At present, there is a strong interest in developing metal free sensitizers for substitution of conventional ruthenium complexes in dye sensitized solar cells, DSC. The main limitation at present is the deficiency in collection of low energy photons while the standard ruthenium based dyes are able to absorb photons in the 800 nm region even if only at comparatively low absorption coefficients. For the organic dyes to be viable broader spectral responses are needed and to find such dyes is the main objective of this study. Systematic structure modifications were done on the donor, linker and acceptor groups (D-L-A) for a series of dyes. Even though all modifications successfully resulted in broader spectra, in agreement with theory, the dyes showed very different behavior in the dye sensitized solar cell. A rhodanine acetic acid was compared with the cyanoaceticacid as anchor group and this revealed that the compatibility of the anchor group and linker chain plays a role in kinetic related properties. The linker was varied by increasing the conjugation with different numbers of methine and thiophene units. The longer flexible linker length showed higher sensitivity to aggregation problems and needed coadsorbers or additional modifications to be feasible as sensitizers in DSCs. The donor group was also modified starting from a triphenylamine group adding different electron donating moieties. This study revealed that there are other energetical limitations for organic dyes in comparison to ruthenium dyes when applied in DSC and those will be further discussed.