Quoting from the footer of the AdSense "Search Performance" report (you have to be logged into your AdSense account and have the Search option turned on). "Revenue from WebSearch ads may be offset at the end of the month by fees applicable to WebSearch." Now what does that mean?
I posted this question over at the SearchEngineWatch Forums and soon after received my answer.
Polarmate, an SEW Forum member and moderator over at IHelpYou Forums, responded with a quote from an email he received from Google's AdSense department.
The WebSearch fees that are referenced in the AdSense Terms and Conditions will not be applied to all publishers. Google incurs a cost for each search that is performed through WebSearch, and generally we cover this cost through our portion of the earnings from advertiser clicks. However, publishers with very high numbers of searches in relation to their revenue may have an amount deducted from their final WebSearch earnings. We expect the number of publishers to be impacted by this to be very small.The WebSearch fees will never be greater than the publisher's WebSearch earnings, so no publisher will owe Google at the end of the month as a result of these fees. Earnings from AdSense for content clicks will not be affected. The adjustment will take place at the end of each month, when earnings are calculated.
What is the cost per query for Google? Every time someone clicks on the search button at Google.com, what does it cost them? Do they have a figure for this?
