Pro-SEO

Google AdSense has made a change to the way content text ads are displayed in an attempt to decrease accidental clicks and therefor improving advertiser campaign value and keeping people on publishers sites until the users wants to click an advert.

The change is a small one and would probably go unnoticed by most people.
Where a visitor could previously click on any element of the AdSense ad to be taken to the advertisers page now they have to click on either the title text or the URL. Clicking the descriptive text will do nothing.If you are worried that you may see a reduction in clicks because of this, Don't be. While CTR may be reduced eventually we should see an increase in what each click pays.

Labels: adsense, Advertising

AdSense have launched a handy new feature in your AdSense account control panel, The AdSense Resource Tab.

The AdSense Resource tab is a page containing useful links, tools, guides and tutorials all in one place. including the Help Center, Program Policies, and Help Forum. If you're looking to improve the performance of your ads, you can now easily navigate to the AdSense Optimization Tips page or to publisher tools like Analytics.

Need help with implementing your ad code or viewing your ads? Try the Demos & Guides or Troubleshooting Wizards, all available under the Resources tab in your AdSense account.

It even contains a link to the Inside AdSense Blog so you can keep up to date with the AdSense news.

Labels: adsense

Though i haven't seen this myself, I have seen a number of people reporting to have seen an italic font being used sometimes on the title in AdSense adverts.

There has been no official word from AdSense at present, so i would guess this feature is currently in testing and they are going to be monitoring what effect this has on CTR and what publishers/advertisers think about it.

initial responses seem positive, Nobody has complained about it and many have said the italic font on AdSense ads is "eye catching".

This may demonstrate a positive aspect of "ad blindness", Ad blindness also means very small changes to how the ads are displayed could have a large impact on how noticeable the ads are. Because we are used to seeing the same ad format over and over again if that format is changed, Even slightly, It may mean people suffering ad blindness have their attention drawn towards the changes.

It also may be the beginning of a new era where AdSense allows publishers to pick exactly how their ads are displayed, I wouldn't be surprised if soon advertisers are able to pick what font their ad is displayed in.

Have any AdWords advertisers seen an option in their control panel to have their ads displayed in italic font? Or does anyone have a screen shot of this new italic font format?

Labels: adsense, adwords, google

It's official, You can ask your visitors to click your AdSense ads, But only the referral products.

Unlike with regular CPC AdSense, where you get paid per click, You can encourage users to click your referral links - Firefox with Google toolbar, Google pack and AdSense referrals - By telling them how good that product is, Drawing attention to the link, Changing the style, size, colour and font of the text link, And even by embedding the link directly into your content.

Why the difference in policies? it's simple. With regular AdSense you get paid on a per-click basis, Where as with the referral ads your get paid on a PPA (pay per action) basis, Which means the users have to sign up or download/install something before you get paid.

Be aware that you can not encourage people to click referral links and download products for "deceitful" reasons such as "to support your site" or to "make me some money".

If Google later introduce a pay-per-action system for AdWords i wonder if they will exorcise the same policy for adverts that are not their own.

Labels: adsense, adwords, google

At last google have come out and given some very clear guidelines regarding images near adsense ads, And guess what, They don't allow them, At all.

We have covered images near adsense and images near YPN in previous posts, But the clarification from google regarding this, Possibly due to Yahoo!s YPN terms, Makes the images near adsense confusion a lot simpler.

For a while people were under the impression that as long as there was a divider or space between the images and the adsense ads that it was allowed, But google have clarified their position by giving examples of what isn't allowed on their recent blog post

Google say that even though images are allowed on the page they ask Adsense publishers not to align the images with the adverts as to suggest a relationship between the images and the adsense block.
They also ask owners of game sites and directories not to format their adverts in a way which "mimics" their sites content as to reduce the chance of a user clicking the advert thinking it leads to site content.

The Google Adsense team were even nice enough to provide examples of adsense implementations which are not allowed, Which is probably something they should have done a long time ago.

These are not allowed

Labels: adsense, google, seo

If you blog using wordpress the chances are you will be using Google Adsense to bring in some income. We have already covered how to put adsense ads in blogger blogs so thought we should do something to help you guys who use wordpress. Incorporating adsense into a wordpress blog is fairly easy since wordpress have the ability to use plugins. So instead of explaining how to hardcode adsense into your wordpress blog we though we would collect a few wordpress plugins for google adsense. As you guys like lists so much, This is going to be in the form of a list.
With these wordpress plugins for adsense you will be able to position your adsense ads anywhere on your wordpress blog, experiment with them and find what produces the highest adsense earnings.

• Adsense Earnings Plugin - With this plugin you can view your adsense earnings from your wordpress admin panel..
• Adsense Profit - This wordpress plugin will display your adsense profits to the public on your blog. Make sure this is inline with adsense terms before using..
• AdSense Revenue Sharing For Wordpress - This wordpress plugin lets you share ad impressions with other people. Maybe co-admin or post authors.
• Author Adsense Wordpress Plugin - If your wordpress posts are made by someone else you can use this plugin to encourage them to post by letting them enter their adsense ID and have their own adverts displayed..
• Adsense Deluxe Plugin - This wordpress plugin allows you to automatically insert YPN or Adsense ads into your blog posts.
• Adsense Injection plugin - This plugin randomly inserts adsense into your wordpress blog.
• Adsense Inline plugin - Wordpress plugin to insert adsense ads into your blog posts
• Adsense Beautifier plugin - This plugin may help you increase your CTR for adsense displayed on a wordpress blog by placing images next to the adsense ads. Before using this you should see our post about putting images near adsense to make sure you aren't going to break adsense ToS.
• AdSense plugin for WordPress Sidebar - Google AdSense wordpress plugin for the new WordPress Sidebar Widgets plug-in.
• Mighty Adsense - This wordpress plugin lets you display adsense in your blog posts without modifying your wordpress template.
• AdRotator Wordpress Plugin - If you don't want to only display adsense you can use this plugin to rotate between adsense and any other advert you want to display, Such as YPN, Chitika or affiliate links.

Having never used wordpress i can't personally endorse any of these wordpress adsense plugins, So use at your own risk.

Labels: adsense, blogging, wordpress

In this post i will attempt to explain what I have done to optimize this blog for adsense and how i got adverts to be displayed in different places depending on what page you are looking at.

If you go to the index of the blog you will see that i have an image block at the top and two text blocks down the right hand hand column. But if you go to this article about firefox extensions you will see i have an image block above the blog post, one below it and a text block in the right hand column. I have found, Through experimentation with adsense channels, that this is the best way to display adsense on blogs. This is only achievable by knowing that blogger blogs have tags in the template that can be used to display different things depending on whether you are on the index, the archive page or the item page.

The two main tags you need to use to optimize your blogger blog for adsense are as follows;
<MainOrArchivePage></MainOrArchivePage> - Text or adblocks placed between these tags will only be visible when the visitor views the index page or an archive page.

<ItemPage></ItemPage> Text or adblocks placed between these tags will only be visible when the visitor views the item page.

So if you want to place an adblock under your article you need to find <$BlogItemBody$> which is the blogger template variable that is used to place the article text. Then directly underneath this you need to put
<ItemPage>your adsense code here</ItemPage> and then you will see adsense ad blocks underneath your blog post.

By using these tags that blogger provides and experimenting a little you can get the adverts where you want them, and more importantly where they will be most effective.

Note: These changes have to be made to the blogger template, It does not work when included in a post.

Labels: adsense, blogging

"I want to make more money from Adsense!". Really? Me too. In this post we will discuss a few Adsense Tools that will help you make the most from your adsense campaign.

I don't use all of these adsense tools, But they are tools i have heard about and thought i would share them. These aren't in any sort of order.

• Advert Comparison Tool - This adsense tool will allow you to compare how adverts will look from various PPC providers such as YPN and Chitika with different color formats, And will also be able to give you an idea of what kinds of adverts will likely to be displayed on your website.
• Adsense Earnings Calculator - This adsense tool doesn't do anything you couldn't do yourself with a calculator, But it makes it easier. It is a tool that can, After you type in your CTR, Impressions, CPM and some other info, Tell you what you will be likely to earn though adsense over a period of time. It's a good tool for finding out if it's worth displaying adverts on your site or not.
• Domain Blacklist - This adsense tool will be able to generate a list of domains you should block through your competitive ad filter. After telling the tool what type of site you run it will then give you a list of domains that pay very little for clicks. These sites are generally sites that will bid on very low cost keywords and link to MFA sites.
• Adsense Sandbox - This adsense tool is from digitalpoint, It will be able to tell you what kinds of adverts will be displayed in your adsense blocks based on keywords. This can be used in conjunction with other tools to get an idea about what you will get per click.
• Adsense preview - This tool is from google.com and is similar to the adsense sandbox tool. It will be able to give you an idea about what types of adverts you will get based on keywords.
• Adsense Earnings Notifier - We already covered this tool in the webmaster firefox extensions
• Competitive Filter - This is a part of your adsense account. If you are serious about your online business you will need to learn how to use the competitive filter. It will let you block your competition from advertising on your site and it will also allow you to block low paying domains from advertising on your site.
• Search Tracker - This tool will let you keep track of how many times a specific search is made. It will be able to tell you how many times a keyword or phrase is searched for. you will have to sign up to use this, But i have heard good things about it.
• Overture Bidding Tool - This tool will be able to give you suggested keywords and an estimation on thier cost. While overture isn't the same as adsense it will be able to give you an idea and the price is similar on all CPC engines. Handy for designing your site with high paying keywords in mind.
• Heat Map - Probably the most important thing on this page. If you pay attention to only one of these adsense tools make it the google adsense heat map. The heat map will shoow you where to place your adverts on the page to get them performing at thier best. By doubling your CTR you are basicaly doubling your adsense earnings.

post, But it's worth mentioning here too. This adsense tool will display your current adsense earnings in your firefox status bar. Much easier than keep loging into adsense.

Labels: adsense, tools

Webmaster forums across the Net are littered with people saying "I got banned from adsense - What should i do?", This is usually followed by assurance that they didn't do anything..

Google will ban people from adsense for various reason, The most common being click fraud. Click fraud doesn't mean that they think you are clicking you own adverts necessarily, It may be that they think you are getting others to click them. Think about it,, If the same person is going to your site once a day and clicking an advert, that would look suspicious, wouldn't it?
It could also be that google believe you are trying to deceive visitors or suggesting they "support" the site by clicking adverts. Remember, At the end of every advert is a webmaster paying for it, It's not google adsense paying you, It's other webmasters.

To not get banned from adsense is simple. Follow the terms and do not click your own adverts, Don't even encourage others to click them. Just put the adverts up, and leave them.

If you do find yourself banned from adsense, Don't start pulling your hair out straight away (though you may have to later). Sometimes when people get banned google will reinstate their account on appeal. If you feel you were wrongly banned, I emphasize WRONGLY, If you were banned and you know what you done wrong, Don't try to get back in, You deserved to be banned, So take your medicine like a man and learn from your mistakes..

If however you feel certain that you had done nothing wrong, You should Contact Google and explain why you feel your account should be reinstated..
Keep your appeal short and simple. Do not threaten google with a boycott, they couldn't care less if you use them and do not tell them how long you have been using adsense, This makes no difference. It may take some time to get a reply, Google have to find your email and then investigate your claim, just be patient

If after that you find you are unable to get back into adsense, It's time to consider some of the Adsense Alternatives.

Labels: adsense

In this post we will discuss the alternatives to adsense and adsense alternatives.
Sometimes webmasters find themselves in a position when they can no longer use google adsense, This may be because your requirements have changed, Or because you have been banned from Adsense.
When this happens you need to change ad provider quickly, Every day you are without adverts is costing you money..

Here i will list alternatives to adsense, and tell you a little about them.

Yahoo! Publisher Network
Yahoo have become googles main competition in the PPC service industry. They are a reliable PPC ad provider. At the moment the YPN is only available to American citizens with a valid SSN.
If you can get into the YPN it's probably the best and most reliable alternative to adsense.

Clicksor
After google adsense and Yahoo YPN, clicksor is your best bet.
They have been around a while and claim to pay publishers 70% of what advertisers pay for each click.

Intellitxt
Intellitxt is run by a company called Vibrant Media. These types of adverts are a little different to the regular PPC contextual adverts. Instead of displaying adblocks on your page Intellitxt puts adverts in your content by displaying a tooltip type adverts whenever your visitor mouseovers on a keyword.

TargetPoint
TargetPooint offers a few options to webmasters, Such as AdPoint, ExitPoint, ImagePoint, UnderPoint..
AdPoint serves contextual adverts relevant to your content.
ExitPoint serves adverts to visitors as they are leaving, Like a popunder..
ImagePoint will display banners on your page relevant too your content.

AdBright
AdBright works slightly different to other adverts. With adbright you need to get webmasters to advertise directly on your site. So instead of leaving it to the PPC provider to display adverts, People have to like your site, want too advertise on it and sign up. Rates are said to be good though.

Chitika
Chitika is a new type of advert, They are sometimes called mini malls. What makes Chitika special is the look of the adverts. It's a tabbed block that allows visitors to move around the adverts on your site. These do tend to have a lower CPC though. While this could be considered a replacement for adsense it's not really an adsense alternative because it's a different type of adverts.

Bidvertiser
Bidvertiser is your ordinary common or garden PPC advert program. What makes it appealing is that they pay through paypal and their minimum payout is just $10. So if you are dropping adsense because you find it hard to reach the $100 mark you should give Bivertiser a go.

You should be aware that it is against adsense terms (and most PPC terms) to display competing contextual adverts on the same page. You can test these providers on different pages of the same site, But not the same page.

Labels: adsense

Google has started testing it's new adsense feature of "cost per action" (CPA).

What is cost per action?

Cost per action would mean publishers get paid for a sale or a lead instead of getting paid for clicks and impressions. For some sites this would mean less money, But for others it would mean a lot more.

Unlike with their pay per click and pay by impression options CPA would not be contextual. This means publishers can pick what affiliate adverts they want to display, and if someone signs up after visiting from your adblock, you will get paid, You will not get paid for impressions or clicks though.

At the moment this program is only open to adsense users through invitation, But it it works well the rest of us will be able to use it in a few months.

Ps.. If anyone has a spare Adsense cost per action (CPA) invite, I would love one.. Thanks.

Labels: adsense, google