Reference

Parameters

Page Level Parameter Descriptions

These parameters only need to be specified once per page. They affect all units on the page.

Required

Parameter Description and Examples
adPage Required when the user navigates to the next results page or previous results page.

The adPage parameter specifies the results page ads are being displayed on. This parameter is used when users navigate past the first page of search results. For example, if five ads are requested, and the adPage parameter is set to 2, the returned ads will be the second page of five ads.

pubId Required
This is your AdSense client-ID. Your pubId is the part of your client-ID that comes after 'partner-'. For example, if your client-ID is 'partner-test-property', your pubId is 'test-property'. This is standard protocol for CSA.

Example: 

'pubId' : 'test-property'
query Required
This is the search query entered by the user. The value of the query parameter should be unencoded.

Examples: 

'query' : 'flowers'
'query' : 'black & decker'
'query' : myQuery // myQuery is a variable containing the search query
resultsPageBaseUrl Required when there are related search units on the page.
Specifies the URL of the search results page on which the search query is the related search term the user has clicked on. The resultsPageBaseUrl may include its own parameters, except the search query which will be appended automatically.

Example: 

'resultsPageBaseUrl' : 'http://www.example.com/search?a=v1&b=v2'

Optional

Parameter Description and Examples
linkTarget Optional
Specifies whether clicking on an ad opens up in the same window or a new window. The default is '_top'. This parameter can also be used at the unit level.
  • '_top' Opens in the same window.
  • '_blank' Opens in a new window.

Example: 

'linkTarget' : '_blank'
maxTermLength Optional
Specifies the maximum number of characters of a related search term including spaces. No maximum if not set.

Example: 

'maxTermLength' : 50
resultsPageQueryParam Optional
Specifies the name of the URL parameter for the search query on the search results page. Defaults to ‘q’ if not specified.

Example: 

'resultsPageQueryParam' : 'query'

Configuration Settings

Parameter Description and Examples
adsafe Optional
Specifies the filtering rules that Google should apply to ads matching the search query. The following are the valid settings for adsafe and the effect each value has on returned ads:
  • 'high' Returns family-safe ads. Does not return non-family-safe or adult sexual content ads.
  • 'medium' Returns family-safe and non-family-safe ads. Does not return adult sexual content ads.
  • 'low' Returns all types of ads.

By default adsafe is set to high.

Example: 

'adsafe': 'medium'
adtest Optional
The adtest parameter is used to indicate that a request for ads is a test. When the adtest parameter has a value of on, Google treats the request as a test and does not count the ad impressions or track the clickthrough results.

When the adtest parameter has a value of on, you do not generate any revenue.

Use this parameter when testing, but do not use it in production systems or you will not be paid for ads that you display.

The default adtest value is off.

Example: 

'adtest' : 'on'
channel Optional
You may include an AdSense for Search channel for tracking the performance of different pages. Use the unique channel ID created in your AdSense account or by your Technical Account Manager. Learn more about channels here.

Multiple channels should be separated by the '+' symbol.

Examples: 

'channel' :  'testA'  
'channel' :  'testA+testB'
hl Optional
This parameter identifies the language that the requested ads or related searches should target. The default value is en.

Google supports all AdWords API language codes.

Note: Advertisers specify the languages that their ads target. If you include this parameter in your request, Google only returns ads that are targeted for that language or targeted for all languages but it does not guarantee that the ad text will be in the specified language.

Typically, you should set the hl parameter to the primary language of the page from which this parameter is sent.

Examples: 

'hl' : 'es'
ie Optional

The ie parameter sets the character encoding scheme that should be used to interpret the query string.

The default ie value is utf-8.

Value Standard name Associated Supported Languages
latin1 ISO-8859-1 Western European (Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish)
latin2 ISO-8859-2 Eastern European (Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian)
latin3 ISO-8859-3  
latin4 ISO-8859-4 Baltic (Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian)
cyrillic ISO-8859-5 Bulgarian, Russian
arabic ISO-8859-6  
greek ISO-8859-7 Greek
hebrew ISO-8859-8 Hebrew
latin5 ISO-8859-9  
latin6 ISO-8859-10 Icelandic
euc-jp EUC-JP Japanese
euc-kr EUC-KR Korean
sjis Shift_JIS Japanese
big5 Big5 Traditional Chinese
gb GB2312 Simplified Chinese
utf-8 UTF-8 All
oe Optional

The oe parameter sets the character encoding scheme that Google should use to encode the text of the ads. While technically optional, it's good practice to pass a value for this parameter.

The default oe value is utf-8. Refer to the ie parameter for the full list of possible values.
personalizedAds Optional
Specifies whether users have consented to allowing the publisher to share personal information with Google for the purpose of personalized advertising.
  • true Returns query targeted ads and some ads that may be targeted with the user's Google cookies. If the user is located in the European Union, the user must first consent to allowing your site to share personal information with Google for the purpose of personalized advertising.
  • false Returns only query targeted ads. This will not return any ads that are targeted with the user's Google cookies. If a user has declined consent for allowing your site to share personal information with Google for the purpose of personalized advertising, you must set this value to false.

By default personalizedAds is set to true.

Example: 

'personalizedAds': false
styleId Optional
Specifies the ID of the custom search style to be applied to the ad or related search units on the page. Learn more about using custom search styles. Note that with the styleId set for a request, ads or related searches will be rendered with the style, and legacy styling parameters will be ignored. If styleId is not specified in the request, a system default style will be rendered.

Example: 

'styleId': '1234567890'

Unit Level Parameter Descriptions

These parameters affect the way individual ad units on a page are presented to the user each parameter can be set individually for each ad unit.

Required

Parameter Description and Examples
container Required
The id of the empty ad container <div> where the ad should appear.

Example: 

'container' : 'afscontainer1'
maxTop Required when the ad unit is above the search results.

Use this parameter to specify the number of ads to be shown on the top ad unit.

Note: This parameter is used in place of the 'number' parameter. This ad unit should be wide enough so the first line of the ads doesn't wrap. Using the maxTop parameter on any other placement on the page is a policy violation.

Example:

'maxTop' : 4
width Required
Specifies the width of the ad or related search unit in pixels.

Example: 

'width' : '700px'
'width' : 700

Configuration Settings

Parameter Description and Examples
adLoadedCallback Optional
Allows an action to be performed when ad calls are finished. The callback function takes the container name of the ad or related search unit and a boolean. The boolean is set to true when there is at least one ad or related search term to display and false when there are none returned. It is important to test your callback function to ensure it doesn't generate any errors, especially those that might interfere with the loading of your page.

Example: 

var adblock1 = {
  'container' : 'afscontainer1',
  'adLoadedCallback' : function(containerName, adsLoaded) {
  if (adsLoaded) {
    try {
      // Most likely do nothing
    } catch (e) {
      alert ("Error in callback function");
      // Do something to handle error gracefully
    } else {
      // As you always do when there is no ad coverage from Google
   }
 }
};
number Optional
The number of ads which should appear in this unit. The default value is 2.

Example: 

'number' : 4
relatedSearches Optional
The number of related searches that should appear in this unit. Defaults to 0 if not specified.

Example: 

'relatedSearches' : 4