Sometimes when I surfed blogs, they’ll have this AdSense Search with a Google Custom Search watermark on the search form. I’ve always wanted that on my AdSense Search as it looks cool and gives the search a more ‘credibility’ to it due to Google branding

Sadly the features is not within and has not been implemented yet in my AdSense dashboard. Well I woke up yesterday to excitingly find the Improved AdSense Search

I’ve tested and implemented the new AdSense Search and it’s a marked improvement over the previous one. Look at top right of this blog, that’s the new custom AdSense search which I’ve implemented

Less coding

Compared to previous HTML code needed to be put up on the blog for the search to appear, the new codes just need a few lines of scripting. Mainly because most of the code is encoded in an external javascript file

Relevant Search Keyword

Now you can add keywords to associate your search results page, to specifically target the audience and readers using the search. Now related ads can appear to your niche blog, so I believe the click-through via search will increase. I’m currently monitoring mine closely

Selected Sites

Previously you can only search one certain sites plus the Web when adding AdSense Search. Now you can add multiple sites, even pages to parts of sites. To a certain extend this allow flexibility in allowing two or more blogs to cross reference each other. Search can be consolidated. Cool hur

Ability to edit search

AdSense Search setup and saved using the new feature can be edited for changes under “Manage Ads” section. This is really useful for me as a blogger with multiple blogs. I don’t need to open up the theme file locally, upload it to my server and such. Despite this cool feature, I do still keep getting problem with how my search will appear. The “Palettes” setting seem to be giving me the default value rather the ones I saved

What Google are saying

Here are some of the new features:

1. Site Search: You’ve worked hard to attract users to your site, so it’s understandable that you’d be concerned about those users leaving through web search. Now you can choose to provide just site search so users can find all the information they’re looking for on your site, and you can host the search results on your own pages so that they can find that information without leaving your site.
2. Improved indexing of your pages: We’ve recently improved our indexing technology so that you can provide a more enhanced Site Search experience for your users. AdSense for search will now index even more pages of your site, as long as we’re able to crawl them, so that your users will see more results from your site in your AdSense for search results. Stay tuned for more updates on future crawl and indexing improvements!
3. Vertical search: You can also allow your users to search across multiple sites - this could be a network of sites that you own or other related sites that you think your users might find useful. If you write book reviews on your blog, for example, you can use vertical search to specify a list of online bookstores for users to search through. Other examples of vertical searches include computer forums, travel blogs, political sites you endorse, etc.
4. Tuning search results and ads with keywords: Search terms can have different meanings in different contexts, so you can now configure your search engine with relevant keywords. Let’s say you manage a site about yoga - you can enter keywords such as ‘yoga,’ ‘exercise,’ and ‘meditation’ so that when a user searches for ‘mat,’ the search results and ads will be more related to yoga mats and less to commercial floor mats. (You can see an example of this in the video below). In experiments, we’ve found that this tuning has led to an increase in earnings for publishers.
5. Selecting ad location: Do you want ads to appear at the top and bottom of your search results? Or along the right sidebar as well, just like on Google.com? Now you can make the call on where ads are placed. (Here’s a tip: we’ve found that placing ads at the top and right monetizes the best for publishers.)
6. Quick and easy updates: Just as you use our ad management feature to quickly change the settings for your ad and referral units, you’ll be able to do the same for your search engine within your AdSense account. Your settings will be saved in your account, so you won’t need to generate new search code for each change.

via source

I reckon it’s about time you use the new AdSense code if you wish for the above changes. If not, its still fine to use the old code. Functionality still works, so no worries there.

As for me, I’ve updated all my blogs with the new AdSense Search. It took awhile, but all worth it. It seems there’s a slight increase in my search usage from the dashboard reports