SearchAdNetwork Wins SES Award (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)

It takes a great deal to impress a seasoned search marketer. Increased traffic and improved ROI do not always signify a mold-breaking strategy. To really excite search veterans, you need to go beyond basic keyword lists and ad copy -- you need to create something worth searching for.

28 Aug 2008, 8:43 am | click here to view more

Internet Marketing For Beginners -- Never Fear Improving Your Site Ever Again (Turks.US)

Setting up a Web site is quite easy. Considering the tools and programs available today that will simplify the task, ther're tons of information online about Web development that you can use to start your possess online page without any problems at every.

26 Aug 2008, 8:25 am | click here to view more

SearchDay: NBC's Olympic Fool's Gold; Google Comes Home Empty-Handed

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: NBC's Olympic Fool's Gold; Google Comes Home Empty-Handed; SES San Jose 2008: Top stories for Day 3 of SEM Conference & Expo; Google News Enables Cross-Language Search; and more.

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SearchDay: Killer PPC Ads: The Fundamentals

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Killer PPC Ads: The Fundamentals; Implications of Google's AdWord Changes; MapQuest Partners with Citysearch; and more.

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On your frequency

In the coming months, we'll be rolling out some new foundational features in AdWords for the content network. These features are intended to enhance your earning potential and the effectiveness of ads we serve to users on your sites. Some of the benefits of these features include:

• Frequency capping, which prevents users from repeatedly seeing the same ads on your pages.
  
• Improved attribution, to help advertisers identify the best performing sites in the network based on post-impression activity.
  
• Improved ads quality, as we're able to improve ad performance within the Google content network.
  

You can read about these in more detail on our official Google blog. To enable these features, we'll be implementing a DoubleClick ad serving cookie on the content network. We now have a program policy that covers data usage related to the launch of these new features.

We're excited about these upcoming features that will improve the experience for users and protect privacy while creating more value for our publishers and advertisers.

Posted by Wei Yang - AdSense Publisher Support

7 Aug 2008, 10:01 am | click here to view more

Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit, Leading Search Engine Marketing Conference Introduces Sponsors and Offers $200 Discount (PRWeb)

Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit, Search Engine Marketing conference is proud to announce partners and sponsors of PPC Summit LA scheduled for Sept. 25-26, 2008. The PPC Summit experts will share the Best Kept Secrets for Highly Profitable Pay Per Click Campaigns during 20+ sessions covering: best practices for managing campaigns on Google Adwords, Microsoft AdCenter, Yahoo! Search Marketing and ...

27 Aug 2008, 2:13 pm | click here to view more

SearchDay: Tightly-Themed Ad Groups: The PPC Pro Advantage

[TEASE] Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Tightly-Themed Ad Groups: The PPC Pro Advantage; The Evolution of SEO; HelloMetro Wins Trademark for 'Hyperlocal'; and more.

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Video units more widely available

We've heard your feedback about the availability of video units, so we've expanded the languages and geographies where they're supported. We've added French, German, and Spanish to our list of supported languages, and also Brazil, Germany, India, and Mexico to the list of supported countries. To help you determine whether you'll be able to use video units, consider these two questions:

1. Do you have an English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish-language AdSense account?
   
   
2. Are you located in one of the following countries?
   
   Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, United States
   

If you answered 'yes' to both questions, then video units are available to you. Sign in to your AdSense account and visit your AdSense Setup tab to receive started. After linking your YouTube and AdSense accounts, you'll be able to customize and embed the video player into your website, and pick between having videos automatically targeted to your content or manually selecting content categories and content providers. Companion and text overlay ads will appear with your videos, and you'll generate earnings for valid clicks and impressions on those ads.

You can find more information about video units in our Help middle, and as always, please feel free to leave us a comment with your video unit feedback. We'll be sure to keep you posted if video units become available in any additional countries or languages.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

13 Aug 2008, 10:09 am | click here to view more

Site maintenance on June 21 at 10am PDT

Tomorrow, our engineers will be performing site maintenance from 10am to 3pm PDT. You won't be able to access your account during this 5-hour time frame, but ad serving and ad targeting will not be affected. In addition, your reports will continue to track your earnings as usual. We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world:

London - 6 pm Saturday
Pretoria - 7 pm Saturday
Mumbai - 10:30 pm Saturday
Kuala Lumpur - 1 am Sunday
Brisbane - 3 am Sunday

In the meantime, we wish you like the first weekend of summer -- or winter, depending on where you are :)

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

20 Jun 2008, 4:02 pm | click here to view more

Easy as 1-2-3

With every of the different AdSense products we now offer, it can be tough to keep track of the maximum number of each type of unit that our program policies allow. To help you remember these important numbers, here's a list.

On any policy-compliant page, you can display:

ONE...
- video unit (currently only available in specific countries and languages, though we're working to expand video units to additional publishers soon)

TWO...
- AdSense for search boxes

THREE...
- standard AdSense for content ad units, and
- 3 link units

While you can place every of these on one page, please also keep the user experience in mind. We strongly recommend maintaining a balance between the number of ads and the unique, quality content on your site, which will keep your readers engaged and coming back for more. Also, the more text-based content you have on your site, the more relevant your ads will be.

If you'd like help with generating ad code for additional ad units, feel free to review our Generating Ad Code video or our Quick Start Guide.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

25 Jul 2008, 11:41 am | click here to view more

Celebrating 50,000 of you

This week, the 50,000th person subscribed to the English AdSense Help Group. To mark this milestone, the AdSensePro Team would like to extend a special word of thanks to every the folks who use our forums, particularly everyone who takes the time to share their knowledge with other publishers. Thank you for providing useful help and advice, and for contributing to the AdSense community.

If you're not familiar with the Help Group, do check it out to share your AdSense experience. Members of the AdSensePro team will also be on hand to help answer questions, lift issues to our product and engineering teams, and collect your valuable feedback. And if you'd prefer to discuss AdSense in a language other than English, feel free to visit one of our international forums: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Turkish.

Posted by the AdSensePro Team - AdSense Help Group Support

26 Jun 2008, 1:09 pm | click here to view more

Networks to Present at the Citigroup 15th Annual Global Technology Conference and the Kaufman Bros. 11th Annual ... (INO News)

(AP:SEATTLE--) (BUSINESS WIRE) _ Aug. 28, 2008--F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that company management will participate in the Citigroup 15th Annual Global Technology Conference on September 3 and the Kaufman Bros. 11th Annual Investor Conference on September 4. Both conferences will be held in New York, NY.

28 Aug 2008, 1:28 pm | click here to view more

A good start to optimizing your site for Google search

In addition to participating in the AdSense network, you may also be interested in having your site ranked in organic Google search. In this post, I'll highlight some important points for search optimization. While there's no a magic formula to make your site show up first on a search results page, there are some good practices when it comes to links, design, content, and the structure of your site.

First of every, as a reminder, Google organic search and AdSense are independent of each other. Displaying AdSense ads on a site won't change the ranking of the site in Google search in any way. So it follows that sites containing AdSense ads don't receive special treatment in Google search.

Ranking in Google search is based on many different algorithms, and optimization for search is a long, continuous process. For these reasons, and because the techniques might violate our guidelines, we recommend avoiding any techniques that claim to optimize your ranking very quickly or radically. If you have concerns or questions, you can consult other webmasters on a number of forums, including Google's official forum for webmaster-related issues.

We encourage you to monitor the quality of your site's backlinks -- links from any site directing to your site. To increase your site's popularity, check if other sites that discuss similar topics or have a similar reader base are aware your site exists.

Outgoing links are also important and should comply with our guidelines. When you create a link to another site, we recommend first asking yourself: "Is this link going to be useful for my visitors?" or "Is this link likely to be clicked by my visitors?". Don't participate in link schemes or buy/sell links that pass PageRank, as it is against our guidelines and may hurt your site's performance in our search results.

Here are some tips for structuring your site:

• Your pages should have a clear hierarchy and relevant internal links. We also recommend creating a Sitemap and using Google's Webmaster Tools. These tools are useful, user-friendly and will provide information such as where your backlinks arrive from or which queries visitors used to reach your site.
  
• Use <title> tags that are explicit and useful for the user. For example, avoid a title like "Homepage" or "Welcome to my site".
  
• For images, use ALT attributes to describe appropriately what the image is about. We've recently created a quick and useful YouTube video to further explain this topic:
  
  
  

Also, adding original and compelling content on a regular basis may help Google crawl your pages regularly. It can have the added benefit of attracting links to your pages too.

Finally, design your site with your users in mind, and be patient and consistent in your efforts. To attract quality backlinks and develop your optimization strategy, it's important to keep a clear structure for your pages and regularly add organic content.

Posted by Ambroise Fensterbank - Search Quality Evaluator

11 Jul 2008, 11:41 am | click here to view more

Western Union expanded to additional countries

Last October, we introduced Western Union Quick Cash as a new payment method for a number of countries. We're excited to let you know that we've now expanded this payment method to Bulgaria, Egypt, Lithuania, Morocco, and Taiwan. If you're located in one of these countries, you'll be able to pick up your AdSense payments in cash at your local Western Union agent. This payment method is free, and you'll no longer need to wait for checks to arrive in the mail or to clear at the bank.

Please keep in mind that in order to pick up your payment, you'll need to gift a government-issued ID that matches your AdSense payee name. If you need to update or correct the payee name listed in your account, please fill out our online form. In addition, we'd like to note that payments by Western Union Quick Cash are only available to individual payee names, but not to businesses.

Signing up for payments by Western Union is a quick process - just follow these instructions. For more information about this payment method, including exchange rates and how to pick up your payments, we recommend visiting our Help middle.

Posted by Korey Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

11 Aug 2008, 12:29 pm | click here to view more

Earning revenue from YouTube videos just got easier

We'd like to let you know about two recent improvements to video units that make them more easy and appealing to place on your sites. First, we've partnered with some new content providers that we'd like to highlight. These partners have signed on to let AdSense publishers embed their videos and share in the ad revenue.

• Broadbandtv: "Broadbandtv is partnering with YouTube to bring the very best video program lineup to a growing and engaged online audience. Broadbandtv shows include hits from Fashion, Celebrity News, Sports, Technology, Comedy and Travel to top notch Spanish-language TV series like Somos Tu y Yo."
  
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: "CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada's national public broadcaster and one of its largest cultural institutions. CBC/Radio-Canada is available how, where, and when Canadians want it."
  
• The Orchard: "A global leader in digital music, video, new media and brand services, The Orchard offers family content like Gumby, Mr. Bill, My Favorite Martian, and other categories of content like music and comedy."
  

To give you a better idea of the videos that are available for syndication to your site, we've also created a gallery of some featured video units content partners. Note that to pick any of these content providers for your video unit, you should receive their YouTube username by visiting their YouTube channel, and then put this username into the "Channel" field when choosing content for your unit.

Second, we're glad to announce that video units now support 728x90 and 160x600 formats to more easily fit into your site. These two new formats will feature five video thumbnails - when a user clicks on one of the thumbnails, a full sized video unit will appear, along with accompanying ads:

728x90 video unit


728x90 video unit, expanded


160x600 video unit, expanded



You'll generate earnings for valid clicks or impressions on the ads which appear. To use the new formats, you'll need to create new video units by visiting your AdSense Setup tab. To pick the new content for your video units, you can edit any of your players or set up new video units dedicated to this new content. Please keep in mind that video units are currently only supported for English or Japanese-language accounts in the following regions:

Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, United States

Finally, if you haven't edited or made a new video unit recently, you may not have noticed that you can now preview the kinds of video that will show up in the unit, based on the filtering choices you've made. We heard that you wanted more insight into the types of content that would display, and we think this will help.

While you can use video units like any other ad, they're also a great addition to the content of your page. So we encourage you to use video units as you may have used embedded YouTube videos in the past - to add variety and interest for your users.

Thanks for every the feedback that's helping us to make video units more useful to you. If you have more thoughts to share, please leave us a comment.

Posted by Ryan Hayward - AdSense Product Marketing

3 Jul 2008, 5:47 pm | click here to view more

Seeing clicks but no revenue?

Have you ever checked your reports and noticed that you have clicks reported, but no revenue? We'd like to explain why this may happen, as we frequently receive emails and questions on our Help Forum about this issue. What you're seeing may be due to one of the following:

1. Allowed Sites setup
   
   The Allowed Sites feature allows you to specify a list of sites where ads from your account may be displayed. If you're using this feature, you'll need to make sure that you've listed every sites where you'd like to display your AdSense ad code.
   
   To check if this is the case, log into your account and visit the 'Allowed Sites' page below your AdSense Setup tab. If the radio button 'Allow any site to show ads for my account ' is populated, you're not being affected by this issue, and you should continue to #2 below. However, if 'Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account' is populated, review the list of sites in the box below -- are every the sites you possess listed in this box? If the answer is 'no', you won't be credited for clicks on the missing sites. Please be sure to add every of the sites where you'd like to display your AdSense ad code.
   
   We've noticed some confusion among publishers who have entered the sites of advertisers they'd like to look on their pages into the Allowed Sites list. Please know that this is not the case, as it's not possible to request ads for a particular page - the sites you enter into this box can only be sites where your ads can be placed.
   
   
2. Invalid clicks
   
   It's possible that you have some clicks that our monitoring system has considered to be invalid. As we've mentioned before, we monitor every clicks and impressions on Google ads for any activity that may artificially steer up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. Any clicks that our system considers invalid will still appear on your 'Overview' page, below the Reports tab. However, because our advertisers aren't charged for these clicks and impressions, we won't show the earnings for this activity. If you're concerned about suspicious activity in your account, we recommend reviewing your site's logs and letting us know about the situation.
   
   relax assured that AdSense accounts are properly credited for every clicks and impressions we consider to be valid. We'll post your finalized earnings for a given month on your 'Payment History' page during the first week of the following month. For more information about invalid clicks, please review our Help middle.
   

Posted by the Google Ad Traffic Quality Team

15 Aug 2008, 10:39 am | click here to view more

One account, multiple sites

We'd like to remind you that once you've been approved for AdSense, you can place the code from your account on any page that complies with our program policies. Simply generate new code and glue it onto your site -- we don't need to update your account, so there's no need to contact us about your new site (although we appreciate the thought!). Even if your sites relate to completely different topics, our system will display appropriate ads for each site. This is because your ad targeting is based on the content of your pages, rather than set within your account. In addition, please keep in mind that publishers may only maintain one account per payee name, so there's no need for you to submit a new application.

If you run multiple websites, you may wish to view separate reports for each domain. Simply create a URL channel for each one. You won't need to modify your code in any way, and your URL channels will start tracking data almost immediately. If you need to send these reports to other people who manage your site with you, you can set up emailable reports.

But what if you've sold the website you applied to AdSense, and now you run another one? We don't need to update your account information in any way. Just remove your ad code from the old site, glue new code onto your current site, and our system will automatically take care of the relax.

Finally, we'd like to note that we do constantly review sites displaying Google ads to make sure that they're complying with the AdSense program policies. If we find that a site isn't compliant with our policies, we'll contact the publisher whose ad code appears on the site to address the situation. If you're concerned about others placing your ad code on non-policy compliant pages, we recommend using our Allowed Sites feature.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

22 Aug 2008, 2:17 pm | click here to view more

Answers to your referrals retirement questions

Since our announcement about retiring AdSense Referrals during the last week of August, we've noticed a number of questions in your blog comments and in our Help Forum. In this post, we'll address some of the most frequently asked questions.

When you say 'AdSense Referrals' are being retired, does this only mean the program where I refer publishers to AdSense?

No, every referrals will be retired. This applies to referrals for AdWords advertisers, as well as for Google products.

What's the deadline for generating referral conversions once the program has been retired?

In order for you to be credited for a conversion, the referred user must complete the required action by the last week of September 2008. However, please keep in mind that your referral units will no longer display after the last week of August.

I have referral earnings in my account, but they haven't been included in a payment yet. Will I lose every past referral earnings?

No. If you've had successful referral conversions in the past, they'll still be included in your earnings and future payments. As mentioned over, any additional conversions must occur by the last week of September 2008 in order to generate earnings for your account.

Can I sign in to the Google Affiliate Network with my AdSense login information?

At this time, no. You'll need to create a new login and password on the Google Affiliate Network site at http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/ .

Will my ad units and search boxes be affected by this Referrals change?

No, AdSense for content and AdSense for search will still be available to publishers in our supported languages, and you can continue to generate ad and search code by visiting your AdSense Setup tab.

Thanks for your feedback, and we wish this helps provide clarification. Feel free to visit our Help middle for additional details about the AdSense Referrals retirement.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

15 Jul 2008, 2:29 pm | click here to view more

SearchDay: The Evolution of SEO

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: The Evolution of SEO; Google SERP Bias? Google Knols Best; Google Close to 71% of Searches in July 2008; and more.

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A picture isn't always worth a thousand words

The maxim about the Internet is that content is king. While this holds true for AdSense publishers, there’s one important caveat: if it’s not text-based content, our crawler might not notice.

While we’re constantly working to improve our targeting technology, our crawlers need text to properly match ads to your pages. Although images, flash, and streaming video can help spice up a site, relying heavily on these sorts of elements will make it difficult for us to receive a good read on what your site is about.

If your site uses a lot of these features, make sure you provide enough text-based content in one of our supported languages to effectively convey the topic of your site. If our crawler doesn’t find enough text, you may receive poorly targeted ads or public service ads (PSAs). While we can't say the exact amount of text content that you'll need to receive targeted ads, we do recommend including complete sentences and paragraphs on your pages.

To improve your ad targeting, here are few other pointers:

• Use text in addition to images when possible. Please note that the crawler can't read text contained within images.
  
• If you use images, be sure to title them appropriately and provide descriptive ALT tags.
  
• Try imagining your site without pictures or dynamic content. This will give you a good idea of what our crawler reads. If you lack imagination, you can try turning the images off in your web browser.
  

Finally, it's important to keep in mind that the AdSense for content ads on your site are automatically determined. Though it's not possible to pick the ads that are placed on your site, including more text-based content will help make it possible for our system to target your site correctly.

Posted by Kent Sugarman - AdSense Publisher Support

1 Aug 2008, 10:07 am | click here to view more

SearchDay: 6 Tips for Aligning Your National, Local SEM Efforts

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: 6 Tips for Aligning Your National, Local SEM Efforts; Google to Roll Out AdWords Quality Score Improvements; Yahoo Releases New Version of Site Explorer; and more.

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SearchDay: Search Engine Optimization: Back to Basics

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Search Engine Optimization: Back to Basics; SEM Success In 10 Minutes A Day; Yahoo Buzz Now Open to every Publishers; and more.

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Newbie, newbie do

(To the tune of "Strangers in the Night")

"Publishers with websites, creating content
Wondering about their sites
If with their content, they could show some ads
Before the day was done

Something in AdSense, was so inviting
Something about those ads, was so exciting
Something in our Help middle
Told them they must be one

Publishers with websites, yearning for earnings
They were just publishers with websites
Up to the moment
When they placed their first ad code
Little did they know
Revenue was just a click away
A glad-user-generated click away and --

Ever since that day, they've been monetizing
Newbies at the start, they're now optimizing
It turned out so right
For publishers with websites.

Newbie, newbie dooo, da da da daaaa da..."

If my lyrical effort didn't clue you in, and our Newbie Central resource wasn't a big enough clue, let me arrive right out and say it: we care about new publishers. For the next few weeks, we'll be sharing that caring every Friday, with posts especially intended for every the publishers who have recently joined AdSense, fresh and green like a newly mown lawn in the summertime. Look for this logo to identify posts in this series:


Now let's look if we can apply that same spirit of new beginnings to your sites.

Updated with logo

Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

18 Jul 2008, 11:22 am | click here to view more

I feel the need... the need for feeds

When you visit the AdSense Setup tab in your account, you'll notice a new "AdSense for feeds" option. This means you can now use AdSense to place ads in your RSS feeds, allowing you to increase the reach of your content while earning revenue. Our salesforce will sell cost-per-impression (CPM) ads directly to the largest advertisers, while the relax of your inventory will be filled with contextually targeted cost-per-click (CPC) and CPM ads. This means that more of your feed items will be sold and with higher overall revenue, than with any other feed network.

At this point, you may either be thinking, "great!" or "umm...what's a feed?" For those of you in the second category, feeds allow your content to be delivered and subscribed to on the Web, often as headlines, summaries or articles. FeedBurner also has a nifty tutorial that you might find useful.

And here are a few more reasons to try AdSense for feeds:

• Receive higher CPMs and maintain a positive user experience by displaying ads specifically optimized for RSS feeds.
  
• View detailed stats on your feed audience, distribution, and more through FeedBurner when you set up your feeds with AdSense.
  
• Manage monetization for your feeds through the same account that you use to manage other AdSense properties.
  

AdSense for feeds is currently enabled in every languages supported by AdSense for content.

Want to learn more about what feeds are and how to receive started with AdSense for feeds? Visit our Help middle and watch our introductory video from Product Manager Steve Olechowski:



To set up AdSense for feeds now, sign in and visit the AdSense Setup page of your account, or apply for an AdSense account.

Posted by Ryan Hayward - AdSense Product Marketing

15 Aug 2008, 3:52 pm | click here to view more

Speaking the language of small businesses

Following our recent testimony in front of the U.S. home tiny Business Committee, we revisited Washington D.C. to deliver our first seminar for tiny businesses on the web -- specifically those in the Hispanic-American community. The Spanish-language seminar, co-sponsored by both the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the League of United Latin American Citizens, focused on making the most of AdSense and other Google tools to effectively and efficiently manage a tiny business online. We know a number of our publishers are Hispanic tiny business owners, so we'd like to share the video of the event with you (in Spanish with introductory words in English):



If you're a tiny business owner, we also recommend taking a look at our tiny business resource page, available in both Spanish and English.

Posted by Carolina Shea - AdSense Publisher Support

16 Jun 2008, 10:30 am | click here to view more

Sharing your ad space

A number of publishers have asked us if it's acceptable to place multiple publishers' ad code on the same page or site. Often they'll run into this issue when two AdSense publishers manage a site together and both want to display their ads, or if a site owner hosts content and ads from other publishers on the same page as their possess.

The answer is that yes, we do allow this. But before you place your ad code on the same page or site as another publisher, here are a few important points to keep in mind:

• The maximum number of products per page will remain the same.
  
• If you don't possess the site, you'll need to receive permission from the site owner to display your ads on their pages.
  
• We're unable to divide earnings between accounts, so any revenue generated will be credited to the account associated with the ad unit that was clicked or viewed.
  
• Any shared site that displays Google ads must also comply with our program policies.
  
• You're responsible for the content of any page where your ad code appears. Before placing your ad code on another publisher's site, we recommend reviewing the site for any policy violations.
  

And one final tip before giving your code to another publisher -- try using our Allowed Sites feature to monitor where your ads are appearing and keep your account in good standing.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

30 Jul 2008, 10:46 am | click here to view more

Site maintenance on Saturday, August 23

This Saturday, August 23rd, our engineers will be performing site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You'll be unable to log in during these hours, but we'll continue to track your earnings and serve ads to your pages. For those of you located in different time zones, we've provided the maintenance start time for a few international cities:

London - 6pm Saturday
Istanbul - 8pm Saturday
Bangalore - 10:30pm Saturday
Hanoi - 12am Sunday
Auckland - 5am Sunday

Finally, you may have noticed that we're posting this message a little earlier than usual. Based on your feedback, we'll do our best to post these maintenance reminders earlier in the week to help you plan ahead. Thanks for the suggestion!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

21 Aug 2008, 9:56 am | click here to view more

We're retiring AdSense Referrals

We're constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which steer the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate your patience during this transition and here are some alternative options to consider:

• Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and receive paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.
  
  
• AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AdSense for content ad units.
  

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

• Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove every referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space.
  
• Run and keep every referrals reports on your desktop: Create and keep every reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information.
  

Thank you for your support of AdSense Referrals in the past. If you have any additional questions, please visit our Help middle.

Posted by Anuj Srivastava - AdSense Product Marketing

30 Jun 2008, 4:41 pm | click here to view more

A peek into recent AdWords developments

If you're an avid Inside AdSense reader, you know that we frequently post about the latest developments in AdSense and new features you can take advantage of. However, we've heard from some publishers that they want to know more about what's happening in AdWords, and what we're doing to bring more relevant, targeted ads to AdSense sites like yours. With that, we'd like to take a moment to give you insight into a few recent AdWords developments, and what they mean for you as an AdSense publisher.

One of the main changes is the ability for advertisers to be more specific with their ad targeting through a combination of contextual targeting and placement targeting. As you may know, contextually targeted ads will appear on your pages if an advertiser's keywords match your content, while placement-targeted ads will appear if an advertiser has specifically selected your ad placement or site. Now, advertisers can target your site or placements, but can also specify keywords for them so that their ads only appear in the most relevant pages. These ads will still need to compete with the available inventory of ads for a particular placement, and so only the highest-paying, most relevant ads will appear on your pages. At the same time, you'll still be able to use your Competitive Ad Filter to prevent ads from specific URLs from appearing.

What does this mean for you, as an AdSense publisher? Your users may look more relevant ads on your pages, and advertisers who become more confident that their ads are reaching the right audience may increase their ad spend -- both of these can result in higher monetization for you. In addition, while advertisers previously could only change their bids for every ads running across multiple sites, they can now adjust their bids for individual sites. This means that advertisers can spend more of their budgets on the specific AdSense sites which perform well and generate high-quality leads for the advertiser.

With these recent improvements, we're looking forward to expanding the number of advertisers who use the AdSense content network and increasing the relevance of their ads on your sites. Not only will this increase your earnings potential through the AdSense program, but it will also strengthen the ads ecosystem that benefits publishers, advertisers, and users.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

21 Jul 2008, 12:20 pm | click here to view more

Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit, Leading Search Engine Marketing Conference Introduces Sponsors and Offers $200 Discount (PRWeb via Yahoo! News)

Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit, Search Engine Marketing conference is proud to announce partners and sponsors of PPC Summit LA scheduled for Sept. 25-26, 2008.

27 Aug 2008, 12:00 pm | click here to view more

When Keyword Research and Search Data Deceives (Search Engine Land)

As search engine optimization (SEO) professionals, we obsess with search data from a wide variety of resources. Which one is best for our clients? Which keyword research tool reveals the most accurate search behaviors when rebuilding a site's information architecture? Does our web analytics data validate our keyword research? And, more importantly, did these tools provide your most ...

21 Aug 2008, 10:57 am | click here to view more

Game on for GameScene

Back in 1995, Gary Rosenzweig published some of the world's first web-based games. Some of his early games as well as more than 100 created by CleverMedia, the company he later founded, are available at GameScene.com.

"Even in those early days, it was clear to us that web advertising was the best way to earn money from our content," says Gary. Revenue from ads offered him creative and financial freedom to be both a game developer and publisher. But the early ad banner market was volatile and fluctuated constantly. It wasn't until he joined the AdSense program in August 2003 that Gary was able to receive consistent high-level performance from advertising.

"AdSense not only performs better than banner ads, but is also much better for site visitors," Gary notes. "The text ads and high-quality display ads used by Google were a far better experience than the pop-ups, pop-unders and interstitial ads still used today by our competitors."

At GameScene.com, CleverMedia uses 160x600 wide skyscrapers next to the games, and 300x250 medium rectangles on instructions pages. Gary encourages other publishers to test different ad formats and placements on their possess sites, especially as their users grow and change. Having non-obtrusive but relevant advertising on high-traffic pages provides the revenue CleverMedia needs to keep making innovative web games.

Have your possess success story to share? We'd adore to hear from you.

Posted by Sunil Subhedar - AdSense Publisher Support

18 Jun 2008, 12:50 pm | click here to view more

Defining invalid clicks and click fraud

We often receive questions from new publishers about what these two terms mean, and we'd like to help you understand the difference.

Invalid clicks are clicks for which we decide not to charge our AdWords advertisers, since they may artificially steer up advertiser cost or publisher revenue. These include extraneous clicks without any value to the advertiser, such as the second click of a double-click. They also include many other types of clicks that we've determined aren't motivated by genuine user interest.

"Invalid clicks" are often confused with "clicking on your possess ads". However, we'd like to stress that invalid clicks are generally any clicks that artificially inflate advertiser cost or publisher revenue, regardless of their source.

Click fraud is a subset of invalid clicks that are generated with malicious or fraudulent intent -- in other words, clicks that are intended to steer up advertiser cost or publisher revenue artificially. Sources for these clicks include, but are not limited to:

A publisher clicking on his possess ads, or encouraging clicks on his ads

Users or family members clicking to support the site / publisher

Third-party programs with user incentives, such as paid-to-click services and click-exchanges

Automated clicking tools, robots, or other deceptive software

The same principles over apply to ad impressions and conversions as well. Some sources of invalid impressions include, but are not limited to:

Excessive page refreshes, generated either manually or automatically

Third-party programs with user incentives, such as paid-to-surf or car-surf programs

Third-party programs for purchasing fixed amounts of traffic, e.g. "$10 for 1,000 page views"

As a reminder, any method that artificially generates clicks, impressions, or conversions is strictly prohibited by our program policies. You can also find more information about these topics in our Invalid Clicks FAQ and our Ad Traffic Quality Resource middle.

Updated links to resources

Posted by the Google Ad Traffic Quality Team

8 Aug 2008, 12:53 pm | click here to view more

Site maintenance on August 9 at 10am PDT

Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance tomorrow, from 10am to 2pm PDT. While you won't be able to log in to your account during these hours, the maintenance won't affect your ad targeting or delivery and your earnings will still be tracked in your reports like always.

To celebrate the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games, here's the start time of the maintenance in past, gift, and future host cities for the Summer Olympics:

Montreal - 1pm Saturday
London - 6pm Saturday
Athens - 8pm Saturday
Beijing - 1am Sunday
Sydney - 3am Sunday

We wish the maintenance period will give you an opportunity to catch a few matches and root for your home country!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

8 Aug 2008, 5:03 pm | click here to view more

SearchDay: A Challenge to our Attention-Challenged Generation

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: A Challenge to our Attention-Challenged Generation; Rehabilitating SEO; Ask Relaunches AskKids.com; and more.

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Independent Director Business Editors/Software Writers (INO News)

(AP:HOUSTON--) (BUSINESS WIRE) _ Aug. 25, 2008--PROS Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:PRO), a leading provider of pricing and revenue optimization science and software, announced today that Mrs. Ellen Keszler has joined its board of directors, effective August 21, 2008. Mrs. Keszler will also serve as a member of the Audit and the Nominating and Governance Committees.

25 Aug 2008, 3:46 am | click here to view more

Five steps to optimising your AdSense performance

"I want to improve my AdSense performance, but I don't know how to receive started!"

We hear you. The myriad of optimisation tools and options AdSense offers can be a bit overwhelming. Colors, placements, channels, ad sizes -- there are more options to pick from than you can poke a mouse cursor at! Ideally, we wish you could just click a button and have a fully optimised webpage published to the Internet. But until that magical day comes, we have a solution for you.

The Australian AdSense team has put together a short video that takes the confusion out of optimising. The video goes through a step by step guide to optimising AdSense performance - from analysing your page type, to choosing the right ad sizes and colors, and tracking your results. We also cover our most popular tips to increase eCPM, without adversely affecting your community's experience on your page.



So if it's been a while since you've refreshed your AdSense ad units, or if you're confused on how to use channels to optimise, invest ten minutes into the video. It's the closest thing you'll receive to that magic button.

Posted by Mel Ann Chan - AdSense Australia Optimisation Team

24 Jun 2008, 10:15 am | click here to view more

Ad serving for everyone

Back in March, we announced the beta release of Google Ad Manager, our hosted ad serving and management solution for publishers with smaller direct sales teams. Today, we are pleased to announce general availability of the product -- no invitation required! Thousands of publishers in hundreds of countries already serve billions of impressions each day with Ad Manager, and we've heard from them that Ad Manager has helped increase revenue, clip serving costs, and keep time managing campaigns.

Now we're excited to bring those benefits to every publishers. If you have an AdSense account, you can sign in to Ad Manager today. If not, apply for an AdSense account now. A Google AdSense account is a technical requirement for creating an Ad Manager account.

Ad Manager can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure both directly-sold and network-based inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple user interface, Google serving speed and reliability, and significant cost savings. Best of every, Ad Manager can be optionally integrated with Google AdSense to offer you an automated way to maximize the revenue of your unsold and network-managed inventory.

We've been busy since March; in addition to supporting thousands of new publishers on Ad Manager, we've been adding new features including:

• Interface available in 32 languages: Do you prefer to work in Turkish or Vietnamese or Hungarian? Now you can! Ad Manager supports international currencies, too.
  
• Ad network management: Easily manage your third-party ad networks in Ad Manager to automatically maximize your network driven revenue.
  
• Automatic macro insertion: keep time and avoid tagging errors since Ad Manager now automatically detects and inserts macros from most popular 3rd party vendors.
  
• Creative preview on live site: Preview the look and feel of ads on your live site to ensure ads look as expected before you start the campaign.
  
• Day and Time Targeting: Don't want your orders to run on weekends? No problem. With day and time targeting, you can set any new line items you create to run only during specific hours or days, or as little as 15 minutes per week. Use day and time targeting in addition to geography, bandwidth, browser, user language, operating system, domain and custom targeting.
  

We also continue to roll out new features for the DoubleClick Revenue middle suite of publisher solutions, including DART for Publishers (DFP), our ad serving platform for publishers with larger direct sales teams. Google Ad Manager serves as an effective complement to the DoubleClick Revenue middle by providing new opportunities for publishers of every sizes.

If you have any additional questions about Ad Manager or want to learn more, visit the Ad Manager Help middle.

Posted by Alex Vogenthaler - Product Manager, Google Ad Manager

26 Aug 2008, 8:05 am | click here to view more

SearchDay: Tips for Making the Most of SES San Jose

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Tips for Making the Most of SES San Jose; And the Link adore Award Winner is...You; Online Olympic Traffic Soars; Mobile Viewing Habits Form; and more.

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Optimizing your search box

Following on the five tips on AdSense for content optimization our Sydney team presented a couple weeks back, now let's turn to AdSense for search. As you may know, we recently integrated Custom Search Engine into AdSense for search to provide additional customization options and improved targeting. Whether you've already implemented an AdSense for search box on your site or you're just getting started with this feature, we recommend these five optimization tips:

1. Place your search boxes in visible locations.
   
   Integrate your search boxes in easy-to-find locations, such as below the header or in your left navigation. Also, keep the placement of your search boxes consistent on every your pages, so users will know where to look if they need help finding something.
   
   
2. Add two search boxes to content-wealthy pages.
   
   For pages with a lot of content or which require scrolling, try placing one search box at the top of the page and another at the bottom. A box at the top of the page will allow users to perform a search immediately, and a box at the bottom will provide a search option to users who've just finished reading your content. You can also track and compare the performance of each search box by creating custom channels.
   
   
3. Host your search results on your possess site.
   
   To keep users on your pages, you can host your search results and ads within your possess pages. If your users don't find what they're looking for in the search results or ads, they'll still be able to to navigate to other sections of your site using your site's template. In addition, you can further integrate your search results into your site by customizing the colors of the results page.
   
   
4. Add a search box to your search results pages.
   
   Similar to #3, try placing a search box on your search results pages so users can perform additional searches from your site.
   
   
5. Customize your ad locations.
   
   Place ads at the top and right sidebar of your search results pages. This layout offers added visibility, and our tests have shown that these ad locations can improve monetization.
   

After you've optimized where search boxes are placed on your site, don't forget to try new targeting options such as keyword refinements and vertical search. To generate AdSense for search code and take advantage of these features, sign in and visit your AdSense Setup tab. You can also find more information in our Help middle.

Posted by Sandra Tsui - AdSense Publisher Support

8 Jul 2008, 2:28 pm | click here to view more

SearchDay: What Are You Converting?

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: What Are You Converting?; SES San Jose 2008: Top Stories from Day 2; Local Online Advertising Does Best on Local Media Sites; and more.

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SearchDay: Tips for Making the Most of SES San Jose

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Tips for Making the Most of SES San Jose; And the Link adore Award Winner is...You; Online Olympic Traffic Soars; and more.

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RedPrairie WMS brings better visibility, efficiency and control to Yard Management through RFID (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance)

MILWAUKEE----RedPrairie Corporation, a world leading consumer driven optimization company, has integrated radio-frequency identification technology into its Yard management system – a module of its WMS – to provide customers with a new level of visibility and control over yard operations and asset management.

26 Aug 2008, 5:30 am | click here to view more

SEO: Is This Your Ticket To Online Success? (Turks.US)

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is being used by Webmasters today to increase their online traffic, especially for those sites that are of business in nature.

28 Aug 2008, 10:23 am | click here to view more

SearchDay: Search Engine Optimization: Back to Basics (Search Engine Watch)

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Search Engine Optimization: Back to Basics; SEM Success In 10 Minutes A Day; Yahoo Buzz Now Open to every Publishers; and more.

25 Aug 2008, 12:33 pm | click here to view more