Money With AdSense

The Best AdSense Tip Of Them All

2010-12-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I published an article entitled, "AdSense Publishes Implementation Tips", which basically said that the tips AdSense keeps publishing on their blog are just the same old tips that publishers already know about.

So what is the best tip for improving the revenue on AdSense?

Well, it's getting an audience that is desperate to find what they want.

If people are wanting something that is difficult to find, and you can develop a website that is dedicated to showing them where it is, then you'll have an audience ready to click on a link to get it.

I think the reason why so many publishers complain about poor AdSense performance is because they started out backwards. That is, they started with a subject that they personally enjoy, built a website for it, and then decided to monetize it with AdSense. That is, they are trying to adapt AdSense to their existing audience.

You have to start the other way around, find an audience that is ready and willing to click on some ads, build a site designed to attract that audience, and then put AdSense on it.

Finding such an audience starts with a lot of research. You have to study the marketplace to find niches where advertisers spends tons of money and compete fiercely with each other. Then figure out what it is in that niche that consumers are desperate for.

For example, if the niche is about real estate, and homeowners are desperate to sell homes that have been on the market for a year or more, then you have to focus on the subject of "How to Sell Your Home Quickly", and build a website that focuses only on that question.

Don't branch out and start covering other topics relating to real estate. All you'll do is drive away your key audience, and create a more watered down audience.

The more narrow the topic, the more refined your audience, but the more likely they will click on your ads.

AdSense Publishes Implementation Tips

2010-12-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

The folks at AdSense posted an article on the Official AdSense Blog entitled, "Improve Your AdSense Implementation for the Holidays"...

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/12/improve-your-adsense-implementation-for.html

Of course I hate to be the complainer when it comes to AdSense publishing tips to improve performance, because I'm always eager to get more tips. But why is it that when AdSense publishes tips, they're always the same old tips everyone already knows about?

First, we want to remind you that you're allowed to put three standard AdSense for content ad units, three link units, and two AdSense for search boxes on each page of your site.

Choose the right ad units for your pages.

As a general rule of thumb, wider ad units perform better because they:

Are easier for users to read and interact with

Allow more ads to be displayed within a unit

Are preferred by advertisers designing image or video ads

Also, remember to opt in to display text and image ads, as this increases the pool of advertisers competing to appear on your site.

Improve your AdSense implementation by increasing ad coverage on your site.

Put ads on pages that don’t currently have any, as this increases the chances of monetizing your site’s traffic. This is especially true for the high traffic areas of your site.

Our data shows that placing ads within the page content or article text, or near the navigational areas of your site, can strongly increase ad performance, since it gives your users relevant ads alongside the great content that they’re used to.

Use link units to monetize the smaller areas on your site.

Above all: the most effective change you can make is to put at least one ad unit above the fold -- the section of the page users see without scrolling down.

By this time, I don't think there are any BIG tips that aren't already well-known by everyone.

Which reinforces my philosophy in that these tips don't really have much effect. What has effect is identifying strong topics/keywords that attract the right audiences. That is, some demographics just don't click on ads. You need to find a subject to write about that draws in people who are desperate, or at least willing, click on ads to find what they want.

That's the biggest AdSense tip.

Blocking Advertisers on AdSense

2010-10-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

This month I've experimented with blocking advertisers on my AdSense account in an attempt to increase overall revenue.

The bottom line? It doesn't seem to work.

Instead it has had the opposite effect, of decreasing revenue.

I blocked a total of 421 advertisers, primarily by viewing pages on my websites, and identifying advertisers that were totally irrelevant to my content.

It's worth noting that on AdSense you cannot block advertisers for a specific website of yours. When you block an advertiser, that advertiser is blocked for all of your websites. I publish websites on a wide variety of niches. So while real estate advertisers are not relevant to my genealogy website, it's totally relevant on my real estate blog. Hence, I can't block those advertisers.

Here are some observations of mine with advertising blocking...

I blocked a total of 421 advertisers starting on October 9th, 2010 through October 18th, 2010.

My CTR increased by as much as 50% on October 13th, but by October 18th, it has settled back down to its original levels, before I started blocking.

My average CPC decreased anywhere between 15% to 30%, and still remains below the pre-blocking levels.

My ad impressions have decreased between 20% to 30%, as AdSense is unable to serve up any ads at all on some of my pages.

My overall revenue has decreased by about 10%, and remains below pre-blocking levels.

So my take on advertiser blocking is that it'll results in more relevant ads, but it won't result in higher revenue. The fact is that my audience still clicks on irrelevant ads. Obviously, ads are also relevant to each individual, not just to each webpage.

At this point, I'm unblocking all the advertisers I blocked.

The trick to getting more relevant ads is to put more of your desired keywords on page. At least, this is according to the AdSense optimization analyst I mentioned talking to last month.

AdSense seems to know what our visitors want to click on, combined with what ads tend to earn the most revenue. At least in my case, it seems better to just let AdSense figure it all out.

MyLinksMyAds Marries Twitter & AdSense

2010-10-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

A new service launched this month that allows Twitter users to tweet while making money with AdSense, AdBrite, and in the future, other advertising networks.

MyLinksMyAds will convert your tweet links into a different link, which redirects to a framed page displaying your AdSense creative in the frame.

That is, anytime you tweet something that contains a URL, MyLinksMyAds changes the URL such that when someone else clicks on it, they're taken to a page with a top-frame containing the AdSense creative...

The top frame illustrates MyLinksMyAds

As of this writing, 100% of the impressions displayed in the frame are from your AdSense, or other advertising network account. But soon that will change to where MyLinksMyAds will split the impressions 75/25 with you taking 75%.

I learned of MyLinksMyAds from a tweet from Brian Schneider, who appears to be its creator. Looking through his list of tweets, it appears he's running an automated tweet service that's spamming thousands of Twitter users, including myself. I managed to scroll through his twitter feed and found a tweet where he claims to be a Google employee, though obviously MyLinksMyAds is not a Google project.

From my perspective, it seems MyLinksMyAds violates AdSense's Program Policies. Specifically in two places...

Under "Ad Placement"...

Google ads, search boxes or search results may not be:

* Integrated into a software application of any kind, including toolbars.

And under "Copyrighted Material"...

AdSense publishers may not display Google ads on webpages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content.

It appears that MyLinksMyAds fits the description of "software application of any kind", and I'll even go on to say that the top frame satisfies the spirit of a browser toolbar.

Moreover, it also violates AdSense's Copyrighted Material policy, displaying your ads on other people's content.

But even besides that, I only have 307 twitter followers as of this writing, and anytime I tweet a link to one of my websites, hardly anyone clicks on it. MyLinksMyAds is perhaps worthwhile for someone with 10,000+ followers.

So, should you sign up for MyLinksMyAds and participate? Is it a violation of AdSense's Program Policies? Well, it's your AdSense account, I'll let you decide.

AdSense for Domains Loves Brands

2010-10-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

AdSense for Domains allows you to associate up to four keywords with your domain name...

So, I recently "parked" another domain on AdSense for Domains. I can't tell you which one it is because AdSense's Terms of Service prohibits me from promoting or driving traffic to these domains. But I can tell you that it is related to dogs, with dog owners as the intended audience.

Also keep in mind, that the 99% (or in my case 100%) of the revenue earned with AdSense for Domains comes from the impressions, not the clicks. Read my previous article, "Making Money with AdSense for Domains" for more detail.

Back to this doggie domain name. There are still a lot of inbound links from other websites, and they're driving about 500 referrals a day.

At first, I didn't associate any keywords with the domain, allowing AdSense for Domains to use its best guess on which ads to display. As a result, after 1,500 impressions, I earned nothing.

Then I changed the keywords to "dog food", "pet supplies", and "dog toys". These are all types of products, which suggest ads of an e-commerce nature. But yet after another 1,500 impressions, not a single penny was earned.

I then changed the keywords to "animal rights", "animal welfare", and "pet adoptions", which bring in a more passionate audience, and hopefully ads that would trigger their emotions. But alas, another 1,500 impressions later and no earnings.

Next I changed the keywords to "puppies", and "puppies for sale". But again, no earnings after 1,500 impressions.

Finally, I changed the keywords to "petsmart", "petland", and "petco", which are brand names. These are all major pet supply stores. And voila!! After 1,500 impressions, I'm now seeing earnings.

It seems that brand names attract CPM-based revenue, while any other generic keywords attract CPC-based revenue. And because the nature of AdSense for Domains is that visitors never seem to click on ads, you need CPM-based revenue to earn anything.

What will really help is to have a domain with a brand name in it.

And I have one of those, and I'm running it on AdSense for Domains. It's in the subject of genealogy, where one of the largest brands is in the domain name. And sure enough, it's earning a very high CPM rate, and interestingly enough, it's doing that without any associated keywords.

So, it seems that brand names is what drives all the CPM revenue for AdSense for Domains. Either you have to have them in the keywords, or you have them in the domain name.

AdSense Expands Category Blocking

2010-10-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

AdSense announced today it has rolled out additional categories in its Category Blocking, to a limited number of publishers on a test basis.

Category blocking allows publishers to block ads from an entire category (sex, politics, weight loss, etc.).

Additional categories they've added include, Arts & Entertainment, Beauty & Personal, Computers & Electronics, Finance, Health, Hobbies & Leisure, Home & Garden, Internet, Job Listings, Real Estate, Travel & Tourism, and Vehicles...

Sample screenshot courtesy of AdSense

It appears that the categories currently in place for everyone have been consolidated into the above.

Has Category Blocking helped increase your earnings?

For me, it doesn't appear to have much effect. I still earn good money on such ads as Ringtones, and Get Rich Quick.

Where I have a problem are ads that match the keywords on my site, but are out of context. For example, on my cemetery records site, in which the primary audience are genealogists, I still get a lot of funeral planning ads. The ads are still related to "cemetery", but are out of context with genealogy.

Read the full announcement on the AdSense blog.

How AdSense Smart Pricing Works

2010-09-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

AdSense released another new video explaining how their "Smart Pricing" system works.

In short, it allows advertisers to set different rates for each AdSense publisher. So, if one publisher has an audience that is ready and willing to make purchases or sign up for accounts, an advertiser can set a higher a bid for that website alone, while setting lower rates to other websites.

Watch the video...

This is very similar to how the eBay Partner Network works. You earn higher reimbursement rates based on the quality of your traffic.

Which means it behooves us publishers to write content that attracts passionate visitors, ready and willing to make purchases. What are the ways to do this? Moderate blog comments, brand yourself as an expert in your field, write intelligently, and write frequently.

Read more about this on AdSense's blog: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/09/insight-into-your-earnings-part-ii-how.html

AdSense Releases Optimization Videos

2010-09-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

AdSense released a series of videos today that provide tips on how to optimize your AdSense creatives to maximize earnings...

Upgrade to high-performing units

Monetize more content

Optimize search box placement

Opt-in to text and image ads

Use link units

Opt-in to placement targeting

Source: AdSense Blog

AdSense Explains Ad Selection

2010-09-23T15:35:00.000-07:00

AdSense today released a video explaining how its system goes about determining which ads to display on your creatives...

You can also read their accompanying blog post here...
Insight into your earnings Part I: Explaining the ad auction - Inside AdSense

This video explains how AdWords' "Quality Score" plays a significant role in determining which ads gets displayed on your website. In the video, they also explain that the number of clicks a particular ads gets on your website is factored into the Quality Score.

This basically confirms what I reported in two earlier blog posts, "How Quality Score Affects AdSense", and "Quality Score Rankings for AdSense".

AdSense Phone Call Consultation

2010-09-23T06:38:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of weeks, folks at AdSense have been calling select publishers for one-on-one consultation. Yesterday, they called me.

I had the opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns, while they had the opportunity to provide some personalized help. Before calling me, they evaluated my flagship website, Interment.net, and formulated some ideas on enhancing performance.

Below is a screenshot of just one of the pages on Interment.net...

I've highlighted the 160x600 ad unit on the side, and the 728x90 unit at the bottom.

The main concern I had was too many irrelevant ads displaying on the side. I don't know if you can see, but two of the AdSense text ads are irrelevant, "Lower Cost Cremation" and "Want a Great Career?"

Actually, over the years, AdSense seems to be doing a better job of displaying relevant ads on my website than it used to. AdSense confirmed for me that AdSense learns what ads to display based on click history. But AdSense suggested that I need to add more of my desired keywords into the content.

My primary audience are genealogists. AdSense suggested using more keywords such as "genealogy" on my pages.

I also learned that which ads AdSense chooses is not totally based on contextual relevancy. Advertisers can force their way into your creatives based on how much money they spend, or what your personal viewing habits are. I think Groupon, for example, is spending so much money on AdSense channels that their ads are going to display on your creatives no matter what you do to optimize your ads.

And in the case of your personal viewing habits, AdSense explained to me that Google watches what keywords you type into Google Search, and figures out what you're most interested in, and displays those ads on any AdSense creative you see.

There are also location-based ads that can force their way into a creative.

AdSense also suggested I change the Title color of the text ads. Currently, the title color is similar to the anchor text color of my website. My anchor text color is a dull navy blue (#333399), while the AdSense Title color is a bright blue (#0000FF). I explained that I used the bright blue for the Title color because that's a little bit more of a contrast against my anchor text color, and theoretically more visible.

However, they insisted that if I change it to my anchor text color, it will perform better. I could, of course, go the other way around and change my anchor text color to fit the AdSense color.

They also insisted that displaying both image and text ads will yield greater revenue. I explained that I had done this before, but that many of the image ads conflicted greatly with the subject of my website. It actually looked spammy with all the coupon ads and singles ads. I'll try it out again, but will watch the eCPM closely to see how much more of a benefit I'm getting.

At the bottom of my pages are image ads from ValueClick. ValueClick is an advertising network focusing on CPM campaigns. I use this because a lot of my visitors do not click on ads, and hence I can still monetize them this way.

AdSense was sharp enough to notice that all of the ads on my pages are managed through their Doubleclick for Publishers (the old Google AdManager) system. DFP is integrated with AdSense, in that I can specify AdSense as a default campaign, so that it displays whenever I have any unsold inventory.

AdSense explained that it can go further than that, and make my campaigns compete against AdSense. So take these ValueClick ads for example. I can tell DFP what my ValueClick eCPM is, and DFP will display AdSense if AdSense can beat that eCPM.

I followed through on all of their suggestions. I'll be keeping a watch on how these things affect my overall CTR/CPC/CPM, and will follow up later.

Making Money with AdSense for Domains

2010-09-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

AdSense for Domains is used with domain names that don't have any content. These are "parked domains", which are just live domain names with no websites attached to them.

Normally when you register a domain name, your domain registrar will display a "Coming Soon" page if you were to type that domain into your browser. AdSense for Domains lets you replace that page with one that makes money for you.

Like most publishers, I have several domain names I registered that I never developed. These domains were ideas that I thought were good at the time, but eventually I lost interest. Just recently, I pointed them to AdSense for Domains.

And I'm suprised to say that I'm making some decent money from it. It's not huge money, but over the course of a month, it amounts to something that makes me say, "Hmmm" and wonder if I should explore it further.

Google's program policies forbids me from telling you how much I'm earning, so I can't give you that level of detail. And AdSense for Domains specifically forbids me from promoting those domain names, linking to them, or referring traffic to them. So, I can't tell you which domain names they are.

The Best Way to Make Money from AdSense for Domains

In short, it's the expired domains that make all the money. These are the domains that used to have websites, used to publish content, and had attracted inbound links from other websites. For whatever reasons, the publishers of these domains decided to abandon them and let them expire.

All major domain registrars have tools to find expired domains. Afternic is a service that specializes in expired domain name sales.

Interestingly, AdSense for Domains appears to monetize these domains through display advertising (CPM). I haven't yet attracted any clicks on these domains; all the money I've earned thus far came from the impressions.

And the traffic I've received is not very much. According to AdSense's reports, it's only two of my domains that are making all the money, with one domain generating about 50-75 impressions per day, and the other about 25-40 impressions. And those two domains happen to be expired domains that I bought. The other domains I have in this program were ones I bought brand new and they haven't earned anything.

The CPM rates are very high, too.

My advice is to register expired domains that used to host content. You can check this on the Wayback Machine.

I'd suggest not spending anymore than $500.00 on an expired domain name. Assuming that domain name used to host a website and had gathered some inbound links from relatively popular websites, it's reasonable to expect AdSense for Domains to earn you about $300.00 to $500.00 a year, per domain.

If you have a website that you've let run stale, and are thinking of dumping it, then just park it on AdSense for Domains. I have a few of these websites myself. The CPM rates I'm earning from two of my expired domains seems high enough, that my stale websites could make more money from AdSense for Domains than with AdSense for Content.

But before you do this, make sure to remove inbound links from your other websites. AdSense's program policies forbids you from linking to your domains. But obviously, it's OK if other publishers are linking to it.

Improving AdSense for Domains Earnings

AdSense for Domains lets you change the colors of ads. I'm not sure if this really helps or not, since much of the revenue is based on CPM than CPC.

You can also specify keywords for each domain, to generate relevant ads.

But the best way to maximize earnings is to find expired domains with lots of backlinks pointing to them.

AdSense for Search Themed Ads

2010-09-20T17:55:00.000-07:00

AdSense for Search today announced it now offers themed ads.

Previously, you could customize the colors of the search results in AdSense for Search, while the ads surrounding the results remained the usual default AdSense colors. Well now, you can change the colors of the ads to blend them in with the colors of your search results.

According to the AdSense Blog...

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.

This should be a welcome enhancement to publishers who use AdSense for Search, considering the data showing that CTR tends to increase when ads are blended in with a website's color scheme.

Just wondering why it took so long for AdSense to roll this out!

Quality Score Rankings for AdSense

2010-09-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote an article entitled, "How Quality Score Affects AdSense", which explained that AdSense will display a particular ad more often if it attracts more clicks and earns more revenue.

Today, I found an article published by the San Francisco Chronicle that backs this up...

A second reason for Groupon's domination surrounds its catchy offerings. A lot of the ads which show up on Adsense aren't compelling or relevant enough to get clicked on. However, a lot of Internet users utilize the web to thrift shop — and the Groupon ads highlighting daily deals can be very enticing for the user. So, this intrigue for users helps Groupon to further boost its click rates on Adsense.

The article explains why Groupon is dominating the AdSense channel as of late. The above passage was just one of the reasons why we're seeing so many Groupon ads.

But it reinforces my point that one of the key factors in ad relevancy is the AdWords Quality Score. The more money an ad makes for Google, the more often it gets displayed.

In this case, Groupon ads are making so much money for Google, that they're displaying these ads more often through AdSense, and giving them higher priority.

So they way AdSense determines which ads to display on your website is not purely based on which ads have the higher bids. But more specifically, which ads get clicked on the most, and which ones are earning the most revenue overall. That's defined as "Quality Score".

AdSense looks at contextual relevancy of your page and then selects a group of ads that match. From there it sorts the ads by Quality Score and displays them from highest to lowest.

If you feel your AdSense earnings are too low (and who doesn't?) consider that AdWords may not have had enough time to build up a reliable Quality Score on the ads that match your content. You might notice that overtime, your AdSense CTR/CPC/CPM rates increase over a period of months, or even up to a year depending on your traffic level, as AdWords is able to collect enough performance data to determine Quality Scores.

The way us publishers can help speed up that process is to make the AdSense ads very visible, make sure that Google can crawl our pages (submit a sitemap), and do what you can to increase traffic into all of your pages.

AdSense for Search as a Dedicated Website

2010-09-18T08:46:00.001-07:00

Lately I'm working on a new website that makes Google Custom Search Engine (Google CSE) the primary content. Check it out here...

http://www.newyorkcemeteryrecords.com

Google CSE is free to use, of course, because it places AdSense for Search ads into the search results page. And Google CSE is based on the full Google Web Search index, meaning whatever Google has indexed into it search engine, is available to you to build a search engine of your own.

New York Cemetery Records Search Engine

My goal is to create something highly useful for the genealogy community, a search engine that scans burial records in New York cemeteries published on dozens of websites. The theory is that genealogists are a very connected group of people both on blogs and social networks, and if they find this search engine very useful, they will promote it to their friends and readers.

My own cemetery website, Interment.net, is among the websites that this search engine scans, so therefore I stand to gain a benefit in the referrals. And of course, AdSense for Search shares the ad revenue with me.

But it's so easy to build.

Building Your Own Google CSE

I recommend building a search engine through AdSense. AdSense gives you the option for "Access more advanced features" which takes you into the Google CSE interface. But doing it this way ensures that your Google CSE is linked to your AdSense account.

Your Google CSE itself need only comprise of two pages, the home page (which contains the search box), and the results page. I also added a few more pages of help content. And then I hosted it on a dedicated server that I use for several other websites.

But technically, you could also host this as a blog. You only need a template with no side bar. The home page would be a post, and the results page is also a post. If you wanted some more pages, you can create them as "pages" instead of blog posts.

The trick to making this successful is to create something highly useful, so that it stands a better chance of gaining viral marketing.

Google CSE has a lot of documentation on how to build a search engine. You can build it through their online interface, or you can code it by hand using XML. I started out using their online interface, and then realized there's more customization options if you handcode the XML.

The XML is a little more tricky to understand, and more technical. But basically you have two XML files, one called an "annotations" file, and the other a "context" file. The annotations file is where you define which webpages to include in the search, and the context file is where you define the refinement labels.

Refinement labels allow your users to refine their searches. Such that if they search for "John Smith", the search results can offer them links to restrict their searches to a specific group of websites, such as New York GenWeb. You can also define refinement labels as search terms, which will append a user's search query with a specific keyword offering them a more finite set of search results.

The annotations file allows you to also define which webpages to include and exclude. But you can also specify whole websites to include, or whole file directories. The annotations file can include hundreds of millions of pages if you like.

Promoting Your Google CSE

Thus far I have linked up my New York Cemetery Records website from Interment.net, as well as my corporate site. And now, I've linked it from this blog post. I'll be linking it up from other sites over the course of the next month.

I also have a Twitter feed and Facebook page dedicated to Interment.net which I can also use to promote this.

But because the Google CSE I created incorporates so many other websites, I can also write to each of those websites and ask them for a reciprocal link.

Summary

So instead of thinking about content that you can create, try also thinking about search engines to create, and publish them as standalone websites.

If you think about it, once you have your Google CSE all built up, you don't have to do anymore work on it. You just let it go. So even if you only get a handful of traffic a day, and just a $1.00 a day in AdSense revenue, at least it's not costing you any hours to operate.

How Quality Score Affects AdSense

2010-09-14T00:46:00.001-07:00

Ever wonder how AdSense determines which ads to display on your website?

There are three basic factors...

Bid Amount - the cost per click an advertiser is paying for that ad

Relevancy - the keywords defined by the advertiser matching the keywords that Google associates with your webpage.

Quality Score - explained below...

In short Quality Score identifies the likelihood this ad will get clicked and result in a sale or action for the advertiser. Quality Score is determined by a variety of things, with the click through rate (CTR) being the most significant.

Hence, AdSense first figures out which ads match your webpage based on relevancy, then it looks at which ads will yield the greatest earnings. Earnings is the combination of Bid Amount and Quality Score.

So what can you as a publisher do to encourage more ads with highest earnings potential?

Crawlability: The single-most effective thing you can do is to make sure your pages are crawlable by Google. If Google has your page indexed, it can then determine relevant ads. If it's not indexed, it's only going to display public service ads (PSA).

Submit a site map into Google Webmaster Tools. Use a site map generator (I use A1 Sitemap Generator for non-blogs). For Blogger blogs, here's an article that explains how to submit sitemaps.

Also, make sure every page of your website is linked together. Better yet, make sure every page is linked up from at least two other pages. On a blog, have your articles link directly to other articles within the body of the articles. Try using "Related Posts" links.

Promote Poorly Trafficked Pages: If you visit a page on your website, and notice the AdSense ads are irrelevant, it could very well be due to a lack of historical CTR data. That may mean this particular page of yours is rarely ever visited, and hence AdWords can't determine a Quality Score.

Find a way to give that page more traffic. Link it from the homepage. Create a "Featured Archive of the Week" section on your blog. Take a look at the TITLE and META tags to make sure they are optimized.

Use Consistent Subdomains: AdSense sees "www.mydomain.com" different than "mydomain.com". Hence, if you have a page that is linked from another page with the "www", and then linked again from yet another page without the "www", you're actually making it more difficult for Google to collect data to calculate Quality Score.

Refine Your On-Page SEO: Google still has difficulty understanding the true interest of your audience, and as a result may display ads that seem relevant, but are actually not.

For example, you may have a blog on that publishes artful photos of floral arrangements, and your audience are primarily hobbyists seeking to appreciate the art of beautiful floral arrangements.

However, AdSense is displaying ads for "Send Mom Roses for Valentine's Day". It's related to flowers, but totally not what your audience will click on.

You have to figure out what ads your audience is attracted to, and then figure out what keywords best associate with those ads ("flower photography", "floral supplies"), and then plaster those into your content and TITLE/META tags.

Will Google Instant Boost AdSense Revenues?

2010-09-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

Will the launch of Google Instant a couple of days ago have any effect on Google AdSense revenues for publishers?

It seems like it would.

Yesterday, I published a piece called "Will Google Instant Kill the Small Publisher?", pointing out that Google Instant will cause people to click on search results before typing out their full search queries...

Since one of my important websites is Best Beef Jerky, I entered several beef jerky related terms. One of them being "beef jerky recipes".

As soon as I typed "beef j" Google assumed I was going to type "beef jerky" and immediately showed me results. At this point, a user can see the results and may not even bother continuing on to type "beef jerky recipes".

So if publishers make a shift towards increasing their optimization of short keywords, it seems likely that they will also compete harder for paid keywords. Small publishers that optimized on long tail keywords will also compete for short keywords on AdWords.

In theory, if the bid rates increase on short keywords, publishers should also see higher CPC rates on AdSense.

Also, publishers should see increased CPC rates on AdSense for Search, as marketers look to find bargains on short keywords.

If all this is works out this way, Google stands to benefit big time.

New Look for AdSense Ads

2010-09-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

AdSense announced early last month that they changed the appearance of three of their largest creative units (728x90), (300x250), and (336x280)...

The changes include...

The Leaderboard (728x90) the ads are now arranged in rows instead of columns,

A different font, and

The URL (in green) is on the same line at the Title, whereas before it was on its own line, below the Description.

I don't use any of those creative units, so I can't tell you how overall performance has been effected. Obviously Google is not going to make these changes unless they've demonstrated to themselves it has a positive effect.

However, I've already read from other publishers that their overall revenue has dropped due to fewer clicks. But then again, it's like the "squeaky wheel syndrome", where only the negatively impacted complain, and you never hear from the ones doing well.

Anyways, if you these creative units, post a comment whether it has helped or hurt your overall revenue.

AdSense For Search - Keyword Selection

2010-09-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

The keywords you specify when creating an AdSense for Search Box seem to have a lot to do with what ads display on your search results page (SERP).

On Interment.net, I have AdSense search boxes created for every country and state sections. For example on all of my Australia cemetery pages, I have an AdSense search box configured to search only content found on those pages.

Here's an example of my AdSense search box on Interment...

The AdSense search box in the upper left of my Australia cemeteries page
searches only content found on my Australia pages.

My visitors use this search box to find burial records to help them with their family history research.

So when I created this search box on AdSense, I was prompted to enter keywords that I wanted to associate with this search...

I specified the words "family tree" and "genealogy"

These keywords seem to have a significant effect on what ads are delivered on the SERPs. They don't necessarily determine which ads to display, but more correctly the context of a search query.

For example, on Interment.net my users always search for the names of people because they are hoping to find burial records. So when someone enters "thompson", it helps that I tell AdSense ahead of time that all search queries on Interment.net are related to genealogy and family trees. That way, AdSense knows not to display stuff for sports, or technology, or animals, or what not.

Here are a few examples of my SERPs with AdSense for Search ads. Notice that in all three examples, I used conducted a search using the word "thompson"...

This is with "family history" and "genealogy" as the associated keywords.
Note there is only one irrelevant ad "ThompsonCigar.com"

This is with "cemeteries", "graveyards", and "tombstones" as the associated keywords.
Note the fewer ads, and only one partially relevant ad "Locate California Thompson"

This is with no associated keywords.
Note that all ads are irrelevant to genealogy research.

The word "thompson" is obviously a very difficult word for AdSense to monetize because it could have so many different contexts. And most of the search queries on Interment.net are surnames and full names. It really behooves me to figure out the right keywords to associate with these search boxes.

If your website is about guitars, then think about what your visitors are searching for. If it's "gibson" or "fender", then imagine AdSense pulling up ads for Debbie Gibson or bicycle fenders.

The First Rule of AdSense

2010-09-01T22:41:00.001-07:00

As you can see from the previous post (dated November 16, 2007) I haven't been writing this blog for awhile.

That's because I had the carpet pulled out from under me.

Around that same time, Google AdSense basically banned this website from participating in AdSense because the domain included the word "adsense". Oops!

I created this blog because I had some tips and observations formulated after several years of participating in Google AdSense. So I figured I could start this blog and just jot down whatever came to mind. I wasn't trying to make this a popular blog, I just wanted to earn a buck a day from AdSense, which was fine with me considering this blog is hosted on Blogger's server (for free).

But when Google AdSense told me I was violating their program policies, suddenly I had no further reason to keep publishing this.

So a few days ago, my domain name registrar told me "moneywithadsense.com" had expired. At first I decided to just let it expire. But then I figured, "Wait a minute, I'm sure I could still do something with it".

So, it's back online. But instead of using Google AdSense to monetize the traffic, I'm using an affiliate program.

I'm not sure at this time if I'm going to go full time on writing this blog, I suppose that depends on how well I do with the affiliate program. Of course, my beef jerky blog and Interment.net still keep me busy. But feel free to add the RSS feed to whatever you use to track RSS feeds.

Or would it be easier to keep track if I had a Facebook page for this blog?

AdSense PSA Ads - They're Back!

2007-11-16T22:59:00.000-08:00

Those pesky Public Service Announcements (PSA) from AdSense have taken over my dog blog, DoggieNews.

They only seem to show up on the homepage, and on the archive pages. On the permalink pages, AdSense displays paid ads.

Since the homepage generates a big percentage of page views, I'm losing a lot of money by having the PSAs show up. And it was only recently that they began displaying, probably only a week ago. For the longest time, PSAs never showed up there.

You won't actually see PSA ads on my dog blog right now because I've replaced them with a back-up set of ads, which is actually Yahoo Publisher ads. But my experience with Yahoo Publisher shows that it pays less than AdSense. So, I'd rather figure out why PSAs are suddenly showing when they didn't used to.

I think the reason why is because there's been recently a reduction in ads for the words, "dog" and "dogs". It used to be these keywords generated a bunch of ads on Google's SERPs. The PSAs are showing up simply because what few advertisers are remaining for these keywords have may have blocked their ads from AdSense.

I'm going to try to replacing the META keywords with more lucrative ads like "dog training", or "puppy training". I'll let you know if that fixes it.

Blogger Archive Pages

2007-11-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

If you're running AdSense on Blogger, there's a little trick you can do to minimize the number of PSA's on your archive pages.

On the Archive Settings, there is a field for the "Archive Filename", as follows...

Enter a filename representing your biggest money keyword. In my case, I used "adsense.htm".

Blogger uses this filename when creating archive pages, such as follows...

By having the word "adsense.html" as my archive filename, AdSense will use this to determine ad relevancy.

By default, Blogger will use the filename, "archive.html", and this will often cause AdSense to show PSA's.

Of course, this "trick" can apply to any blogging platform, not just Blogger.

AdSense and Hyperlocal Blogging

2007-09-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

Earlier on my website publishing blog, I mentioned that my hyperlocal news blog, Menifee 24/7 is doing particular well with AdSense. I wanted to touch on this subject some more.

What's suprising about it is that it earns quite a bit more money than some of my other blogs, even if with far fewer visitors.

Junk Food Blog, one of my more popular blogs, earns far less than Menifee 24/7 on AdSense. JFB actually gets about 2,000 visitors per day, while Menifee 24/7 gets about 300 visitors per day. Yet, Menifee 24/7 earns about twice as much money from AdSense as JFB.

Here's the reasons why...

Audience Focus - The more an audience is focused down to a specific subject, the more likely they'll click on AdSense ads. The problem with JFB is that the audience is too broad. JFB is largely an entertainment site; it's audience comes from all walks of life, from all over the world, and have varied interests. On the other hand, Menifee 24/7 has a highly focused audience. The only people who visit it are people who live in this town, or want to relocate here.

The Real Estate Factor - Real estate ads on AdSense are very lucrative to publishers like myself. And they tend to appear often on websites that focus themselves on a specific geographic locale. Menifee 24/7 being focused on happenings in my town, gets plenty of them. So, once in awhile I publish articles about property values, selling a home, or relocation, just to maintain a demographic of visitors who want Menifee real estate info.

Ad Recognition - The audience on Menifee 24/7 tend to click on AdSense ads more often than JFB's audience because they don't realize its an ad. They're just not savvy enough to know what AdSense is. To them, the AdSense unit are just links, especially if you blend the AdSense unit into the background colors. On JFB, the audience tends to be more Internet savvy, and younger.

I think the key to making hyperlocal blogging a success with AdSense is to make sure your audience is primarily people in your city or town, and give some added weight to real estate topics. Remember that there's also a demographic of people who want to relocate to your town, and therefore are interested in real estate information.

There's a lot of money in them-thar real estate ads.

Blogs with AdSense

2007-09-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

Blogs are a great way to build audiences for monetization purposes.

I created the blog you're reading, "Money With AdSense", on August 24, 2007, which is just 30 days ago from today. Already it's starting to pick up some steady traffic.

This steady traffic started occurring about one week after the launch, when Google added pages from this website into its search index. Albeit, the traffic was very small, only 1-2 visitors per day. As of today, Google is now referring about 2-3 visitors per day. Woo Hoo! Big difference!

But before you toss your hand at that, also consider that just three days ago, Yahoo began referring visitors as well. I'm now seeing about 2-3 visitors a day from Yahoo.

So overall, I'm getting about 4-6 visitors a day to this blog from Yahoo and Google combined.

That's pretty good if you consider the following...

It's only been 30 days since the launch of this blog

I spent zero on traffic building.

I spent zero building the website

I spent zero on content (it's all my content)

I spent zero on hosting (it's running on my dedicated server)

The only area I paid money was for domain name registration

Thus far, I've earned very minimal from AdSense, but I have gotten some clicks. Considering the traffic volume, it's easy to understand why. But that's ok, because traffic will grow as I continue to publish more articles.

Remember, the more articles I publish, the more pages I'll have in Google & Yahoo's search index. The more pages in their index, the more likely one of those pages will show up on someone's query.

You can build up a steady income stream with AdSense just by doing what I described above. All I did was launch a blog, pasted AdSense into it, and then just write new articles (in your words), regularly. Traffic will automatically starts coming within days or weeks, and it builds from there.

The key to all of this, is original content.

That is, you have to create the content. You can't republish someone else's article from an article archive site. Google seems to know when it finds an article that exists elsewhere.

In a year's time, you might have hundreds of visitors each day, or thousands, depending on your niche, your SEO efforts, your domain name, and if you can get other sites to link to you.

Blogs have an uncanny way of building up traffic quickly from search engines, as opposed to other types of websites.

Blocking Public Service Ads

2007-09-13T06:19:00.000-07:00

My home-based website publishing blog, "In Your Web", has a nagging problem of getting a lot of public service ads (PSA) from Google AdSense.

This only happens on the homepage.

The reason is the domain name "inyourweb.com". Considering that keywords in the domain name, directory name, and filename, is a key factor towards determining relevant ads on AdSense, now you see why I get so many public service ads on the homepage. The other pages are ok, because those have more keywords in the filenames.

So the million dollar question is, "Why did I choose such a stupid domain name?"

Well, it wasn't that stupid at the time.

In Your Web was first launched in October 2003. That was only 7 months after Google AdSense was launched (March 2003). At that time, no one understood how AdSense determined relevancy, we were all still trying to figure it out.

I chose the name "In Your Web" because I wanted something that was easily recognizable. I was going after a domain that could be easily branded. Knowing what I know now, I would picked out a domain that had a keyword in it.

Blocking Public Service Ads

You can't force AdSense to display paid ads instead of the public service ad. Remember that the public service ads are displaying because Google can't figure out what else to display.

AdSense does provide some options on how it should handle this situation...

The second option, "Show Non-Google ads from another URL" is perhaps the best choice. It allows you to enter a URL to display ads from another source...

Here's what you do.

First create a new webpage on your server. This webpage should NOT have any of your website's template on it. It should be pure blank. Except, between the BODY tags, paste the advertising code from another advertising network. Make sure that the advertising code will display an ad with the same dimensions you're using with Google Adsense. NOTE: don't center the ad on the page, let it top-left-justify naturally.

Upload this page to your webserver.

Now, enter the URL for this page into the box above.

That's it. When Google decides that it can't find any relevant ads, it will display this instead.

You can also get creative, and instead of pasting code from another advertising service, you can use links for some affiliate programs, or links to some of your other websites.

AdSense CPM Drops as Impressions Increase

2007-09-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

One of the most intriguing statistics for me is that my effective AdSense CPM drops as the number of impressions rise.

It's frustrating, actually, because you want some predictability with your earnings. You'd like to know that if you earn "x dollars" with 1,000 impressions, you can earn "xx dollars" with 10,000 impressions.

I'd love to provide a graph from my own statistics to illustrate it for you, but AdSense's terms of service prevent me from disclosing that information.

It's not just AdSense, actually. It works this way for me with any advertising network or affiliate marketing program.

My explanation for this is that as your traffic increases, it becomes more diverse.

For starters, one of the primary causes of traffic increase is having published more pages. The more pages you publish, the more search engine food you create. Effectively, it's a like fisherman casting a wider net, catching more of the fish he wants, but also getting more fish he doesn't want.

The best way to guard against that, is to keep your focus on your primary audience, by writing articles whose keywords and filenames are optimized for that audience. That can be hard to do, because when you've written your 100th article, it's harder to find more stuff to write about.

Another reason for the increasing diversity of your audience, is that they're coming in from more places. When you write a compelling article, people tend to e-mail it to their friends, or post a link to it from a message board, or even blog about it on their own blogs. And when they do this, it's often for slightly different reasons than what you intended.

For example, if you write an article about how a blogger made a thousand bucks in one day using AdSense, one guy might e-mail it to his buddies because the photograph of the blogger shows she has big boobies.

Another nagging problem is Google's Image Search. Assuming you're putting images in your blog posts, people will eventually find those images through Google Image Search, and that will produce page views.

What can you do to help monetize this diverse traffic?

For all those page views created by Google Image Search, find an ad network that will pay "per impression" intead of "per click", and place one of their banners somewhere.

Place some promotional links in a highly visible place on your website, that link to some of your most popular content. Use heading text like, "Top 5 Most Popular Articles", or, "Top 5 Must Have Tools for Webmasters". If you don't have that stuff, try "Get Laid" and link it to a dating affiliate program.