Google News, Inside.

AdSense E-mail Communication

After logging in today, I saw a screen that would let me see how Google’s AdSense team can communicate with me.

I think it’s really good that the AdSense team is committed (or at least is attempting to being committed) at being very open and vocal with its publishers.
I was still slightly disappointed when the AdSense [...]

Extending Ads by Google

This is not a huge change for the industry, but it is a change that will be seen on millions of websites around the world. As both the AdWords and AdSense blogs announced, more and more advertisers are choosing rich media ads instead of typical text ads.
The new change will result in [...]

Google AdSense – Change the Font Size

Google announced a few months ago that they would let publishers change the font face of the ads. They took it one step further; now you can change the font size!

Another awesome release! Rounded edges, many different ad unit sizes, different font face styles, and now font sizes, publishers can easily customize the [...]

AdSense Goes Down

Ummm that’s a huge “whoops” to be throwing out there.
For about an hour this morning, beginning at 7:48am PDT, we experienced a global network routing issue. As a result, fewer or no ads were served to some publishers during this time. Our engineers have since resolved the issue, and we’re working to ensure that this [...]

Google Analytics & AdSense Integration

Late last week, the Google Analytics team announced that they would be pushing out the AdSense+Analytics integration to all publishers. This was previously a feature that was still in a private beta, which I was involved with.
I’m mostly happy with the integration, but I’m still not completely happy. It’s can be slightly flakey [...]

AdSense is Developing a Category Filtering Feature

The AdSense team is busy at work behind the scenes developing a new “category filtering” feature which will allow publishers to select which categories they do or do not want to receiver ads for.
Since Google Engineers and Product Managers are extremely smart, which is attributed to Google’s huge success as a company, they [...]

New AdSense Email Preferences

The AdSense team announced a new set of email preferences that you can choose from for you AdSense account.
Old Preferences

New Preferences

My account is still showing the old preferences, so I imagine they are rolling it out slowly and not all at once.

Google Hosting Services

Google Hosting?
Today, Google is launching Hosting Services. The primary requirement is that you’re a web hosting provider.
It looks like I was spot on with the prediction that Google services would integrate with cPanel. This announcement confirms that Google services will be leveraged at the hosting provider level giving web hosting clients even [...]

Hanging out with Google Around Town

Google likes bring around everyone and meeting people face to face. You certainly will not see Larry Page or Sergey Brin hanging out at these conferences, but you will certainly see Google employees.
I was talking with one Googler here at SXSW who is a UX (user experience) designer out of Google New York, and [...]

Opt-Out of Google Targeted Advertising

Google’s recent announcement of targeted advertising is completely changing the way that AdSense operates. But, Google has also provided a way for you to opt-out of it.
You can do this by one of two ways. Using your Google account settings or using a plugin. Both examples are below.

I’m not quite sure how [...]

How to Sue Google and Win

Aaron Greenspan writes about his story of suing Google…and winning.
His story accounts for him being both an AdSense publisher and an AdWords customer through his company, Think Computer Corporation, where he is the CEO.
You can read the full article on The Huffington Post.
[ via Blogoscoped & Reddit ]

AdWords Testing New “Expandable” Ads

This sure looks a lot like pop-outs to me, rather than what they are terming them as “expandable ads.”
Here’s what they are describing it as.

Here is what they have to say about the new ad type,
Expandable ads on the Google content network are designed to automatically expand in the direction where the most space is [...]

The Website is Down

Well, sort of.
AdSense and AdWords have been having some issues today.
Here’s a video that explains it.
*WARNING* There is profane language in this video.

Google AdSense and the DMCA

This has been a long-standing issue for quite some time now. People copying other people without attribution or care of the original work. This happens frequently to a number of blogs, including this one, Ginside.com.

Inside AdSense has written a great article about how to take action and deal with these copyright violators.
Here’s a [...]

Google Lost Your Revenue

Here’s where you a Google engineer hits his forehead on the table and thinks, “stupid, stupid, stupid.”
If you have a Blogger site, some of you may have noticed that your ad units began showing public service announcements (PSAs) in the last nine hours. This was due to a technical issue that we’ve now identified and [...]

New AdSense for Domains

So I logged into my AdSense account a few minutes ago and noticed a new link there.
“Get Started” using AdSense for Domains.

I remember I applied for this some 6 or 10 months ago and was automatically declined because they weren’t accepting any new publishers, but it seems they flipped the switch for new publishers.
I looked [...]

Dead Landing Pages in Google

Domain squatters make a boat load of money every year by grabbing expired or unregistered domains. Here is one example where Google’s quality of results is diminished by a domain squatter.
I was looking up a restaraunt one of my friends recommended for a place to eat. So I looked up the restaraunt name [...]

AdSense Now on Finance and Images

Google has gone ahead and taken the liberty to start advertising on two of their online properties; Google Finance and Google Images.
Here’s what Google is doing with these ads.

Having ads on various online properties is still relatively new for Google, aside from running ads on the google.com search engine. Yahoo!, however, has been [...]

Errors in Google AdSense?

I noticed something today that seemed really weird. It was that there were two periods between the sub-domain and domain extension. Instead of the normal www.ginside.com, I saw www..ginside..com
After thinking, ok, maybe just a typo, I went to the Google AdSense Channels page and noticed there was something fishy there too.

So then, on [...]

Google AdSense Blocks Google

I find this slightly ironic, but someone at Google accidentally created a block so if you are being hosted by Google or blogspot.com, you could not sign up for AdSense.
AdSensePro Jennifer touched on this subject on the Google Groups recently to shed some light on the issue that people were having.
You might see this message [...]

Google Pushes Again to Mobile Devices

If it wasn’t obvious already to you that Google wants to be part of the mobile industry, this should clear any doubt you have.
Google recently registered a patent regarding Location-Based Responses to Telephone Requests.
Abstract
A method for receiving processed information at a remote device is described. The method includes transmitting from the remote device a verbal [...]

Google Reminds us of Quality, Not Quantity

This is a point that I’ve tried to tell anyone I run into. Forums, networking events, at a bar with some friends; I try to convey the point that it’s never quantity.
If you have a single site, then go for it, build up the site, grow the traffic, build your readership, and expand, [...]

AdSense TOS Violation Reporting Moves to Web

The AdSense team previously accepted TOS (Terms of Service) violation reports via email at “Google AdSense” <adsense-abuse@google.com>, but that is no longer available.
AdSense Abuse has moved to the web.
Good move? I think so, yes. Why? Scalability.
Having hundreds, if not thousands, of e-mails coming in everyday with TOS violation reports is not scalable [...]

Feeding AdSense

Google has finally launched AdSense for RSS feeds. ‘Bout freakin’ time, seriously.
But it’s not as easy as 1, 2, 3. It’s going to take a little manual work from Google.
Here’s what they say in their instructions for migrating your feeds over to Google.
“To migrate all of your feeds, and your account from feeds.feedburner.com [...]

AdSense Referrals to Stay with AdSense

I just stopped by the Google booth at Affiliate Summit East and asked a question that’s been killing me.
Will AdSense referrals be switched over to ConnectCommerce’s platform?
“No, as far as I know, but dont quote me on it.” Oh snap, sorry, didn’t mean to quote you on that one, but well, I sort of [...]

AdSense Optimization Tips

Well, that was fun while it lasted. I was getting AdSense Optimization Tips fairly regularly, on a monthly basis. But they stopped coming as of November 2007.
What happened? Did the spiders get lazy? Did the algorithm get lazy? Did Google stop caring about making more money through publishers?

Have yours continued [...]

AdSense Report Aggregation

Two years ago, nearly to the day, I was mildly confused about reporting and earnings through AdSense. What turned out to be a common mistake, I had thought something was terribly wrong.
Well apparently, I was not the only one being confused by the reporting. So many other people wrote in asking about it [...]

Google Responds to AdSense Referrals Questions

Google has officially responded about some of the questions that popped up regarding the transition from the AdSense platform into the DoubleClick platform.
But one question still remains for me. Why don’t the Google Products show up under the new DoubleClick (ConnectCommerce) platform? I do a search for “google,” nothing returns; do a [...]

Google Affiliate Network

I was finally approved for the Google Affiliate Network after previously being declined, which is good news for everyone. Means more ads here! Alright, just kidding. Not more ads, but better targeted advertising and linking…yeah, that’s what I meant by it.
After browsing around a little bit, looking for the new AdSense referral [...]

Subject: We are Retiring AdSense Referrals

Earlier tonight, I received an email from Google notifying publishers that AdSense Referrals will no longer be served through AdSense.
Well that pretty much sucks.
I mean, great, yeah, hopefully with the new platform you will be able to use direct links instead of being forced to use the javascript.
But the downside to all of this is [...]

AdSense Optimization Tips

The Australian AdSense team published this video about how to optimize AdSense ads, but it’s still missing something.

There are a lot of optimization tools which us, as publishers, really need. Such as, which ads are actually getting clicked on? Which colors are performing better? How many ads were displayed when an ad [...]

Good People Still Exist

Late last week, a question was brought up in the Google AdSense Group.
Can I sign up for only PSAs?
That seems a bit off coming from someone who wants to generate revenue through Google AdSense, me.
But looking at it from another angle, this may be a great way to promote other companies if you are running [...]

Requesting Duplicate AdSense PINs

AdSense requires all new publishers to verify their account by receiving a PIN after reaching $10 of revenue. So what happens if you lose your PIN the first time? No need to worry now! There is a resolution!

I personally never went through this process, but maybe that’s because I opened my AdSense [...]

Google AdSense Updated Terms and Conditions

Google’s core product, AdSense, has had another round of revisions to its Terms and Conditions. “…most of the changes to the Terms and Conditions fall into two broad categories: 1) future products and features and 2) privacy requirements. Specifically, one of the main changes is that the terms anticipate future products that may become [...]

Google Hosts Online Advertising Meetup

Earlier this week on Monday, I attended an advertising meetup that was being hosted at Google NYC. A lot of people felt it was a sales pitch for Google products, but I had other thoughts. Since I author this site, I felt it was actually informative and there were some really interesting things [...]

Rumors of Google to Buy The New York Times

John Ellis brings up the rumor (or potential rumor) of Google acquiring The New York Times.
What’s in it for Google? Well, for one thing, it’s cheap. Sell off the New England properties and the real cost is $3 billion. That’s not much money to buy one of the premier brands of the information age. It [...]

Float AdSense? No Way! …says Google

Google’s AdSensePro, Jordan, has confirmed that Google’s official policy is “no, you may not float AdSense units.”
Check out the full comment on Google Groups. Click here for the full discussion.
[Hat tip Barry]

AdSense on Facebook?

As Eric points out on VentureBeat.com, Google is trying to be sneaky and get a piece of the action here.
The AdSense team has been undercover and talking to Facebook application developers. Working with them to get AdSense to display within their applications.

New AdSense Resources

Google AdSense has launched a new tab in their interface. The “Resources” tab which will provide access for publishers to more self-help resources (mostly just centralized and easy to access now.) Here we have the full Resources page with all the different sorts of optimization, community, find help, and references. Then below is another screenshot of just the optimization page. It has quick links to resources such as Google webmaster tools, Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Google base, and plenty more.

Google AdSense Creator Leaves Google

Tamar at SERoundTable rallies up some data about the AdSense creator. Here are some direct links from the article, CNN Gokul Rajaram — off to start his own venture!

Bring Out Your Dead…Bring Out Your Dead Links

Old school Link spamming building is dead. You can no longer simply put up completely irrelevant links and hope you get link love for them.

As illustrated in the comic above (which is thanks to Monty Python and the Holy Grail [one of my favorite movies]), we can see how traditional old school link building is dead.
The old style of link building was “Hey! You have a PageRank 8 site, that must mean it’s [uber] trusted by all the search engines! I’ll give you $100 if you put my link there. K? thx!” That is no longer the case. Search engines have been smarter and better.
But from what I can tell, a lot of people are still stuck in the 90s and think that irrelevant linking still works. Let’s take a look at what I’m talking about.

Google AdSense for Mobile

The Google AdSense Team has announced the new AdSense for Mobile market. As part of our ongoing efforts to develop new ways for users to find the information they need anytime and anywhere, Google announced today the availability of AdSense™ for Mobile, a program that contextually targets ads to mobile website content. AdSense for Mobile also allows AdSense publishing partners the ability to earn revenue from their mobile websites

Who’s Using My AdSense Publisher ID?

With the recent feature release of “allowed” and “disallowed” sites within an AdSense account, it also came with the feature of being able to see who is displaying your publisher ID.

AdSense URL Whitelist Now Available!

Since the start of AdSense there has been a huge issue with people “stealing” the ad code and putting it on their own site. This could cause many issues with click fraud. This has been a personal security fear of my own for quite some time.
The Google AdSense team has finally released the feature which allows you to specific which sites you want to allow to display your ad code (with your publisher ID).

New AdSense API Guidelines and Limitations

Google has recently released a set of new guidelines for the AdSense API. The new rules will go into effect tomorrow, September 13th, 2007. Something key to note is that this new rule applies to all future applicants, not current AdSense API users. The primary topic here is that the minimum required traffic has been increased to 100,000 pageviews per day, before even applying. I’m getting to the point where I may need to apply for the AdSense API usage, but we’ll see how it goes, I’m still getting there.

July Top Paying Keywords

Here is a small list of some top paying keywords for AdSense right now. Structured settlement Mesothelioma Acne Life Insurance Death Insurance Bextra Asbestos Car Insurance Dental Plans Private Jets Debt Consolidation Credit Cards Rewards Cards Equity Loans Equity Line Credit

AdSense Referrals 2.0

Browsing around DigitalPoint again, I noticed someone pointed out an AdSense Referral 2.0 feature.
After browsing around the AdSense interface a bit further, I did notice there is a huge new portion to Google AdSense Referrals.

New AdSense Spider Authentication

The AdSense team has done it again and now lets publishers have the ability to let the AdSense spiders into private areas of their websites. Where once before the spiders would not be able to see the content and the ads would not be related, the case has changed. This is a huge feature because a lot of people have been putting AdSense on forums. Some, not all, but some forums are private-only and this new feature will give those forum owners a better contextual ad base to serve its visitors. A great new feature. Congrats to the AdSense team for launching this! Direct link (you must login first)

AdSense Redesigns the Login Page

As I was visiting the AdSense page today to go check my stats, I noticed they improved the page design just now. Go take a look yourself: http://www.google.com/adsense

What Grinds My Gears? Poor AdSense Tracking for Publishers

Something that’s really bothered me over the past year or so is that there isn’t sufficient support for AdSense tracking. Sure, you can hack your way around and track AdSense clicks through javascript and Analytics, but there’s no solid support for it. Why does this bug me? Optimization. I really don’t know where my clicks are taking place exactly on which page. I can channel

AdSense Officially Changes ‘Ads by Google’

Google has officially changed their Ads by Google logo for the text ads of AdSense. The Google AdSense team has been testing new formats for quite some time now. But after checking the various ad formats today, I noticed that they officially moved to the new format which has a more web 2.0 look than it did before.

AdSense Optimization Reports

Not too long ago I noticed that I had an AdSense Optimization report in my account. So I clicked through to see exactly what it was and it was actually pretty useful. It was something basic, but something I had overlooked while developing one of my sites.
Click the image below to view the report.

It was useful to me. Not sure who else is getting these reports though. I expect almost all other publishers are getting these as well now.

AdSense Banners Encourage Clicking

The AdWords team just released some news about click-fraud protection utilities that will be in place, but at the same time I noticed this yesterday. So why are advertisers allowed to encourage clicking on their banners? In the AdSense Terms and Service agreement for publishers, it clearly states that publishers may not encourage clicking, but no where does it actually say that advertisers cannot encourage clicking. I’ve seen this ad quite a few times on the ValueClick ad network, but it’s normally animated and very annoying. I fail to understand why AdWords advertisers would want to encourage visitors to click on their banner in such a manner if they’re not directly interested in the product. I actually visited that URL too and it comes up as a 404 (Starware.com/Jokes). Very odd ad in my opinion.

Google in Hot Water with Korea for Fair Trade Pact

Google has been hit with an alleged violation of the Korea Fair Trade Pact (”KFTC”). The unnamed web company in Korea which complained to the commission in Korea is battling Google over an unfair termination of contract over possible click fraud. The KFTC claims Google carried out violations including terminating the agreement between AdSense and the Korean company, failing to ensure payments and not providing advertisers with a

AdSense API

I was snooping around Google a few minutes ago and noticed something huge in the search results: An AdSense API. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I submitted my application, we’ll see how it goes. Oh, also, it’s still in beta in case anyone is wondering. If I get accepted, I’ll be sure to post updates on what it’s about and how it’s going.

My 2007 Google Wishlist

There are a lot of enhancements and feature-requests that I want from Google still, so here’s my list. Google Maps (I did this already, but here’s a re-cap) Optional Direction Mapping Real-Time Traffic Reporting Account Settings -> Home Optional Quick-to Home Google AdSense Obscure the Google Pub ID Faster updating in the control panel Optional Video-only ads Integration into Google Analytics for tracking Webmaster Central An API Enhancements to the new backlink tool These are just a few things I am hoping Google will add this year.

AdSense Spam in E-mails

From: Google Maps Date: Feb 15, 2007 2:21 PM Subject: Have you downloaded Google Pack yet? Best Download Out. To: xxxxxx@gmail.com Jon, Download Google Pack. http://fun…w.com/soi…56336&l=0 No Registration, No emails to submit, No silly offers to complete. Just a Great download. http://fun…om/soihc?e=…u&m=156336&l=0 So it appears that I’m getting spammed for AdSense referrals now to download the Google Pack. I have already forwarded one of these spam e-mails to AdSense abuse, but I will forward this second one and hopefully something will be done about it.

AdSense Tips: Size Matters

Does size matter when setting up AdSense units?
The size more certainly does matter. Not too long ago I was contacted by the AdSense team about placing a specific sized banner around my site and placing it above the fold. So I did that. At first there was not much of an increase, but after a few weeks I have noticed that the increase in revenue jumped from a ten cents per click to up to a dollar per click. I used to have a 728×90 adblock on those pages that I noticed the huge increase on
So size matters, but why?
Size matters because not all advertisers use all the size formats. I have noticed that a lot of advertisers are using the 250×250 adblock size because it’s big enough to be effective and small enough not to take up the whole page.
So you are saying that if I put 250×250 adblocks on my site, I will see a ten times fold increase in revenue?
I am saying that anything is possible. Every site is different. The traffic is different, the content is different, the owner is different, the ad categories are different. There is no way to say for sure how much of an increase you will see — if any at all.

AdSense Inquiry: google_ad_region

Question: What does google_ad_region = ‘test’; actually do? AdSense Support Response: At this time, we are not able to disclose further information about the code you noted. Please keep in mind that as stated in the AdSense program policies, publishers are not allowed to alter the AdSense ad code for any reason. Once you’ve generated the ad code in your AdSense account pages, you may not alter any portion of the code or manually change the layout of the ads. So it makes me think that maybe they’re doing a test on some sites through AdSense…anyone else have a more firm answer on it?

New Referral Bonuses

AdSense Referrals: When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5. When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250. If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within

AdSense Referrals Step it Up

Have you noticed many $5 AdSense or AdWords referral popping up on your AdSense reports yesterday? Don’t worry, you aren’t losing out on the potential $100 you could earn when that referred publisher earns his or her first $100 with AdSense… in fact, you can now earn up to $255 for a single AdSense referral with the change made to the referral structure yesterday. Instead of the previous $100 you could earn, there’s a potential $255 now which is huge. Google is doing anything in their power to stay number one in online advertising and it’s working. AdSense is one of, if not the top, contextual advertising platforms. Yahoo! and MSN entered the game fairly late, but AdSense has done a better job and now they’re trying to sustain their competitive advantage.

AdSense Channel Ad Placement

This is a follow-up from my earlier article about brand advertising. Google released (not sure when) a new channel feature that lets publishers specify to advertisers where their ad would show up. This function is essential for both publishers and advertisers because in the end, it will create a higher ROI (return on investment). Channels now have a much greater purpose than just to separate earnings for publishers. It’s a unique identifier for advertisers as well now.

AdSense Brand Advertising

So I received an e-mail from the AdSense team last night. This is part of what I got. After a recent review of your site, we would like to include mysite.com in our custom placement packs program. Custom placement packs are selections of individually-reviewed sites designed for our largest brand advertisers. Wow, sweet, I’m stoked that they would consider one of my sites for this opportunity.

Time to Google Friendster

Google is becoming the unchallenged leading providing in content ads on the web. With Google’s not too long ago partnership with Myspace to provide their search and some advertising, Google is dominating the realm of online exposure for advertisers. Friendster – the pioneer social network founded in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams – is going to partner with Google to place ads on the community site and to power the search technology. Google takes over yet another social networking site and is on their way to becoming (if they aren’t already) the number one advertising source on the web. AdWords is a great platform and it reaches out to billions of people a day across the world.

AdSense is Down

AdSense had been really slow for me this morning and now this appeared when I tried to navigate around: The Google AdSense website is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later. We apologize for any inconvenience. Looks like AdSense is having some unexpected downtime. Update @ 11:45am PST: Seems AdSense is back online now. Update @ 2:30pm: And then again, it seems I missed the notice yesterday about there being some downtime for AdSense. http://adwords.blogspot.com

Google’s 2006 Wrap Up

Here are a few things from Google that are part of the 2006 wrap up. Top non-Google referrers and most influencial sites of 2006: Digg.com and Slashdot Inside AdSense goes international Click-to-play video ads AdSense Help Forums Referrals Optimization Month AdSense for content availability AdSense for search on your own page Landing Page Quality Straight from Google’s Ariene Lee at Inside AdSense. There have been some huge improvements for products across the map for Google, these are a few of the AdSense highlights.

Why Google is Advertising AdSense so Much

In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that AdSense has been advertising itself quite a bit more than it normally had been. I noticed that AdSense was advertising its platform a lot more and AdWords has been advertising that they are hiring. So I wonder why Google is advertising so much for AdSense and AdWords right now…

AdSense Image Placement Policy Clarification

For the past 6 months or year, there has been a lot of hype to using images next to ads to create a higher click through rate. The AdSense team has finally came out and stated clearly what the policies on this matter are. It’s basically not allowed. I had to go change one of my sites because it had an implementation of this vaguely, but it’s fixed now. It’s a good thing that the AdSense team has finally released an official response to this. Now AdSense publishers can stop e-mailing support asking about it or asking about it on the forums (as I see every week).

New AdSense Payment Layout

There is a new layout to the AdSense payment page. Take a look below to see the specifics of how it looks or just login to your account (if you have one) and check for yourself.

AdSense Team Adds Four New Languages

Yesterday, the AdSense team release four new languages for publishers. Croatian Czech Slovak Traditional Chinese As a friendly note for everyone, “…it can take up to 48 hours for our crawler to access your site…” just so everyone remembers that.

Ads by Gooooooogle or just by Google?

I saw some threads around the forums and decided to take another look at it. I looked around at a few of my sites, including this one. Here are the results I got. One with just straight text of Ads by Google and the other with a white arrow image and the Google logo. Is Google testing out a new brand image for their publishers?

Blank AdSense?

I just logged into my AdSense account and found that the page was blank….anyone else getting this?

Blogrolling the Blog with the Washington Post

There’s a new platform coming out that is being produced by the Washington Post (washingtonpost.com). It’s not a revolutionary advertising system, but it does seem to be unique in its class. I’m looking forward to see the program in full swing. But a little about the platform first. It’s a platform that will use an advertising algorithm which will detect the CPM, for example, $1.25 of

Some Success, Some Failure

Google has a huge list of products on the market right now which are utilized everyday by people. Some of these great products include AdSense, AdWords, Google Maps, Gmail, and Google Calendar — just to name a few of them. But not all of these have been a success.
Two huge success stories include the AdSense+AdWords platform for advertising and the second is Gmail. These products have honestly changed the way the world of the Internet actually functions. AdWords+AdWords brought a new kind of advertising to the table and let small-time publishers start earning a few bucks here and there. Gmail re-invented AJAX — which Microsoft created nearly 15 years ago. AJAX lets a user check for new e-mails without ever leaving the page. This AJAX technology blew up and became widespread across the Internet. The technology wasn’t new, but not many people knew about it until the release of Gmail.

Google Audio Ads

As I was looking through my account services again, I noticed a new one. Audio Ads. I went to it, but all I got was an “under construction” page. This will be the new wave of advertising for Google in the AdWords and AdSense platform. Google already introduced video ads and now it’s time for the audio ads.

Multiple Channels for AdSense

Something I never noticed before is that you can have multiple channels for a single ad group. I don’t know how long this has been active, but I haven’t generated new AdSense code in a while. I actually went in to check something out in the AdSense control panel because someone on DigitalPoint had mentioned a google_ad_host = “” variable and I wanted to check it out. But alas, it didn’t show up in my account.

Google Domain Trademarking

Cristian wrote a good article about this so I’ll dig a bit more into it. Google is a very exclusive domain name. They want to protect their intellectual rights and therefore they are now banning AdSense publishers that have “google” in their top-level domain name or their second-level domain name. When I first started ginside.com, I was very careful not to put Google in the domain

AdSense.com Now Owned by Google

AdSense.com has been owned by an advertising consulting agency for quite some time. The company, AdSense, owned the domain quite some time before Google ever released their product of AdSense. AdSense.com never went to court about suing Google over the name copyright violations, but they did receive some added traffic to their site because so many people thought that they were going to Google’s AdSense.
AdSense.com is now owned by Google. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The company that owned AdSense.com may have given it up freely or they may have been forced to give it up. Nissan.com went through a lawsuit battle over their domain as well, could this be similar?
But in the end, AdSense.com just goes to Google.com now — which seems kind of weird..maybe it should redirect to google.com/adsense? Maybe that’s just me though.
History Timeline of AdSense.com
- October 16, the owner was still AdSense Consulting
- October 23, the domain was transferred to MarkMonitor.com
- October 31, the domains registrant was set to “Trout & Zimmer”
- November 1, the domain was officially in the hands of Google

Analytics and AdSense Suggestions

As I’m re-reading over the forum discussion so far, there have been some great suggestions. Here’s a few to list them. One user/password for AdSense and Analytics All my site statistics in once place rather than being scattered over AdSense, Analytics and Google Sitemaps Most profitable referrers Report similar to the “tunnel tracking” but showing me the most common path from Referrer, to Landing page, to other pages visited, and eventually to the pages where the ad was clicked. Most profitable pages (total $, as well as, $ per visitor) Most profitable search engine keywords Most profitable in page keywords In page keywords that attract the most visitors What was the most profitable items I have written about These are some really great ideas. I have a few suggestions myself, but again, take a gander at it. It’s a good group discussion going on.

AdSense + Analytics Feedback

So I attended the eComXpo last week and I talked to a couple Google reps about Analytics and AdSense. As a publisher and a user of Analytics, I think it would be great for Analytics and AdSense to be integrated with each other. What is one of the biggest reasons I love Google? They listen. Google listens to what their users want and they deliver. Google is very user-focused which means users want to come back and use their products. I’ve put in my 2 cents time and time again for Gmail features and sure enough, they get implemented. Of course I know I’m not the only one with ideas and by no means are they implementing these features based on what I say, but it counts as a vote in their books and those votes add up. Read here for the topic of discussion about Analytics and AdSense integration. AdSense Blog

AdSense Reports Confusion

As a lot of publishers have often become confused about how their data is displayed in the account control panel, the AdSense team decided it was time to clear things up. I had some confusion not too long ago, so this is quite helpful. Your ads are being tracked on multiple URL channels. Let’s say you’ve set up 2 URL channels – one to track example.com and to track www.example.com/page. The URL channel example.com will track clicks and impressions from all subdomains, subdirectories, and subpages of example.com. As a result, one click on www.example.com/page will be tracked on both of your URL channels, which means you’ll see two clicks recorded in your channel reports. However, your aggregate reports will show you the correct number of clicks, one, with no data duplication. AdSense Blog

AdWords / AdSense Down for Maintenance

The AdWords account interface is temporarily unavailable due to system maintenance. AdWords is expected to be down from approximately 10:00 AM until 3:00 PM PDT [?] on October 14, 2006. Please note that your campaigns will be running normally during this short period of downtime, which only affects your account management pages. We apologise for any inconvenience. The Google AdSense website is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later. We apologize for any inconvenience. Grrr! I want to setup some new campaigns for my sites in AdWords…..man….oh well, guess I’ll have to wait.

The “Completely Free” Ringtones that Aren’t

Ringtone ads often claim to be “free,” “totally free,” “all free,” “100% complimentary,” and available with “no credit card” and “no obligation” required. These claims typically appear in pay-per-click ad bodies, but they also often appear in ad titles and even in ad domain names, of course along with landing pages. Ben wrote a great article on PPC scams and how Google shouldn’t really be letting it happen. I

Google Bought YouTube.com

It has been confirmed. Google bought YouTube.com is a stock transaction that will close in Q4. It will allow for YouTube to operate as it’s own entity still just has it has been. The only difference is that it will be owned by Google. “Our community has played a vital role in changing the way that people consume media, creating a new clip culture. By joining

Two New AdSense Forums

The AdSense team added some new forums for people to use. There was already English, German, and Chinese, but they added two more: Japanese Portuguese

New Settings in AdSense — Allowed Hosts

Webmasters go crazy over having their publisher ID so public and easily accessable for anyone to use. The AdSense team is finally putting a foot down and starting to give publishers some leverage to fight this. As I’ve seen time and time again on DigitalPoint, people will often come in screaming “ahhh my account was deleted!!!” and have no idea why. Maybe the AdSense team saw their pubID on a site that they didn’t own, but Google didn’t know any better. This move will help clean up the publisher network a lot and make it a lot better for everyone to use. In the end, it will save advertisers money too so not just anyone can use their pubID. Here is the new setting you will be seeing soon. labnol.blogspot.com

AdSense Spotlight: TakeABreak.com.au

Since 2003 TakeABreak.com.au has enabled visitors from around the world to find and book accommodation across Australia. The site lists more than 30 types of accommodation and provides an online calendar for holiday makers to request dates up to 18 months in advance. The young company’s bookings grew tenfold in 2004 with revenue projected to increase another 50% in 2005. Rankings firm Hitwise places TakeABreak in the top 10 Australian travel and accommodation sites. There’s a nice write-up about TakeABreak.com.au about the spotlight the AdSense team has given to the site. It’s a well written article.

Protecting Your AdSense Publisher ID

Jensense talks about it a little bit, but I’m fairly concerned with Google’s lack of care about how there is no protection of one’s publisher ID. Anyone can take someone’s publisher ID and use it on any website without Google actually knowing if it’s their site or not. This is rather disturbing, even though this is how it’s always been. Google should spend the finances to setup some sort of protection, even if it’s small.

Google’s Inside Scoop on Clicking

So, here’s my question…Has anybody heard of Google artificially inflating hits by having someone in their office click on their AdWords client links to improve the click through (and make themselves money)? The AdWords team does in fact click on AdWords ads, for a variety of reasons, but primarily during the ad review process in which we check that the Destination URL is functional, that the back button works, etc.

AdSense Opens an Office in Australia

Problogger Darren Rowse writes about his first experience with the new AdSense office in Australia that recently opened up. This will help with timezone problems that some premium AdSense publishers have had in the past.

The Weekly Report by AdSense

The Google AdSense team has released another frequently requested featured for enhanced automated-reporting. This feature release gives publishers the ability to aggregate data together with channels and custom URL settings to more effectively analyze how a specific site or channel is performing. You now are able to choose which day “starts” the week so you do not have to conform to everyone else’s preset idea of what starts the week. You could start your week on Wednesday if you wanted to.

AdSense Channel Page Gets Revamped

The AdSense channel page was a bit disorganized before and people were complaining. Google took a hint and did some restructuring of it to give it a better feel for the user and give it better usability. Click the image below to see a full screen revamp of it.

AdSense: New Ad Format

The AdSense team has released a new ad format of 200×200. The format might look something a little bit like this: I haven’t actually tested it out myself yet and they didn’t have a preview yet on the ad formats page.

Have You Received Your Lava Lamp Yet?

Looks like there have been quite a few people getting some free lava lamps from Google for being part of the AdSense Video Beta program. Wolf Howl

Apple: Go Big or Go Home

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt didn’t join Apple’s board just for kicks and giggles, there was obviously a reason behind it. There were rumors of running Google Video on future iPod products, but it’s doubtful that will happen. What is likely though, is that Apple will start running Google ads on their online properties. This is a very viable opportunity for Apple to generate another huge source of income and for advertisers to match up with their consumers.

Google Launchs Click Call In the UK

It appears that Google is starting a Click to Call method of advertising in the CPC world, but only in the UK right now. SERoundTable has the full article.

AdSense and Analytics Just Became Friends

While there’s been a hack around that I use for tracking AdSense clicks through Analytics, there was no full-integration which really helps track everything properly. Knowing how well a specific marketing scheme is working is very key to how a website runs. I know that I personally depend heavily on seeing how my marketing is effective and how it doesn’t work. There is now some simple integration between AdSense and Analytics for publishers. I’m very curious to see how well my sites are actually performing

Some More Good AdSense Tips

Be well rounded – In high school, being a talented football player or a skilled musician makes you interesting. But being a star quarterback who plays first violin, gets straight As, and still finds time to volunteer at the local soup kitchen makes you amazing. If you’re only successful with the standard AdSense ads, it’s time to expand. Try link units, referrals, and AdSense for search and track the results.

Google AdSense Adds Self-Search

Google AdSense now allows you to display AdSense ads for search results within your site. While it was against the TOS before to display AdSense ads on non-Google search result pages, they have opened up that portion to everyone. How does this really help publishers? This really helps publishers because now we can use the Google search platform that indexes our pages and has one of the best algos on the net for searching on our own site. While before you could have used the Google Search API, it was limited. Now it’s not limited.

AdSense Last Login

AdSense recently added in the “Last Login” time to show how long it has been since you last logged in, obviously. I don’t know how useful this feature is though. I think something such as … the last hostname used to login would be more useful to me, something for security instead of just knowing when you last logged in.

Multiple Google Accounts

A few weeks ago I logged into my AdSense account and it asked me to change my login, so I did. I thought it was a little weird at first because I liked having all my Google Services linked to one account. Since that time though, I had to change my login for AdSense so it uses another Google Account. I now have 3 different logins,

Good AdSense Tips

After reading the Official AdSense Blog, here are some good tips… AdSense’s content-matching technology is designed to provide useful links and resources for your site’s visitors — but they won’t find the links useful if they can’t find them at all! 1. Take a look at each page on your site and imagine yourself as one of your site’s visitors. Would he or she rarely

AdSense Branding Without Branding

Jensense reported that Google AdSense is starting to test some sites with unbranded ads being displayed. As of right now, only premium publishers can unbrand the Google AdSense ads and use their own format, but there are not that many premium publishers out there. It takes some 20million odd pageviews per month before being able to apply for that status. I’m not exactly sure why AdSense would start unbranding their ads, but the only reason I can think of is to attract more clicks to drive more revenue. I often see AdSense ads and think “oh great, more ads, not clicking those…”, but maybe having an unbranded system would give them the ability to stop that mindset of Google Ads for people, such as myself. I hope to see some better testing and progress of this unbranding from AdSense.

AdSense Allows You to View Site-Targeted or Contextual

As I was browing my stats today I noticed this small feature. It could be really old..or it could be brand new. This feature allows you to see which impressions and earnings came from Site-Targeting or from Contextual clicks. This helps give an idea of how you’re earning the revenue.

AdSense.com … Google Should Do *Something* About it

If you think you can get rich quick placing other people’s ads on your site or blog, please contact Google who has taken and used our business name without permission or compensation. AdSense.com It’s true. Google did take the name AdSense without permission and has not compensated them for any brand name losses they may have had through the process. Google has the motto of “Don’t be Evil.” They really need to take this to heart and contact AdSense Consulting in order to sort this all out. As I’ve seen through other companies, this is something that should not be tolerated. (Full Story)

The Future of Google

A topic, not touched on too much, was brought up on DigitalPoint. How do we all see the future of Google? We’ve got a company that makes 99% of its revenue from one source of income – ads. With MSN and Yahoo moving in, as well as many other contextual advertising companies, do you think this will deal a blow to Google? An interested point, I think. As

Google AdSense Site Diagnostics

The AdSense has added a Site Diagnostics tool which will help webmasters determine if pages are being blocked or not from the Mediabots that Google sends out. Here is a little demo of it: What is the site diagnostic feature? The Site Diagnostics page within your account provides details about whether our crawler was able to access your site in order to provide relevant ads. Our crawler sometimes encounters errors when attempting to crawl a page to determine its content. Using the site diagnostic section of your account, you can review the errors our crawler encountered for specific blocked URLs, then correct them in order for us to crawl and deliver the most relevant ads. (via)

India is Widely Blocking Blogger

Source: panos.org.uk Reports from various sites are showing that India is blocking the Blogger website, just as China did in the past. It’s a bit odd that only now they are starting to block the blogger website when it’s been active for so long. We all hope — including those in India — that this is resolved quickly and swiftly so people from India can continue blogging.

PayPal Payments for AdSense … or Maybe Checkout Instead?

As of right now, the AdSense program does not allow for PayPal payments for the monthly earnings. In short, Google does not have a payment storage system right now, such as PayPal. Google now has Google Checkout which will allow for consumers to manage one account and buy products through different eStores, but it doesn’t allow you to ’store’ money there — as far as I know.

AdSense Earnings Unstable

As I’m viewing my AdSense account, there have been some serious influxes in the earnings. When I had $8 for one day, it now shows that day for $16 and the impressions nearly doubled that for day. When I had a lower amount of impressions overall monthly, that nearly doubled and shows almost 500,000 impressions now for the month. I’m not sure what is going on with AdSense right now, but I emailed AdSense support and should have an update shortly on this influx in the AdSense control panel for accounts.
UPDATE: All the stats restablized to the old stats and they are showing the old data. I’m still waiting to hear back from AdSense support.

Made-for-AdSense Sites Get the Slip

Google is in the process of trying to clean-up and make the AdWords and AdSense network a little bit better. The process of doing this is making the ‘landing page’ quality algorithm just a little bit stronger so that AdWords accounts can’t be used for made-for-adsense (MFA) sites anymore. In short, they are making the network quality better so they don’t have fake advertisers just trying to

AdSense Referral Tracking Now Active

While everyone using AdSense knows you can channel your earnings — which really does help in case you aren’t using them — but there was no way to channel your referrals. Well, now you can. The AdSense team released an update to the control panel so you can now channel your referral data for items such as Picasa, AdSense, AdWords, Google Pack, or any of those referral products that Google is offering. (via)