pre-populating the search box with terms or hard-coding direct links to search results pages. AdSense for search code may not be integrated into any software application such as a toolbar.

Thanks for pointing that out, I owe ya one...

BUT

I also thought of something else, but never implemented it because I can't be bothered after all...

Without prepopulating or making a direct link, we can do the same effect:
- have a normal adsense search box form in the page
- in your text, on your selected words, simply have them between SPAN tags (with CSS for underline or color) and have an onclick javascript event in the SPAN tag, calling a function with the words as argument to this function
- this function will simply set the adsense search form's input field's value to the argument (selected words) and will submit the form.

That way, when a user click on the words, they are quickly pasted into the search form and the form is submitted, it's like if they did it themselves, only faster.

The problem is that it's still a bit more complex than just "Queries must originate from users inputting data directly into the search box..."

So... technically it would work, we could explain ourselves in front of a judge, but adsense is not a judge and the punishment if they decide to give one, will be without appeal process.

Does this method violate TOS?

"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=google+adsense&aq=f&oq=&aqi=n1g10"

In other words, if you type 'google adsense' to google.com, it will produce the above address.
So I can substitute any string with 'google+adsense' for new search without entering in the search box.

I don't think that search string you posted would violate anything, all it's doing is pointing to a Google Search, that does not include anyones Adsense Ads.

My whole idea when I first posted was to send vistors to my Adsense (Embedded) site search, with keyword anchor text. Since I found out that violates the TOS, I didn't do that.

Thanks,

So do you think embedded search like the following violates TOS? I guess it does. There must be some work around...

"http://www.????.com/?cx=partner-pub-???????????????&cof=FORID:11&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=google+search&sa=Search"

Yes, that would violate the Adsense TOS, because the URL includes a publisher/partner ID number.

The way that your URL is setup is sorta like what I wanted to do in the first post, until I found out it violates the TOS.