Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Happy St. Patrick's Day

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Happy St. Patrick's Day

Friday, March 18, 2011 | 8:55:00 AM
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A big St Patty's cheers from everyone on the Dublin AdSense team!


Site maintenance on Sunday, March 20

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Site maintenance on Sunday, March 20

Friday, March 18, 2011 | 11:02:00 AM
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This Sunday, our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance from 3am to 7am PDT. You may be unable to log in to your AdSense account during this time and some features may be temporarily unavailable during the maintenance. We'll continue serving ads to your pages and tracking your clicks, impressions, and earnings as usual. Your ad targeting won't be affected.



We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world:



London - 10am GMT Sunday
Alexandria - 12pm EET Sunday
Hyderabad - 3:30pm IST Sunday

Jakarta - 5pm WIT Sunday

Perth - 6pm WST Sunday

To learn more about what goes on during these maintenance periods, check out this Inside AdSense post.






New in-ads notice label and icon

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New in-ads notice label and icon

Monday, March 21, 2011 | 2:32:00 PM
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You've probably noticed that AdWords ads appearing on your site have a special "i" icon that expands to an "Ads by Google" label in the bottom corner of the ad. Users who click this label are taken to a page where they learn more about online advertising and the ads they've seen. Giving users clear notice about the ads they see is a high priority for Google and for many in the online advertising industry at large.

We'll soon start to change our in-ads notice icon to a new icon that expands to an "AdChoices" label. These notifications were developed by the online advertising industry’s Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising to more proactively give users notice and choice about the ads they see. With the change from our "i" icon and "Ads by Google" label to these new notifications, we hope to show our support for this cross-industry initiative, and to increase our users' understanding about ad choices through adoption of an icon they'll see on ads across the web.



In a few weeks, we'll begin to show the new icon and label on most ad formats across the majority of English-language sites. Over time, we’ll expand the notice to ensure that all English-language publisher sites in the Google Display Network come within the Self-Regulatory Program (until then, these sites will show the existing “i” icon and “Ads by Google” label). This will be the single most widespread rollout of the "AdChoices" label to date, and we're encouraged that others in the industry are similarly adopting it. We’re also looking at ways to increase transparency and control in other languages and countries. In the meantime, those languages and countries will continue to see the “i” and “Ads by Google” notice.

Just like before, users who click on the "AdChoices" label will be taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they've just seen. This page will also provide a link to the Ads Preferences Manager, where users can control the types of interest-based ads they see. Our tests of this new icon and label showed that they should not have any effect on ad performance. We think this rollout will help users better understand the ads they're seeing, and we look forward to seeing widespread adoption of this label throughout the industry.




Thursday, March 17, 2011

Troubleshooting tips part III: Performance reports & earnings

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Troubleshooting tips part III: Performance reports & earnings

Wednesday, March 03, 2010 | 11:10:00 AM
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Once ads are displaying fine on your pages, your next concern may be your earnings. To make sure all your impressions and clicks are recorded correctly, check out the following notes and tips.

First, be aware that your AdSense reports are updated every 15 to 30 minutes, but can sometimes take up to 24 hours to update. So at times, if you don't see the numbers you expect in your reports, be sure to check again later once your reports have been updated.
  • Do you use the Allowed Sites feature? Allowed sites are websites or URLs on which AdSense publishers allow or wish to have their Google ads displayed. If you use the allowed sites feature in your AdSense account, be sure to add all the websites you're displaying ads on, to the list of allowed sites. If you forget to add a sites where you're displaying ads, then impressions and clicks on the sites will be shown in your reports, but advertisers won't be charged and the clicks won't earn any revenue.


  • Do you have channels set up to track your clicks and impressions?
    • If your channel reports show more data than your aggregate reports, it might be the case that your domains or ad units are being tracked simultaneously on multiple URL or custom channels. If that's the case, then to see your complete, accurate statistics, visit your Advanced Reports page. When you select the Aggregate Data radio button and click Display Report, you'll see all clicks, page impressions, and earnings from your account with no duplication of data.
    • Alternatively, you may see that your aggregate reports show more data than your channel reports, even if all your pages are tracked with channels. This can occur sometimes when your page is displayed within a frame; in this case data won't appear in your channel reports but will display in your aggregate reports.


Channel data can be a bit tricky, so make sure to pick distinctive names to differentiate between URL and custom channels -- that way, you'll know exactly what data you're viewing. We also recommend checking out our optimization tips for channels to help you determine which ad units and placements are performing well, and how you can use this information to earn more revenue.
  • If you have ad placements, have you named them accurately? Once you create channels for your ad units or domains, you can turn your custom channels into ad placements that advertisers can specifically target their ads to, using placement targeting. When entering a description for your channels to appear as ad placements, be sure to enter something informative and accurate to represent your site well.
Also, we advise you to be careful when renaming the ad placement as you will lose existing advertiser bids.

Next week, we'll look at publisher controls and how to filter certain ads from appearing on your site.


Google-certified ad networks now available to all publishers

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Google-certified ad networks now available to all publishers

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 | 3:21:00 PM
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Back in August, we announced plans to give publishers the ability to allow multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete for display ad space on your site. While this feature was initially available only to publishers located in North America and Europe, we're happy to announce that all publishers will now have access to these participating ad networks.

Allowing these ad networks to compete for your display ad space means that more ads will be eligible to appear on your pages, leading to potentially higher earnings in the long run. Our system will show the ads that will generate you the most profit, whether they're from these Google-certified ad networks or the AdWords program. As a reminder, all Google-certified ad networks are required to adhere to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. In addition, you can use the controls in your Ad Review Center to specify which ad networks can appear on your pages.

Finally, some ad networks use tools similar to Google's interest-based advertising to show more relevant ads to users on the sites they visit. We'll allow certified networks who comply with user privacy guidelines to show ads using these tools, but they won't be permitted to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent interest-based advertising. You'll be able to opt out of receiving ads based on user interests from these certified networks, and we have changed our requirements for third-party ad serving to reflect this. We're dedicated to providing users with a positive experience, while helping publishers effectively monetize the ads appearing on their sites. We believe you'll find that more competition translates into better ads and increased revenue in the long run.

We're continuing to certify additional ad networks, so please keep in mind that you won't see immediate changes in your earnings or ads. As we continue to add new ad networks, you'll see them appear in your Ad Review Center. To learn more about managing your account settings and Google-certified ad networks, visit our Help Center.



Link units revamped

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Link units revamped

Monday, April 12, 2010 | 11:36:00 AM
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If you’re as excited about link units as I am, then you’ll be happy to know that they’re now better than ever! Link units are a different type of ad format which display a list of topics relevant to the content of your page. When a user clicks on a topic, we’ll show a page of related ads and you’ll earn from valid clicks on those ads. Many publishers have found that link units offer monetization similar to that of ad units and provide a more integrated user experience.

In our biggest performance overhaul to date, the link units engineering team recently completed a full rewrite of the link unit matching system. The new system is much smarter: it not only uses more sophisticated topic ranking algorithms but also continuously optimizes by learning which topics have the most appeal to the visitors of your site. The results are overwhelmingly positive -- topic quality, user response rate to topics and ads, and monetization metrics have all improved in significant, measurable ways.

If you aren't already using link units on your pages, I encourage you to give them a try. They’re space-efficient and can help provide additional AdSense revenue. Visit your ‘AdSense Setup’ tab and select 'AdSense for content' to get started, or learn more in our Help Center.





Two new ways to optimize AdSense on your website

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Two new ways to optimize AdSense on your website

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 | 9:00:00 AM
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Publishers frequently ask for new ways to increase the relevancy of the AdSense ads shown on their sites. Today, we're pleased to announce two features to help you display highly targeted ads to your users in new and exciting ways.

AdSense for Search Ads Only

You may remember that last year, we introduced the Custom Search element to help you easily bring Google search results and ads to your site. More recently, we introduced data rendering to give you even more control over how the results are shown to your users.

We understand that some of you may have your own, non-Google search results that you'd like to monetize. In the past, this typically meant that you weren't able to use AdSense for search ads. Now, with AdSense for search ads only, publishers can now include AdSense for search ads on their pages and pair them with their own, homegrown search results.

By adding just a few lines of JavaScript to your page, you can display AdSense for search ads above, beside, or below your own search results. You can pick the size, shape and number of ads displayed in each block, and you can even adjust the style of the ads to better fit the look and feel of your site. For instance, check out how seamlessly MerchantCircle has integrated AdSense for search ads only above and next to their search results.

AdSense for Ajax

Whether your site offers your own search results or not, if you have dynamic content, you may be interested in delivering your AdSense for content ads with AdSense for Ajax. With traditional AdSense for content, ads refresh only when a page is reloaded. This works great -- but isn't optimal when your site relies heavily on Ajax, which allows visitors to navigate a lot of content without actually leaving a single page. Also, sites that generate a lot of dynamic content that isn't crawlable are difficult to target accurately.

Here's where AdSense for Ajax comes in. With AdSense for Ajax, your AdSense for content ads will refresh whenever there's a context change - regardless of whether the page reloads or not. Travel site trip.com has taken advantage of this by showing relevant ads based on the selected tab. Try clicking on the "Hotels" tab. The page doesn't reload, yet the Ads by Google have refreshed to show ads more relevant to hotels than flights.

In addition to the ads refreshing, you might wonder why the subject of the ads changed since the crawlable content on the page didn't change much when the tab changed. The second benefit of AdSense for Ajax is that it allows you to provide hints about your site's uncrawlable content with each refresh.

Both of these AdSense features can be easily added to most sites by just copying and pasting a few lines of JavaScript code, which will help you show highly relevant ads to your visitors.

Sound right for your site? Please sign up to try out AdSense for Ajax or AdSense for search ads only today!




Category filtering available in 13 languages

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Category filtering available in 13 languages

Thursday, May 20, 2010 | 9:12:00 AM
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If you're an international publisher who's been waiting for category filtering, we're happy to let you know that we're continuing to expand the feature's availability worldwide. It's currently available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Arabic. In addition, we're beginning to roll this out in beta for Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian -- although we're not able to add additional publishers to the limited beta at this time, we're working to make category filtering more widely available in these languages soon.

With category filtering, you can prevent ads from up to 11 specific categories from appearing on your pages. Ads in these categories will be filtered if they're in any of the supported languages, regardless of how they've been targeted to your pages. To start using category filtering, sign in to your AdSense account and visit your Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Once you click 'change', you'll be able to view the full list of categories you can filter. In addition, you can see the percentage of revenue and ad impressions you've been receiving from each category in the last 30 days; this information can help you understand the impact that applying filters might have.

To learn more about category filtering, please visit our Help Center.




The AdSense revenue share

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The AdSense revenue share

Monday, May 24, 2010 | 7:00:00 AM
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Today, in the spirit of greater transparency with AdSense publishers, we’re sharing the revenue shares for our two main AdSense products — AdSense for content and AdSense for search.

As you may already know, AdSense is comprised of several products. The most popular are AdSense for content, which allows publishers to generate revenue from ads placed alongside web content, and AdSense for search, which allows publishers to place a custom Google search engine on their site and generate revenue from ads shown next to search results. Since AdSense for content and AdSense for search offer publishers different services, the revenue shared with publishers differs for each of these products.

AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide. This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites. The remaining portion that we keep reflects Google's costs for our continued investment in AdSense — including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads. It also reflects the costs we incur in building products and features that enable our AdWords advertisers to serve ads on our AdSense partner sites. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed.

We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations. As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that we keep reflects our costs, including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies. The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when we increased it.

We also offer additional AdSense products including AdSense for mobile applications, AdSense for feeds, and AdSense for games. We aren’t disclosing the revenue shares for these products at this time because they’re quickly evolving, and we're still learning about the costs associated with supporting them. Revenue shares for these products can vary from product to product since our costs in building and maintaining these products can vary significantly. Additionally, the revenue shares for AdSense for content and AdSense for search also can vary for major online publishers with whom we negotiate individual contracts.

Of course, we can’t guarantee that the revenue share will never change (our costs may change significantly, for example), but we don’t have any current plans to do so for any AdSense product. Over the next few months we’ll begin showing the revenue shares for AdSense for content and AdSense for search right in the AdSense interface.

We hope this additional transparency helps you gain more insight into your business partnership with Google. We believe our revenue share is very competitive, and the vast number of advertisers who compete to appear on AdSense sites helps to ensure that you’re earning the most from every ad impression. Additionally, when considering different monetization options, we encourage you to focus on the total revenue generated from your site, rather than just revenue share, which can be misleading. For example, you would receive $68 with AdSense for content for $100 worth of advertising that appeared on your site. If another ad network offers an 80% revenue share, but is only able to collect $50 from ads served on your site, you would earn $40. In this case, a higher revenue share wouldn’t make up for the lower revenue yield of the other ad network.

We’re continually working on helping you improve the returns from your site while giving you more control and insight into AdSense. For example, we continue to improve our technology so that we can deliver even better matched ads and attract even more advertisers to your websites. Additionally, we recently began providing more granular ways to find and review the ads on your site, as well as the ability to filter more ads by category. We’re also focused on finding other ways to make AdSense better for you. As you may remember, last December, we asked for your ideas and feedback on how we can make AdSense better. We received more than 600 suggestions and 35,000 votes, and we’ve been reviewing them all.

Keep an eye on this blog for updates about the new features we’re building to help you maximize your advertising revenues.




Introducing the Google Display Network

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Introducing the Google Display Network

Friday, June 18, 2010 | 10:57:00 AM
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We’re always focused on improving AdSense by bringing more advertisers to your sites, giving you more control over the ads that appear on your sites, and giving you more transparency into how much revenue you’re earning. Over the past year, much of our focus has been on attracting more display advertisers and display advertising spend to your sites. We’ve added new advertisers and introduced options that help these advertisers reach your sites. At the same time, advertisers have continued to run ads on YouTube and our own properties. To make our display media offerings clearer to advertisers and agencies so that we can continue to bring more display spend to your sites, we’re creating a new umbrella name for all these properties, the Google Display Network.

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites where advertisers can buy ads through Google, including the over one million AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partners as well as YouTube and Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, and Blogger. As an AdSense publisher you’re already part of the Google Display Network. We’re not making any changes to how AdSense works, so no action is required on your part. If you use AdSense for search, your AdSense for search ad space won't be part of the Google Display Network. Advertisers will continue to be able to purchase ads on your search results pages in the same way they always have.

While this new name reflects our significant investment to bring more display advertising to your sites, we want to make sure you know that we are still committed to delivering relevant text ads. If you receive text ads on your sites today, rest assured that you will continue to do so. The Google Display Network offers all ad formats - text, image, rich media, and video ads - enabling advertisers to unleash their creativity and engage visitors on your websites in various ways. If you haven’t opted into receiving image ads, we encourage you to do so in order to benefit from the investments we’ve made.

We’re working hard to offer the best display advertising solutions, and we look forward to continuing to introduce new features on the Google Display Network that help advertisers reach their goals and that help our AdSense publishers earn more revenue.




AdSense Facts & Fiction Part III: The stats pipeline

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AdSense Facts & Fiction Part III: The stats pipeline

Thursday, June 24, 2010 | 3:21:00 PM
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Fiction: Site maintenance periods and delays in my AdSense reports mean that data isn’t being recorded properly.

Fact: Although there can sometimes be delays in the stats pipeline, all data is still tracked accurately.

We call the process of tracking your clicks, impressions, and earnings the “stats pipeline.” The stats pipeline runs continuously, reviewing the logs of activity written by our ad serving system, aggregating them, and updating the storage system. So that we can generate these statistics quickly and reliably, without losing any information, the process of aggregating your statistics spans several data centers.

Sometimes in rare cases, the process for aggregating stats can be delayed for several hours. This can happen for a few possible reasons:
  • We sometimes make updates to our datacenter to make use of the latest technologies. However, these don’t affect how your clicks are tracked or how much you earn. Depending on the time it takes for the updates to complete, you may notice that stats are delayed by several hours.
  • We have scheduled database down-times, generally on Saturday mornings (Pacific Time). Since the process of aggregating your statistics depends on database data, any such downtime also leads to delay in statistics. I’d recommend reading this Inside AdSense post for more information about these downtimes.
  • On rare occasions, data centers can have unforeseen problems, causing unplanned delay in updating statistics.
These downtimes only delay your statistics -- they don’t impact the actual tracking of your statistics. We make sure that all events are processed exactly once, and we have implemented a number of internally and externally audited verification procedures to ensure that this is the case. Also, events in the aggregation pipeline are processed in a way that’s not specific to a particular publisher, so all of you should get your stats updates at the same time.

When downtimes occur, we work to notify publishers in advance and as quickly as possible using this blog, the AdSense Help Forum, and our Known Issues page. We understand how important it is for you to have up-to-date statistics, and continue to work towards making sure that the delays are kept to a minimum.



An update on the AdSense Product Ideas page

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An update on the AdSense Product Ideas page

Monday, June 28, 2010 | 11:30:00 AM
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A few months ago, we created a Product Ideas page for AdSense, where you could tell us what product and feature updates you’d like to see. We received over 600 ideas from publishers all around the world, with ideas ranging from ad filtering options to increased transparency, and more detailed reporting to easier account management.

Our product and engineering teams have been hard at work to bring you ideas from the wishlist. We still have more to do, but wanted to share some of the progress so far:

You asked for...More transparency about how much you’re earning from AdSense.
What we’ve delivered...The AdSense for content and AdSense for search revenue shares are now publicly shared.

You asked for...The ability to block certain categories of ads, like religion and dating.
What we’ve delivered...Category blocking (previously known as category filtering) is now available in 13 languages. You can filter up to 11 ad categories, including religion, dating, politics and weight loss.

We’ve also been developing a new version of the AdSense interface. Although the interface is currently in beta, it addresses many of the requests we saw on the Product Ideas page. Take a look at the improvements that the new interface offers:

You asked for...Make it easy to change addresses when we move from one location to a new one.
What we’ve delivered...You can make requests to change the country of your payment address directly in the new AdSense interface. (Due to legal and system constraints, some country updates will still require you to create a new account.)


You asked for...Automatic revenue tracking to quickly and easily compare performance of ads of different sizes and types.
What we’ve delivered...The new AdSense interface offers Ad units, Ad sizes, and Ad types reports in the Performance Reports tab. These detailed reports can help you understand which individual ad units, ad sizes, and ad types perform best on your site.


You asked for...The ability to view data for a custom date range, similar to Google Analytics.
What we’ve delivered...The new AdSense interface includes a date range selector just like Google Analytics. Plus, to see how your earnings have changed over time, we also have a feature that allows you to compare two date ranges. Simply select the date range you want to compare, check “Compare to other dates”, fill in the start date, and we’ll fill in the end date for you!


You asked for...More time frames for analyzing metrics. Specifically we heard the wish to “select the same period of time and say group by week or month to see the trend.”
What we’ve delivered...Reports by week and month, in addition to by day, are available in the Performance Reports page. Along with reports for “Entire account by day” you can choose from weeks and months.

If you’d like the new beta interface enabled in your account, you can make a request.

Thanks for all your ideas and votes. Your ideas and feedback help our teams determine where we should be spending our time, so keep them coming!

Switch to the new version of AdSense for search

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Switch to the new version of AdSense for search

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 | 11:50:00 AM
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Over the last two years, the AdSense team has offered the powerful Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) product as an improvement over the original AdSense for search. After some recent improvements, we're now ready to retire the older version of AdSense for search. If the Google logo on your search results page reads "Powered by Google" instead of the newer "Google Custom Search" then you haven't yet upgraded to the newer version. The new AdSense for search with CSE is available in your account, and we encourage you to make the switch by updating your code as soon as possible.

AdSense for search with CSE gives you more control over your search results without changing how you earn money showing AdSense for search ads. For example, with the new version, you'll have access to advanced features like refinements and promotions. Our team has developed a number of updates and improvements during the past few months, and you can access more advanced features at www.google.com/cse.

Your existing AdSense for search box will continue to work normally for a few more months, and we'll be sure to update you when we retire this version. To take advantage of the benefits offered by the new version of AdSense for search and ensure you don't miss any revenue during the transition, we encourage you to update your code now. You'll just need to regenerate your AdSense for search code by signing in to your account and following these instructions:
  1. Visit your "AdSense Setup" tab and select "AdSense for Search."
  2. Select the sites you'd like your users to be able to search across (Learn More).
  3. Customize the look and feel of your search engine results.
  4. Update the code on your website.
For more information about AdSense for search with CSE, please visit our Help Center.



A new look for AdSense for content ad units

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A new look for AdSense for content ad units

Monday, August 09, 2010 | 11:10:00 AM
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We're excited to announce a revamped design of three of our AdSense for content ad units! After analyzing publisher site layouts and reviewing requests around the world, we decided to make our formats more space-efficient and visually pleasing by changing the layout of the text. We spent a lot of time experimenting with different possibilities, and we're starting with changes to the following ad units:
  • Leaderboard (728x90): the title, description, and URL are now arranged in rows instead of columns (except in the case when only one ad is showing)
  • Medium and large rectangles (300x250, 336x280): the URL is now in the same line as the title
In certain cases, you'll also see a few minor adjustments to the font size. For example, the font size for the leaderboard with four ads is much more readable. Please note that these changes will roll out over the next few weeks.


During testing, the redesigned ads performed extremely well. We'll continue to experiment and innovate on our formats to help you monetize your content, and we encourage you to submit ideas in the comments below.



Update: We've been listening to your feedback and monitoring the performance of the new ad layouts closely as we continue our gradual rollout. After much consideration, we've decided to return to a 3 line layout in the medium rectangle (300x250) so the URLs have more space. Thanks for your input thus far, and we'll continue to investigate ways to improve the performance of your ad units.

Updated on 8/27/2010 by Amy Wu - AdSense Product Manager


Sensitive category blocking now available for Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese

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Sensitive category blocking now available for Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese

Monday, August 23, 2010 | 11:30:00 AM
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In an effort to expand the availability of sensitive category blocking (also known as category filtering) worldwide, we’re happy to announce that sensitive category blocking has now officially launched in Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese. As you might know, this feature is also available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Arabic with testing being done for Russian.

With sensitive category blocking, you can prevent ads from up to 11 specific categories from appearing on your pages. Ads in these categories will be blocked if they're in any of the supported languages, regardless of how they've been targeted to your pages.

If you’d like to set up sensitive category blocking, please sign in to your AdSense account and visit the Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Once you click 'change,' you'll be able to view the full list of categories you can block. In addition, to help you understand the impact of applying these filters, we'll show you the percentage of revenue and ad impressions you've been receiving from each category in the last 30 days.

For more information about sensitive category blocking, we encourage you to visit our Help Center.




AdSense email preferences: Get the most from your account and from Google

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AdSense email preferences: Get the most from your account and from Google

Monday, August 30, 2010 | 9:10:00 AM
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Have you checked your AdSense email preferences lately? If not, you may be missing out on important information and special offers without realizing. Take a minute to log in and update your email preferences under the ‘My Account’ tab.

Want to be invited to upcoming events like AdSense In Your City? Make sure you check the box next to Special Offers when you edit your email preferences so you can stay up-to-date with giveaways and other special programs in your area.

Want tips from the AdSense team for how to earn more with your AdSense account? Check Customized help and performance suggestions and/or Newsletters so we can offer personalized guidance to improve performance and maximize your revenue.

Want to help us improve AdSense by testing out features like the new AdSense interface? Check Google Market Research and you’ll be able to share your valuable feedback with us through surveys and beta tests.

Want promotions and key updates for other Google products that can help you grow your AdSense business? Check Information about other Google products and services which may be of interest to you so we can send you news and coupons based on your potential needs.

We want to help you earn more with tips and promotions, invite you to in-person events, and gather your feedback so we can continue to improve AdSense. So log in, update your preferences, and take advantage of the opportunities coming your way from the AdSense team!




Introducing themed ads in Custom Search

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Introducing themed ads in Custom Search

Monday, September 20, 2010 | 12:50:00 PM
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Last year, we took a big step forward in improving customization of the look and feel of results by providing plug-n-play themes in the Custom Search Element. This enabled you to choose from among a palette of predefined styles. You can find a style that matches your website and start using search, or further customize the style if you like.

We’re taking themes one step further. Each theme now has ads displayed with a look and feel that match the overall style used for the search results.

The result is harmony between search results and ads, which we think makes for a great user experience. The following screenshots show search results and ads for three different themes: espresso, minimalist and green sky.



We hope you agree that your visitors will enjoy themed ads. As always, be sure to send us your feedback.



Announcing beta test of expanded category blocking

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Announcing beta test of expanded category blocking

Monday, October 04, 2010 | 2:03:00 PM
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Last year we launched sensitive category blocking in order to give you more control over the ads that appear on your sites by letting you opt out of receiving ads that fall into potentially sensitive specific categories such as dating, religion, and politics.

Today we’re excited to announce that we’re beginning to test a related new feature called general category blocking with a small group of publishers. General category blocking will allow you to block even more categories of ads from appearing on your site. We’re testing this feature with 170 more specific categories, including finance, travel, job, and automotive. This feature will allow publishers to block up to 50 ad categories from among a broad range of 170 fine grained categories. To help you understand potential changes to your earnings, we’ll provide you with the percentage of your total revenue and total impressions that fall under each category.

General category blocking will initially apply only to ads in English, regardless of the language of the site. We are working on expanding it to other languages in the future.

This feature is available in the new AdSense interface, which is currently in beta and being tested by a limited number of publishers.



Although we're not able to expand this test to additional publishers at this time, we wanted to give you a glimpse into one of the ways we're working to give you even more control over the ads that appear on your site. Over the coming months we’ll be working hard to refine this feature so that we can roll it out more broadly in the future. Please stay tuned to the blog for any updates, and feel free to leave us a comment in the meantime.




‘Tis the season for placement targeting

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‘Tis the season for placement targeting

Wednesday, October 06, 2010 | 11:27:00 AM
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With the holiday season fast approaching, everyone is spending more online. As consumers start shopping for gifts, searching for holiday activities, and booking vacations, advertisers are putting more of their marketing dollars online to reach these potential customers. This means there is an increased demand for the ad space on your site and an opportunity for you to earn more. To help you capitalize on this trend, we recommend you take advantage of placement targeting.

Many advertisers create targeted brand campaigns at this time of year that are shown on AdSense sites in the Google Display Network. In fact, 99% of Google’s 1000 largest advertisers run campaigns on the Display Network. To ensure their brand is noticed by the right shoppers, advertisers will often use placement targeting to show their ads on websites in the Display Network that cater to their target audiences.

You can take advantage of this holiday increase in advertiser spend, and help advertisers placement target specific sections of your site using a feature called ad placements. By creating an ad placement, you’ll make sections of your site available to be targeted directly by AdWords advertisers.

Imagine a sport shoe manufacturer. To ensure his shoes get to the right consumers for the holidays, he may want to select sites within the Display Network that appeal to 25- to 34-year-old athletic males looking to purchase athletic shoes. As a publisher with a sports site, you can create ad placements for specific segments of your site so that the sport shoe manufacturer can find you based on these criteria. You can provide descriptions of your site, general demographic segment / audience information, and where the ads appear on your site. Placement targeting connects you directly to the advertisers who want to reach your readers, and are ready to spend their holiday budgets to do just that.

In the coming weeks, we’ll post more tips on how to make the most of placement targeting. In the meantime, check out the Help Center and this video to learn more about placement targeting and how you can get started. The sooner you do so, the sooner advertisers can see your ad placements and potentially include you in their holiday campaigns!




Make the most of your AdSense experience with our new checklist

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Make the most of your AdSense experience with our new checklist

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 | 9:45:00 AM
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Starting a new program can be overwhelming. What steps should you take to get off on the right foot and make the most of your account? To help you make your way with AdSense, we're delighted to introduce the AdSense Checklist to publishers viewing our U.S. Help Center.


If your language preference is set to U.S. English and you are logged in your Google Account, you'll find the checklist in the left navigation bar of the Help Center. You can recognize it by the progress bar. The checklist is divided into five parts, offering basic recommendations, required steps, and tips to help you grow your account to its full potential.


When you check an item, you'll see the progress bar update accordingly. This will help you in several ways. If you're new to AdSense, you'll get a clear overview of what steps to follow to make the most of your account. If you’re already an experienced AdSense publisher, you'll also have the chance to revisit the basics, and further develop your use of the program.

The progress bar can help you identify quickly how many of the recommended steps you’ve completed, and the checklist will suggest which step you can take next.

We hope that this Help Center feature will be useful to you and help you grow with the AdSense program! If you have other great ideas for ways to help newbies get started with AdSense or thoughts on how to make the checklist even better, join the conversation in our forum.



AdSense for domains makes it easier to setup your domains

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AdSense for domains makes it easier to setup your domains

Friday, December 03, 2010 | 7:55:00 AM
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A common request we’ve received from publishers using AdSense for domains is to make it easier to park your currently unused/undeveloped domains with Google. We’ve listened to your feedback, and are now pleased to announce that we've simplified the process of setting up AdSense for domains.

As of today, to get your domain setup with AdSense for domains, you can simply delegate your domains’ nameserver to Google’s DNS nameserver. This is typically a single step with your registrar, and simpler than the old method of changing A records and creating CNAME records. You can still use the old method if you prefer, and domains that are already set up will continue to work.

To get started, review our instructions for delegating your nameserver to use Google’s DNS nameserver in our Help Center.

If you own any domains that you haven't yet had a chance to develop, now is a great time to sign up for AdSense for domains.

General Category Blocking extended

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General Category Blocking extended

Tuesday, December 14, 2010 | 3:15:00 PM
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Following up on our announcement that we’ve been beta-testing a new category blocking feature, we’re delighted to release the feature to all publishers in English-speaking countries. General category blocking is an important update to the new AdSense interface that offers you more controls over the ads that appear on your website. It helps you scalably prevent competitors’ ads and ads that you might not find suitable for your audience from appearing on your site. With this new control, you can opt out of receiving ads from across 170 specific categories, including finance, travel, job, and automotive.

We show the percentage of total revenue and total impressions for each category to give you insight into the categories of ads that appear on your site and the relative spend in those categories. Keep in mind that blocking categories may have a negative impact on your potential revenue so it’s important to review the % of total revenue and total impressions carefully before deciding to block a certain category.


This feature is now available to all publishers in English-speaking countries in the new AdSense interface. General category blocking will initially apply only to ads in English, regardless of the language of the site. We are working on expanding it to other languages in the future.

We hope this feature will address the feedback we’ve heard from many publishers who want a way to quickly and easily control the ads appearing on their site.

Please leave us comments on how you find the feature.



New Interface Wednesdays: Bulk edit

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New Interface Wednesdays: Bulk edit

Wednesday, March 09, 2011 | 8:10:00 AM
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You might have read in a previous AdSense blog post that opting in to both text and image ads increases the pool of advertisers bidding for your site inventory -- which can in turn increase the amount of revenue you make from AdSense. In the past, changing all your ad units to accept both text and image ads might have taken a lot of time. But now, the new interface allows you to easily find and edit all or some of your ad units with just a few clicks.

Simply go to the 'My ads' tab in the new interface and under 'Content,' choose the 'Ad units' page. Using the checkboxes, select the ad units you’d like to edit, or simply select the checkbox at the top of the list to select all of your ad units. Using the 'Actions' dropdown, select 'Edit ad type.' Choose 'Text & image/rich media ads' and then click 'apply ad type.' Now any ad units that can be opted into both text and image will have this set as their ad type.

We recommend opting your ad units into both text and image to increase auction pressure, ensuring you will get the highest RPM possible. Keep in mind that some units such as link units and certain ad sizes cannot contain image ads, so you will not be able to modify these ad types.


Try it now! Navigate to the new interface and click on the My ads tab, and then 'Content,' followed by 'Ad units.'



Making the web faster for all AdSense for content publishers

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Making the web faster for all AdSense for content publishers

Thursday, March 17, 2011 | 8:10:00 AM
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At Google, we spend a lot of time working to make the web faster. Your site is no exception. And today, as part of this vision, we’re pleased to announce a major boost in speed for AdSense publishers worldwide.

AdSense ads, like any element on a webpage, usually contribute to the time the page takes to load. Last year, we ran tests that showed AdSense adding 12% on average to the time it took to load various pages from top web sites, so we set out to make this better. We’ve now developed a new ads delivery technique to improve the speed of websites that display AdSense ads, so that it doesn’t slow down your page content. We’re very happy to announce that we’ve eliminated this slowdown for the majority of websites and for a number of browsers, and are seeing pages load as much as a second faster than before.

The best part is, you don’t need to make any changes to your code or account — the faster load time has kicked into gear for everyone automatically, so your visitors will experience a noticeable improvement in the speed of your webpages!

At this time, we're deploying globally for users of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and will be expanding the list of browsers that benefit from this speed-up soon.

And it doesn’t stop here, as we’ll keep working to make things even faster. Continue to grow your site and AdSense inventory. We’ll be sure to keep up.




Display both text and image ads for an easy change with big impact

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Display both text and image ads for an easy change with big impact

Monday, February 14, 2011 | 9:20:00 AM
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FunCheapSF.com is an online resource for finding free or affordable events in the San Francisco Bay Area. Founder Johnny Hayes recently shared his site’s story with us and gave some tips on an easy and high impact way that he’s optimized his revenue -- by enabling both text and image/rich media ads.

Inside AdSense: How did FunCheapSF.com come about?
Johnny Hayes: I moved to San Francisco without a job and couldn’t find much work, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I spent my time hunting down cheap and free things to do in the city and, starting in 2003, began emailing my friends with a weekly list of activities. More friends found out and wanted to be added to my email list, so I decided it was time to make a real website.

IA: How did you get started with AdSense?
JH: I began using AdSense in March 2007. It was my first source of online advertising revenue. As content developed on my site and traffic grew, my AdSense revenue grew as well.

IA: Why did you decide to opt in to both text and image/rich media ads?
JH: Several months ago, I received an email from AdSense letting me know that I hadn't opted in to displaying text ads and was only displaying image ads.

I had originally chosen to only show image ads because I figured they were more aesthetically appealing to my readers. But Google’s reasoning – which made sense to me – was that even though there’s tons of advertisers using image ads, there’s a bunch more out there who are specifically bidding on text ads. If I’m only showing image ads then I’m leaving the text advertisers out of the auction. And since these text ads would only be shown on my site if they outbid image ads, why not offer this space to them?

So I decided to give the text ads a shot. It seemed like an easy thing to do that might have a positive impact on my revenue with virtually no downside.

IA: What were the results? Would you recommend this strategy to other publishers?
JH: After enabling both text and image ads on my site, I saw a 51% revenue increase and nearly a 60% increase in average eCPM. It was an easy change with a big impact. And using AdSense means I don't have to worry about the laborious task of finding and managing advertisers myself and can instead focus my time on what I like to do – writing good content, putting together a great site and growing my business. I just plugged in the AdSense code and rarely have to think about it again.

I would say to other publishers that it’s worth giving the option for both text and image ads a try. It's pretty easy to set up – I just followed the instructions in the email I had received from AdSense and it took just a few minutes. Also, set up channels to track your ads so you can see specifically which of your ad locations and ad types are monetizing well, and continue with that.

If you want to give text and image ads a try like Johnny, click here to upgrade your units now!
  • Once you're signed in to your AdSense account, click the "My Ads" tab in the new AdSense interface
  • Select all ad units
  • From the "Actions" dropdown, edit ad type to "Text & Image / rich media ads"
  • Set up custom channels to monitor the impact on your AdSense performance
Check out the images below to see where to enable both text and image ads in your account using the new AdSense interface:

New Interface Wednesdays: Chart and change metric feature

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New Interface Wednesdays: Chart and change metric feature

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 | 8:25:00 AM
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Have you ever changed ad formats and wanted to see which actually performed better? Now you can, with the new chart and change metric features. If you've created and saved an ad unit in your account, you'll now be able to do this easily in your ad sizes report.
  • Start by visiting the Performance Reports tab and choosing the ad sizes report
  • Check the boxes next to each format you want to see and then click the Chart button
This overlays the earnings of both ad formats you've selected so you can compare them on the same graph. You can still toggle the metrics shown on the graph using the radio buttons to the right of it so you can compare CTR, RPM and other metrics that are relevant to you.


Try it now! Navigate to the new interface and click on the Performance Reports tab, and then Ad sizes.

AdSense in Your City is coming to Charlotte

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AdSense in Your City is coming to Charlotte

Monday, February 28, 2011 | 8:15:00 AM
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In 2010 we kicked off the AdSense in Your City program by visiting and optimizing more than 400 publishers in six different US cities. We loved getting to meet you face to face, and are very excited to head down South this March to provide even more of you with personalized optimization tips!

On Wednesday, March 9, a few of our optimizers will be in Charlotte, North Carolina to hold 20-minute optimization sessions at a local coffee shop between 9:30 am and 4:30 pm. We’re going to keep it casual, so we can provide one-on-one consultations to as many of you as possible.

We’d love to meet you, so please fill out this form if you’ll be in the Charlotte, NC area on March 9 and would like to schedule an appointment with our team. Once we get your RSVP, we'll follow up via email with additional details if there's still room. Scheduling will be done on a first-come, first-served basis, but we’ll do our best to include as many of you as space will allow.

Hope to see you in Charlotte!




Earn additional revenue from AdSense for search

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Earn additional revenue from AdSense for search

Tuesday, March 01, 2011 | 7:15:00 AM
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Online readers have a very short attention span. You might be able to get users to your content, but what if they can’t quickly find what they’re looking for? That’s why it’s important to make sure that the users who come to your site actually stay there.

The solution is AdSense for search. This free, easy to implement product lets you place a Google search box on your website. It provides an additional layer of interactivity for your users, while helping you generate additional earnings from ads on the customizable search results page.

Here are some of our favorite AdSense for search features:

Site search: Allow users to search directly within your site to find the information they’re looking for without leaving your site.

Vertical search: Allow your users to search across multiple sites you select, including related sites you think users might find relevant or a network of sites that you own.

Keywords: You can use keywords to make search results more relevant to your audience and your site content. For instance, if you own a website about Pilates, you can enter keywords such as “exercise,” “fitness,” “meditation,” and “pilates.” As a result, when a user searches for “equipment,” the ads that appear will be specifically related to Pilates, rather than to any other types of equipment.

Ad location: You can optimize the location of your ads on search result pages. We recommend placing ads at the top and along the right-hand side, as we’ve found that this layout increases visibility and revenue.

Are you ready to give AdSense for search a try? You can find all the information you’ll need to set up AdSense for search here, or watch the video below to learn more!