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Add Custom Fonts To Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:00:00 +0000

Adding Custom Fonts to Blogger can improve the look and feel of your blog. Before getting into font embedding lets know how this works.
In your templates you can use any font you want, but these would be properly displayed only if the viewer has those fonts installed on his/her System.
Font embedding Techniques allows you to use any font on your Blog and these fonts will be viewable to the viewers even if they don’t have the font installed on their Systems.
@font-face is the best Font Embedding technique in my opinion but it wont easily work with externally uploaded fonts unless the server has special Access Control Headers for your blog .(blogger wont allow you to upload the font to it’s servers :P ) So here are certain simple alternative methods to add custom fonts to your blog. These are listed out in an order of my preference

Google Font API

Kernest Font API

Cufon JavaScript Font Embedding

1. Google Fonts API.

This is the best and robust method to add custom fonts to your blogger blog. It uses the @font-face technique but you needn’t worry about the backend things. You can see a list of available Fonts at the Google Font Directory .
When you select a particular Font, Google will provide you with the Embed Code which looks like

Copy out this code and you have to modify it by changing > at the end of the code to />
That is you have to change the code to something like

/>

Adding the Google CSS Embed Code

Now Go to your Blogger > Design > Edit HTML page
Find and immediately below that line paste the edited Embed Code and save your template.

Using This Custom Font on your Template

You use this Custom Font in any of your CSS Font Definitions. For example if you want to change the Post Title Font to this one, then you can use the following CSS code

h3.post-title {font-family: 'CustomFontName', serif;}

In This definition serif is a fallback font which will be used in case the something bad happened when loading the custom font. (It is a safe practice to include at least one Fallback font and it will help in tackling unexpected behaviours) After editing the above CSS with the proper Custom Font name,add the code above the closing ]]> tag in your template.

You can alter other fonts in your Template by modifying the font-family definitions in your template.

How to use Multiple Custom Fonts in your Blogger Template

When you use multiple Custom Fonts, then there is no need to add the Google CSS embed codes multiple times.You can load multiple fonts using a single line of code.
For example if you are planning to use 3 custom Fonts Tangerine,Inconsolata, Droid Sans, then you can load all these three fonts using a single embed code

ie, just separate the multiple fonts by a |
Now to apply these fonts on your template, you can use these in your template CSS
For example you may use something like

h3.post-title {font-family: 'Tangerine', serif;}
#header h1 {font-family: 'Inconsolata', serif;}
.sidebar h2 {font-family: 'Droid Sans', serif;}

Extra Settings

By Default the Google API provides the Regular version of the Font. If you need specialised versions like bold, italic or bold and italic, then you have to append :b , :i or :bi to the font name in the google font embed code.
For example, if you need the blold + italic version of the Tangerine font, then you should have used the following embed code

/>

If you like to play around with codes , then refer the Google Font API Documentation
You might also want to refer the Google JavaScript Web Font Loader, which provides you with more Fonts and Font Providers.
These Web Fonts would be much useful for Non-English Blogs, if the other language Fonts get added to the Font Directory

2. Kernest Font API

1.Create an Account and signup at Kernest
2.Browse through the Fonts at Kernest.
3. Add your domain url by clicking on the Domain Embed Url

4.If the Font is free you will find the embed code below the font demo.

Copy the Style Sheet code from there(as shown in the image above)
5.Login to your blogger Template and Go to Design > Edit HTML and paste this code just below the tag in your blogger template and save it.

6. Now you can use this Custom Font name inside your CSS style Definitions.
For example , if you need to change the font style of the post title, add the following code

.post-title h3 {font-family: 'NAME_OF_THE_FONT_U_ADDED' , serif;}

just above the closing ]]> tag after editing the code with the custom font name that you added.(serif is the fallback font which will be used if some misbehaviours prevented your custom font from loading)

You can use this Custom Font name in any font style definitions in your template

3. Cufon Font Embedding

1.You should have the font with you in TTF , OTF or PFB formats.
2.Now Goto the Cufon Generator Page and browse for your Font in the Regular Type Face section
Make sure that “The EULAs of these fonts allow Web Embedding” .
Accept the terms and click the “Lets do it” Button
3. You will be prompted to download a JavaScript file. Save it to your computer.
4.Right Click on this http://cufon.shoqolate.com/js/cufon-yui.js and Click on the Save Link as option and save this JavaScript File to your PC.
5.Upload these 2 JavaScript files somewhere and note down their urls.
6. Now Goto Blogger Design > Edit HTML and just below the in your template , add the following code after editing the code with the proper urls of the two script files

7. Now just before the closing body tag , add the following code(IE fix)

I would advice you to use the Google Font Embedding API , but the Fonts available on them are now limited. Kernest also has a good Collection of Fonts. If you use Cufon make sure that you have the rights to use the font. Cufon will allow you to use virtually any font but its not as robust as the other two methods.

If you have any doubts regarding Font Embedding, please let me know via the comments and i will try to help you out.

Blogger Statastics on your Blogger Dashboard

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:52:00 +0000

Many of you might have been using Google analytics or some third party tracking scripts for monitoring your blog statistics. Now blogger has made it much easier for you. You can now get the stats right in your dashboard without adding any extra widgets or codes to your template. This feature is not yet available on your regular dashboard. This is only available on the Blogger in Draft Dashboard.

“The coolest thing about the new Blogger Stats is that it monitors and analyzes your visitor traffic in near-real-time. You can see which posts are getting the most visits and which sites are sending traffic to your blog right now. For example, if a reader shares one of your blog posts on Twitter and the post is getting lots of clicks, you will see a traffic increase in Blogger Stats almost instantly, with the particular Tweet mentioning your post being identified as the traffic source. Of course, traffic data across longer time periods (day/week/month) and all-time historical data are available as well.”
Source : (Official blogger in Draft Blog)

The stats will keep track of the popular keywords,countries where the visitors come from,web browsers used by the visitors and lots more.

“Note that the page view data in Blogger Stats and in Google Analytics may not be identical, due to different collection mechanisms used. Also, Blogger Stats do not support private blogs for now.”
Source : (Official blogger in Draft Blog)

How to See My Blog Stats?

Blogger Stats is Currently available on the Blogger in Draft Dashboard only. So login at http://draft.blogger.com
Now Click on the Stats Link Next to your Blog

Here are the Screen shots of the different Tabs of Blogger Stats For the “Last Day” with the figures shaded out :)

Officially Share Buttons on Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:50:00 +0000

Blogger has been rolling out new features to improve the looks and usability of the blogs. Blogger is now testing out a new Social Sharing icon set consisting of Email, Blogger,Twitter(with goo.gl shortener),Facebook and Google buzz buttons. The set looks simple and elegant with some cool mouse over effects. These Sharing buttons are now available in your regular dashboard.If you need to take a peek at these new sharing icons, then take a look at my post page(and try sharing it :P ).
You are still reading. So i guess that you are really interested in implementing these Sharing buttons on your Blogger Blog.
Then don’t wait. Just follow these simple steps

Login to Your Blogger Dashboard
Go to Design > Page Elements and Click on the Edit Button near the Blog Posts Gadget and check the “Show Share Buttons” Option
You can Drag and Drop the Share buttons and place it where you want.
Now if everything went right, then you should be able to see the Share buttons on your Blog. If not then read on. :)
If it didn’t appear then don’t worry, That is because you are having a modded template. Just Go to the Edit HTML page under the Design Tab , Check the “Expand Widget Templates” Option and locate.
Or if that is not there then find
Or if that is not there then find
and place the following code just below any of these lines[whichever is present in your template].
```
   
```
and Save your template.

Optional Tweaks

Show the Sharing Buttons on Post pages only - Find the Following Code in your template
```
   
```
and wrap it within conditional tags as
```
   
```
Hide Some of the Sharing Buttons – If you want you can hide some of these buttons using CSS. For example to hide the Blogger sharing button, add the following code above ]]> in your template
```
.sb-blog{display:none}
```
sb-email , sb-twitter, sb-facebook, sb-buzz and sb-blog are the different Button Classes. If you hide the mail or buzz buttons, then it might look a little bad as these have rounded edges,

Got into Trouble with implementing the sharing buttons? Ok leave a comment here and i will try to help you out. :)

Internet Speed Test

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:42:00 +0000

Internet Speed Test for Broadband, Cable, Satellite and DSL Modems that helps determine your true bandwidth.
Know your ipaddres
We created our Internet Speed Test to be the most accurate broadband Speed Test on the internet! In fact, many sites charge for speed tests similar to this one!
Because this speed test is so popular we have to limit the test to 15 users at a time. Although we have a large amount of bandwidth, this speedtest may take up to 30 seconds to complete, so please be patient.
Before you start the Bandwidth Test
This test accurately measures bandwidth and serves as a DSL speed test and Cable Modem Speed test to help visitors troubleshoot and locate bandwidth issues.
Before you start the Speed Test, please keep in mind that it uses TCP port 8500 to test packets. What does this mean? If you see a 'connect time out' message, then you need to tell your firewall to allow 198.104.150.202 (that's our server) to communicate with your computer using TCP port 8500.
Here is an example of the IP Security Policy on a XP machine:Protocol = TCP, Source Port =8500, Destination Port = ANY, Source Address = 198.104.150.202, Source Mask = 255.255.255.255, Destination Address = My IP Address, Destination Mask = 255.255.255.255
Speed Test - No Graphic?
If you still can not run the bandwidth test, download the latest version of Java. If this does not work, please let me know and I'll work with you on this.
You can also try our very popular Broadband Speed Test and / or our Speed Test which also supports any language in the world!
It would be greatly appreciated if you would notify us of any problems with this speed test - Thank you!
Bandwidth Testing can be complicated!
There is a lot more to an internet speed test than meets the eye! When you measure bandwidth, be it DSL speed Test, Cable Modem Speed Test or any other, you have to consider the devices the packets of data travel through. A speed test also has to consider the technology used to deliver those packets of data and account for variations in speed.
To give you the most accurate results, our internet speed test was based on a research paper by Liang Cheng2 and Ivan Marsic from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The paper explains in detail how to accurately measure Digital Subscriber Line Networks and is used by our speed test.
In researching Broadband Speed Tests, we also found some very 'unfriendly' user interfaces that left us confused as to the results. We have put great effort into providing an accurate, easy to understand graphical interface that clearly displays the results of the internet speed test.
For those of you interested in greater detail, keep reading; otherwise, just click the speed test start button. This speed test uses Java and will not work with java disabled.
Internet Speed Test Definitions
The following internet speed test terms are useful for understanding the Speed Test measurement report:
QOS
Represents the level of consistent download capacity provided by your Broadband or DSL providor. The higher QOS percentage, the higher the overall quality of the internet connection. High quality plus internet speed provides better connections for VoIP (voice over IP), Citrix and other high traffic applications.
This figure should come in around 80 or higher yet. This does not mean that you won't find success at lower speeds, but on average, the speed test should report >= 80.
RTT
The Round Trip Time (RTT) reports the total time in milliseconds (ms) to send a small data packet in our internet speed test and obtain a reply back. The faster (smaller) the RTT, the better broadband speed you'll have.
For Voice over IP, round trip delays can occur when results exceed 250 mSec or 150 mSec one way which is also considered the maximum desired one-way latency to achieve high-quality voice.
Max Pause
Max Pause is the longest pause recorded during the Broadband Speed Test data download. This should be a very small number. If not, it could indicate Internet speed congestion or a bad broadband connection.
Anything less that 100 would be ideal for this broadband speed test.
Speed Test - How It Works
Existing Internet Speed Tests - bandwidth testing techniques are not suitable because link asymmetry and ATM traffic shaping in xDSL deployments impact the accuracy of their speed test measurements.
Speed Test - Techniques
A number of techniques exist for Speed Test and bandwidth measurement. Most of them can be categorized into two groups. One group is a variant of pathchar based on the one-packet model. The disadvantage of this group is heavy overhead in bandwidth consumption. The other is a variant of packet-pair based on the packet-pair model. This group imposes lower overhead compared to the first group.
In theory, one- or two-packet techniques and the tailgating technique in internet speed tests and can get good estimation of xDSL link bandwidth. However, the existing tools do not regulate the probe packets so that ATM traffic shaper will regulate the probe packets for them by packet delay or packet drop.
One possible solution is that to explicitly regulate the probe traffic, but then it is difficult to specify the source rate for speed tests. That is why a stepwise scheme is proposed: in the first step of the bandwidth test, a rough estimate of the bandwidth is obtained and the subsequent probe traffic is regulated according to the estimation. Multi-packet technique is used to avoid explicit packet filtering to help accurately measure internet speed.
Broadband Tests - Traffic Shaping
Our broadband speed test take into account that ATM traffic shaping has a goal of regulating the traffic flow as per the parameters describing the negotiated QoS to achieve better network efficiency. The basic idea of ATM traffic shaping is buffering the packets/cells and controlling, mostly delaying, their entry into the network, thereby ensuring a more constant flow of traffic in the network.
DSL Speed Test - Application to Asymmetric DSL Networks
The DSL Speed Test understands that the asymmetric nature of ADSL networks makes it necessary to have different measurements methodologies for upstream and downstream cases. The speed tests are based upon the assumption that the upstream bandwidth is lower than the downstream bandwidth.
DSL Speed Test - Upstream methodology
A fixed number of UDP packets of uniform size are sent from the customer's computer (client) at a rate slightly higher than the nominal bottleneck bandwidth of the ADSL network during our DSL speed test. Probing traffic with the slightly higher rate (e.g., less than 10%) is necessary to saturate the pipe for testing. A server process on the Bandwidth Measurement Server, echoes back the packets as they arrive at the server end. The time difference, T, is measured between the arrival of the first packet and the last packet at the client end. During the broadband speed test, the upstream bottleneck link bandwidth, b1, is computed as: b1 = (NxPx8)/T [bps]
Bandwidth Test - Downstream methodology
A traffic generator at the Bandwidth Speed Test Measurement Server generates a downstream traffic. A receiving process at the client measures the arrival time of the packets. Because of the nature of ADSL, such that the upstream bandwidth is smaller than the downstream bandwidth, the client does not echo the probe packets back. Instead, the client computes the downstream bandwidth to accurately check internet speed.
Bandwidth Speed Test - Stepwise Scheme
The stepwise scheme consists of at least two steps during the speed test. It can be used for both downstream and upstream bandwidth measurements described in the previous section. The generated traffic should be smooth rather than bursty to avoid excessive ATM traffic shaping. The stepwise bandwidth measurement scheme runs several times and reports the maximum measured value as the link bandwidth.
During the first bandwidth measurement step, a small number of packets, e.g., 10, are sent sequentially back-to-back from the client to the server. This small number of packets will likely not be affected by ATM traffic shaping, as most ATM networks are capable of handling such small bursts. The computed result is used in the second step of the speed test as the trial bandwidth of the xDSL link.
The subsequent step(s) in our internet speed test assumes that the accurate xDSL bandwidth is close to the trial result obtained from the first step. A larger number of packets than that in the first step are used in the measurement to ensure that the results are convergent and in the end consistent. Had it not been for the first step that approximately determined the bandwidth, the sustained higher-than-provisioned traffic would result in a considerable loss or queuing delay caused by ATM traffic shaping, and this would end up providing inaccurate internet speed test results.
Internet Speed Test - Conclusion
In Summary, we have put a lot of time into designing the most accurate and easy to use speed test on the internet, and for free! This whole project was inspired because I found too many broadband speed test sites that were either inaccurate, charging money or were just too confusing; users can simply start our speed test and know the results are accurate and instant!
More Cool Speed Tests
We have two other very popular speed tests to help you measure your bandwidth, plus, if you own a website, you can even install them on your server!The Broadband Speed Test made with flash - and -the multilingual Speed Test made with Java.
Internet Speed Testing on other servers
Here are other Bandwidth Tools (speed tests) that are hosted on high-end servers with plenty of bandwidth for those of you looking for further testing. I should also mention that these sites have been designed around our free speed tests.

Google Sitemap Generator

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:32:00 +0000

Google Sitemap Generator, XML Sitemaps and HTML Sitemaps made easy with this free unlimited tool!
NOTE: This Sitemap Generator has been completely revamped - It's awesome! It is now part of our Webmaster Tool, simply click on the webmaster tool image to start. Below you will find instructions for creating XML Sitemaps, Google Sitemaps and HTML sitemaps.

* Before you jump into this, you should read everything on this page.
* The SITEMAP GENERATOR respects sessions! If you are logged into your site and have delete privileges, the sitemap generator will follow all links, including 'delete links', so play it safe and make sure you are NOT logged into your website!
* In order to Generate Sitemaps, you'll need Sun's Java Runtime which is free and located here: http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
For other parts of the webmaster tool, such as checking your site for invalid links or finding out why it's not ranking well, visit the Webmaster Tools page.
You're probably here to generate a sitemap for your favorite search engine? At one time, Google had it's own sitemap format, Yahoo had their own version and everyone else was trying to catch up. Fortunately, a standard was developed for XML Sitemaps which are now accepted by Google, Yahoo and others.
There is still the traditional html sitemap, and we have taken that into consideration when building the sitemap generator; our webmaster tool provides you with the option to generate a XML sitemap or HTML sitemap – how you export (save) the file is up to you.
Creative website owners have been using sitemaps to get their content recognized by search engines for years; these html sitemaps predate Google and XML site maps. The nice thing about this type of sitemap is that it can be read by humans AND search engines.
To create these older style sitemaps, website owners need only use our program to generate an HTML sitemap, upload that file to their server's root directory (same location as the website's main page) and place a link to that file in their footer (bottom of the website's main page)
XML Sitemaps now the standard
A Google Sitemap (XML Sitemap) and the traditional sitemap differ in a number of ways. The XML sitemap is for made for search engines such as Yahoo, Google and MSN and when viewed by a human, it's not pretty.
The traditional sitemap (HTML Sitemap) is a graphical way to present your website's layout to humans to further aid in their navigation of your site.
If you want the search engines to see your webpages, a XML sitemap is the way to go. You can a Google sitemap (xml sitemap) and standard sitemap (html) running side by side and it will not negativly impact your site.
Why the Sitemap Generator
Google Sitemaps is a service that allows webmasters to submit an XML map of their site containing information such as change frequency, priority, date created and more. Google suggests a great sitemap program to create the site map, but you must have Python in order for it to run. For further reading on Google's program, visit Google Sitemaps FAQ.
I needed a way to accomplish this without installing Python or extra software on my server and Java was the perfect solution!
Free Site Map Builder
This free and easy to use site map builder is fast, efficient and allows you to build sitemaps that can instantly be submitted to Google. The only requirement is a popular browser that supports java, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and others.
Sitemap Generator Overview
The easy way to create a Google or XML Sitemap is by watching our 60 second Webmaster Tool Video.
It's simple, just enter the website you would like to create a site map under the 'settings' tab, enter filters (if any), select any options (defaults work fine) and click the little green arrow to start crawling. The program will spider your site (nothing to do with spider bites:) and generate a sitemap using the default values, such as thread count of 5, include all files, etc. Care has been used to make sure the crawler does not follow external links :)
If you have a large site, you'll need to increase the memory allocated to the webmaster tool, more about this can be found on our forum and this 60 second video on Increasing Java Memory.
Sitemap Generator Details
This site map generator (now part of the webmaster tool) is loaded with tons of features and consists of six tabs:
'Project' tab - allows you to save and load your sitemap project. This can be very handy when building XML Sitemaps (or any type of sitemap for that matter). An example might be that your site is a few million pages long in size and you have access to a computer for a short period of time. Simply stop the job, save it out and open it later. Note: The project saves out as an XML file - don't confuse this with a XML Sitemap - they are NOT the same.
'Settings' tab - allows you to specify the way your site will be spidered and what will be included in your Google or XML sitemaps.
Project Name - This will be the name of your project
URL - The full address (including the http://) of the website you would like to create a Google or XML sitemap from
Filters - you can tell our tool to include or exclude certain files when building your HTML, Google or XML sitemap. All filters are case sensitive, so if you are trying to exclude .Jpg files, then use *.Jpg, not *.jpg, etc.
Include Filter - This is a list of path patterns, asterisk (*) wildcard supported, case sensitive. When the sitemap generator / crawler is about to process a website, it is validated against all inclusion patterns. If none have matched then the location will not be processed and will not be included into sitemap. If you leave this area empty, then it is assumed that you want to include everything so that all locations will are processed (provided they conform to the rules listed below. Example: /dir1/* - process all files located below (recursively) directory "dir1" *.html - process all HTML files at any location
Exclude Filter - Patterns included here will be excluded from processing. When the sitemap generator crawls a website, that site is validated against exclusion patterns. If any patterns match, the location will not be processed and included into Google sitemap. Say that you have a directory located at http://www.yoursite.com/private/messages.php?voice=112 and you would like to prevent the messages.php from being included on the sitemap, then you would enter the following into the exclude filter */private/messages* Want to exclude everything in the private directory from being included in the sitemap? Enter the following */private/*
Rules - Allows you to set rules when creating your XML, HTML or Google Sitemap.
Load From - Provides you with the option to process files from the entire server and below the initial directory which is specified by URL parameter. For example, if the URL parameter is a server address, this option does not effect the behavior of the google sitemap generator; However, if you enter a directory, say for example http://www.popupcheck.com/news/index.html, only files below /news directory will be processed including any sub directories.
Respect Robots.txt file - you can tell the sitemap generator to honor this file or to ignore it.
Respect Meta Robots.txt - you can do as this meta tag instructs or ignore it.
Respect No Follow - If the sitemap builder finds a link with a no-follow tag, it will ignore or follow it depending on your selection.
Ignore invalid links - If you find links that try to back up past your root directory, then you can choose to not include this in your sitemaps.
Exclude images - Check this. Images will not be included anyway (not used)
Download only new files - this works when you have a sitemap project that you have saved out
Options - Some cool stuff here and can be very important!
Add skipped links to sitemap - when the webmaster tool crawls your site, it may find bad links. This option allows you to include those in the sitemap anyway.
User agent - When you spider a site, you leave in the log files the name 'AuditMyPC Webmaster Tool' as the browser type. Some web hosting companies may block a browser if it is making too many requests. You can change the referrer (user agent) to something else by selecting from the drop down or typing it in!
Max Level - the maximum depth the webmaster tool will dive down to when creating your sitemap. The default is all levels, but if you wanted to set it at 0, then only the root web pages would be found and included in your XML sitemap, if you have something like mysite.com/news/newat11.php then that file would be 1 deep and would not be included.
'Crawler' tab - Set the speed in which the sitemap is generated.
Request Delay - Our XML sitemap generator works extremely fast, the downside of this is that some internet service providers may find this places a heavy load on the server. If this is the case, then you can place delays between requests.
Connect Timeout - When building XML sitemaps which encounters pages that don't load or take too long, a timeout can be set.
Read Timeout - If the spider finds a page that goes on forever, you can specify a timeout for reading that page.
Transfer Rate - Each thread can transfer web pages at a very fast rate. You can tone that down a bit if necessary, but the default works fine.
Thread Count - The number of simultaneous crawling threads to run when creating the Google site map. This may significantly decrease overall crawling time if large number of threads are specified but will increase bandwidth usage - so use with caution or just run with the default.
Once you click on the button, crawling will begin and you'll be presented with status indicators for thread status, uri, values and more. All parameters are self explanatory and 'Finished' will appear once crawling is completed. You may stop the sitemap generation at any time by pressing the 'cancel' button.
'Sitemap' Tab - Contains a ton of information about each page and updates in real time. all the locations / files that have been crawled. Under the 'Sitemap' tab, you have sub-tabs, such as 'save sitemap', 'retry', 'row filter', 'column filter' and 'trees'.
Export - this is where you decide what type of sitemap you would like to build. You can choose 'URL Raw List', 'Delimited', 'XML File (not for sitemaps)', 'Sitemap XML (For creating sitemaps for Google, Yahoo and others) ', 'HTML Sitemap' and a 'HTML Report'.
Retry Failed - This option will retry to read pages from the sitemap that had problems on the last run
Row Filter - When building a sitemap (crawling a site), you can filter out rows based on just about anything you can thing of (see the question mark next to each item for details).
Column Filter - Save as the Row filter but for Columns.
Find - This allows you to search your xml sitemap for text.
You have the option to edit 'Modified', 'Change frequency' and 'Priority' cells for each row (or all rows - well get to that in a moment).
Listing of URLs (pages) - You'll see a listing of all your webpages that include items like Title, Status, Errors and more. For the Google sitemap, you can set the 'Change Frequency' and 'Change Priority' for on or multiple urls by highlighting the desired url(s) and right clicking, then choosing your option. You can also delete page from your Google or XML Sitemap by simply highlighting the desired urls and pressing your computer's delete key.
Change frequency - Tells Google Sitemaps the frequency that content of a particular URL will change. Your options are "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly" or "never". The value "always" should be used to describe documents that change each time they are accessed. The value "never" should be used to describe archived URLs.
Priority - The priority of a particular URL relative to other pages on your site. You may select between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 identifies the lowest priority page(s) on your website and 1.0 identifies the highest priority page(s) on your website.
The URL check, server headers and other parts of the tool are covered on the Webmaster Tools page.
How To Create Google Sitemap
To create a Google Sitemap, simply enter the full address of your website, select any sitemap options and choose 'Start Crawling".
When you have completed the crawling process and status reports finished, then select export under the sitemaps tab and choose Sitemap XML.
Enter the filename you would like the sitemap saved and click save (the default is sitemaps.xml which is fine).
You have now created a Google Compliant Sitemap and saved it to your computer - congratulations!
Now, you need to upload the new sitemap to your website. It seems every hosting company has a different method of doing this, but they are all basically the same:
Think of your sitemap.xml file as any htm (html, php or asp) file that you're going to place on your website.
There is probably some type of import option that your hosting company provides you - use it to move (FTP, Publish, etc) the sitemap.xml file from your computer onto your website. Place it in the same directory that holds the main page for your website.
Submit your Sitemap to Google
The final step is activating your Sitemap. Here's how:
Log into your Google Sitemaps account by visiting Google Sitemaps Account.
Click on the "Add a Sitemap" link.
Enter the URL for your Sitemap in the field, then click the [Submit URL] button.
Example: The URL for your Sitemap will be your website address, followed by the filename that you uploaded. For example, if I uploaded my 'sitemap.xml' file to my auditmypc.com site, the URL I would give to Google Sitemaps would be http://www.auditmypc.com/sitemap.xml
This will submit your Sitemap to the Google service. It may take Google a few hours to generate reports about your site, so be patient while they work their mojo.
How do I Resubmit my Sitemaps?
Initially, you just uploaded your site map file to your website and told Google the location of the site map. If you make a change, say add or delete information from the sitemap, you need to do the following:
Generate another sitemap with the same name as the original
Upload the sitemap file to your server just like before, but this time you will overwrite the original sitemap
Tell Google you have made a change to the sitemap – you can do this one of two ways:
A) Sign into Google Sitemaps with your Google account and from the "Sitemaps" tab, select the checkbox beside it and click the "Resubmit Selected" button.
B) Send Google an HTTP request by typing in a special address into your browser (also know as 'pinging google')
To resubmit your Sitemap using option B (a HTTP request), you simply enter the full location of your sitemap that you provided Google and place it into your browser (but, it must be encoded first! Here is how)
Enter the full address of your sitemap into the form below:Example http://www.auditmypc.com/sitemap.xml
Click Encode URL
Copy the Encoded result and paste it into your browser's address bar (just like you would any website address).
Encoded Sitemap
Once you have entered the encoded sitemap address into your browser and pressed enter (or Go, etc), you'll receive a screen message from google telling you it has your information; Bookmark the address before you close it and next time you update your sitemap, just visit the bookmark. This saves you from having to go through this process again!
Encode your Google Sitemap
Although the form above encodes your sitemap url for you, you may be curious how exactly it works or want to manually encode your sitemap address.
As an example, if your Google Site Map is located at http://www.auditmypc.com/sitemap.htm, you'll enter the following website address into your browser: www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.auditmypc.com/sitemap.htmbut, google asks that you encode the URL first.
You must URL Encode everything after the /ping?sitemap=
So, you'll actually enter:www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.auditmypc.com%2Fsitemap.htm
Notice how the '/' became '%3a', that's the hexadecimal representation of ':'. It's easier to just use the form on this page to encode your sitemap location :)
In Summary, take the address of your sitemap, enter it into the 'Site Map Location' area above and press 'Encode URL' button. Append the encoded result to the end of google sitemap url like this: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=[encoded result]
To decode a Google Site Map address, simply enter the encoded url into the 'Encoded Result' and press Decode URL
For more detail on how to resubmit the Google Sitemap, simply visit Google Sitemap.
Yahoo Sitemap Generator
Yahoo also has a sitemap program that allows you to submit a list of your webpages to Yahoo!
Create a Yahoo Sitemap xml file using our webmaster tool.
Use Yahoo Sitemap XML files to make sure that all your web pages are indexed by Yahoo. This can be done by creating a single xml file containing your sitemap. XML Sitemaps for Yahoo is a free service and easy to do.
To create your XML Sitemap file follow these steps:
Create the sitemap as normal using our Sitemap Generator (webmaster tool)
Click the 'Save Sitemap' tab located under the 'Sitemap' tab
Select 'Sitemap XML' to save it out as the name you would like and then upload the sitemap to your website
Submit your XML File to http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
To use Yahoo Sitemaps, you will need a Yahoo account which is free. Then, add your website under 'My Sites'. Once in 'My Sites', click manage and add your Yahoo XML sitemap file that you just created.
You can provide Yahoo Sitemaps with a feed in the many formats other than XML (stick with XML).
RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0 or RSS 2.0, for example, CNN Top Stories
Sitemaps, as documented on www.sitemaps.org
Atom 0.3, Atom 1.0, for example, Yahoo! Search Blog
A text file containing a list of URLs, each URL at the start of a new line. The filename of the URL list file must be urllist.txt; for a compressed file the name must be urllist.txt.gz.
Yahoo Sitemaps is easy and a great way to get indexed on this search engine!
Top Sitemap Builder Suggestions
Suggestions (Thank You!) from users that have been using the Sitemap Generator and that have been incorporated into the application include:
Make XML Sitemaps for Yahoo Sitemaps, MSN and others.
Add a Google Sitemap URL Encoder / Decoder to help submit sitemaps.
Make the URL list sortable by clicking the column title. When generating a site map for larger sites, it can become overwhelming.
The ability to save your settings when you create a sitemap. The next time you generate a sitemap, you'll be able to refer to these settings.
Include in the sitemap program the ability to honor robots.txt files. When a site map is created, the program will look at its own filters first and then look at the website's robots.txt file if the option is selected.
Include in the sitemap builder the ability to honor meta tag robot rules. When a site map is generated, the program will look at its own filters first and then look at the website's robots.txt file and meta tag if the options are selected.
I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to suggest improvements!
Version history is included below.
Sitemap Bugs and Fixes

The current version is v1.2 realesed on 9/21/07. Major items fixed include supporting non-standard characters, updated Google Sitemap code and increased browser compatability with less popular browsers.
We provide free support on our Sitemap Generator Support Forum.
May 2007 - v1.1 Updated the sitemap generator so that when you export (save) your sitemap, it is in a format that is accepted by Google Sitemaps, Yahoo Sitemaps and other engines.
Feb 2006 - Sitemap Generator has been renamed to the AuditMyPC.com Webmaster Tool and is now at version 1.0. This new tool replaces the older sitemap generator and includes the ability to check sites for errors, server headers, XML sitemaps, and much more. If you select stay informed from the menu to your left, you'll be able to use this tool on your site. Those not on the list will still be able to use the old tool.
June 9th, 2006 - Latest Sitemap Generator update is now at version v2.32. Fixed a case sensitive issue that could cause some internal pages not to be recognized. Fixed a 'time out' problem where the site map generator would not stop or just hang.
May 19th, 2006 - Version 2.3 - Performance issues such as speed and calculations made.
May 18th, 2006 - Fixed a 'case' issue with the sitemap generator that would see urls with mixed case as different from urls with straight case. For example, if you entered AuditMyPC.com and the site has links pointing to auditmypc.com/firewalltest.asp, it would be considered and external link and excluded from the sitemap builder.
March 28th, 2006 - Version 1.7 released;
This version gives you the ability to look for and respect the rel='nofollow' tag. This tag is used to tell robots not to follow the link. The sitemap generator will now look for this tag and if found, will not include it when building a sitemap.
In rare configurations of the robots.txt file, the sitemap generator would not catch some entries.
Speed - enhancements to the speed at which generating sitemaps has been made and will also play a big part in the next major sitemap update.
December 1st, 2005 - Version 1.6 updated; when reading the robots.txt file, upper and lower case could cause a problem when building a sitemap. The sitemap generator is now case insensitive. Problem fixed.
October 28th, 2005 - Version 1.6 released; corrected a small bug that looks at a robots.txt file when generating a sitemap and if it sees 'disallow:', treats the command as disallow all. Although many people that generated sitemaps did not have this type of configuration, it forced the user to uncheck the 'Follow robots.txt rule'.
September 23rd, 2005 - Version 1.5 released; this addressed speed issues when building a sitemap.
September 14th, 2005 - Version 1.4 released; no bugs, site map cosmetic enhancements.
September 8th, 2005 - Fixed a bug where the sitemap generator would hang if spaces were found in the url.
July 27th, 2005 - Version 1.3 of Google Sitemap
Version 1.3 of the site map generator sports an entirely new skin, is more compact, has improved code and fixes a number of small bugs.
One of the biggest requests by users was greater detail when errors were discovered. If your website has any errors you will now have the ability to see exactly what caused the error when attempting to build a site map.
The number of invalid pages is easily identifiable. Each sitemap error can be expanded to see all related pages that point to that particular problem. You also have the ability to cut and paste Google Sitemap errors.
July 24th, 2005 - Updated site map submission instructions.
June 16th, 2005 - Identified and Fixed:
Drop downs appeared to be missing from the sitemap creator when the user changed format from 'Plain' and then switched back to 'XML' format.
Sometimes crawling startup failed when trying to generate a Google Sitemap.
When creating a Google sitemap from a website that contains more than 4,000 pages, the applet started to consume more system resources. The sitemap creator now supports up to 50,000 pages!
Added the ability to resize the site map applet to fit different size monitors.
June 15th, 2005 - Identified and fixed bug that when crawling over 3000 URLs, the Sitemap Generator would eventually drop down to one thread and may stop creating a sitemap entirely.
Google Site Map Generator v2

This version was RETIRED on 1/24/07 and was a major revision which included new features such as improved performance, the ability to ignore invalid relative links, ability to load from anywhere, max level, delay between requests, and the ability to save errors!
One of the most important and requested features have been the ability to regulate the speed with which the Google Sitemap Generator crawls a site. It's possible that some website hosting companies may view multiple requests in a short period of time as hostile; this could result in the sitemap not being generated correctly.
You now have the ability to place a value in seconds so that sitemap building requests are spaced out over time and more friendly.
We found a large number of sites have invalid links, such as../ rather than ./ which can create additional pages when combined with rewrites. Many of the users experiencing this problem thought it was our sitemap builder creating extra pages and was not aware it's actually a coding error on their site. Those users now have the ability to ignore these errors when building their Google Site Map.
We recommend you run the program without checking the 'Ignore invalid links' option to catch any errors. If our Google sitemap creator sees the file, so will the bots - it's a great way to make sure you're not generating duplicate content!
Another popular request was the ability to restrict the sitemap creator from going beyond (x) levels deep. For example, building a sitemap with a max level of 3 would go down three directories deep and ignore the rest of the sub directories.
By far the most requested enhancement is the ability to save out errors that have been reported when you build a site map. Site Map errors can now be saved so that you can review them later or work on them as time permits.
To access the new version of our free site map generator, simply click on our webmaster tool icon at the top of this page and you can start building your XML sitemap in minutes.
Sitemap Generator Support

Support for our Sitemap Builder can now be found on the Sitemap Generator page of our Forum. Listed below are some questions that may still be valid.
One of the major advantages of using this tool is that owners of websites find errors they never knew existed on their sites! These errors most often prevent sites from being indexed by Google, Yahoo MSN and others! Once fixed, site owners usually notice a major increase in search engine traffic!
It starts off with trying to make a sitemap for Google and discovering that the sitemap generator simply stops at the main page and doesn't find other pages within the site.
It is this very problem that people often write to me about. Almost always, after reviewing their site, I discover web pages that are missing beginning or ending tags, such as html, head and body tags.
I also discover that a large number of site owners are accidentally blocking robots from visiting their page. In the sitemap builder, you'll notice that there is an option to honor robots.txt files and no follow tags.
If you're having a problem with the sitemap builder and your page is formatted correctly, try deselecting the robots and no follow options. If this works, then the problem is with one of these items.
Every attempt has been made to make our webmaster tool behave as the search engine robots do when spidering a site. There are standards that each search engine subscribes to when reading websites and we subscribe to that same data. The point is, if we catch the errors, it's a very real possibility that the search engines will also.
A perfect example would be a hosting company blocking our spider because it's going to fast - chances are, the hosting provider is also doing this to the search engine robots and could be preventing them from seeing your entire site (which could lead to poor ratings). - See changing user agent above for solutions to this problem.
Creating a Sitemap - Common Questions

* Support for our XML Sitemaps and other site maps is now located on our forum.
Question: I have created a sitemap and it includes files that I want hidden from Yahoo and Google. If I take them out of the sitemap, then the search engines won't see them, correct?
Answer: Wrong – If the sitemap builder finds these pages that you want hidden, so will Yahoo, Google and other search engines. Sure, you can exclude them from the sitemap, but the problem is that you have links on your site to these files you want hidden.
You need to exclude them in your robots.txt file. My sitemap builder will respect the robots.txt file (obey it), just like the search engines and prevent them from being included in the site map.
Common Sitemap Builder Problems
* Our sitemap forum has up to date problems and solutions, the ones listed below are dated but still apply
Problem: You enter your website address and nothing happens.
Solution: Is that really your website's main page? For example, you might have entered http://www.mysite.com as the address, but if you type this in the browser and you end up at http://www.mysite.com/main/index.shtm, then you have a landing page that is different than your website address.
In this case, you would enter http://www.mysite.com/main/index.shtm as the site address.
Problem: I want to exclude images and css files.
Solution: enter the following in the exclude area:*.jpg*.bmp*.gif*.css
Problem: Site Map Generation slows down after 20,000 pages
Solution: Some webmasters have noticed that during a crawl of a very large site, the sitemap generator may slow down after spidering about 14,000 urls. This can happen if the site is heavily nested or has a complex linking structure.
People who experience this lag usually have rapid applet memory consumption and need to increase the amount. The site map builder by default is limited to 50-100m which can quickly be consumed on a complex web site.
To solve this problem, you can increase the amount of memory used by the site map builder. Simply navigate to the control panel and click on the Java Icon. Then, inside the Java Control Panel, click on the Java Tab, Java Applet Runtime Settings, View and then in the Java Runtime Parameters cell, enter '-Xmx256m'.
You can take it a step further when building a sitemap (if you're still having problems) and enter '-Xmx512m'.
Problem: You enter your website address and the site map builder stops immediately.
Solution: This is caused because your main page is redirected to another page (landing page). For example, you may have yoursite.com being redirected to yoursite.com/sales/products/sindex.htm
If this happens to you, simply enter your website address into your browser and notice where you are redirected to; take that redirected website address and enter it into the sitemap generator.
In the example I used above, you would enter: yoursite.com/sales/products/sindex.htminto the sitemap generator.
Problem: The sitemap generator misses a few or many files.
Solution: If you are having problems building a sitemap, it may be due to your Robots.txt file or your Metatag. Try unchecking the Follow robots.txt rules and/ or meta name robots rules.
Problem: I can't see the webmaster tool graphic button, so I can't start the test.Solution: If that's the case, then your browser settings may be preventing sitemap generation.
In IE, look under Tools, Internet Options, Security, Custom Level, Scripting of Java applets and choose prompt. Active scripting should be enabled as well.
In Firefox, look under tools, options, web features and make sure the Enable Java and JavaScript is selected.
If after trying these you still have a problem, please let me know and I will do my best to get you up and running.
Problem: Google Sitemap Invalid Date Error Message
Solution: If you get an 'invalid date' when you submit your sitemap, check to make sure that the time in not in the future. A common mistake is to not to account for daylight savings when creating the sitemap, so make sure you use the time zone for your server and not the local timezone. Note: This sitemap generator runs on your PC and not the server.

Fontastic new options for your ad units

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:46:00 +0000

Fontastic new options for your ad units
You've been asking for more control over the appearance of the ads on your sites, so we're happy to let you know that you can now change the font face of the text in ad units on pages in Latin-character languages. You can choose between Arial, Times, and Verdana font faces. Please note that while font options will appear in every account, they'll currently only be applied to ad units on pages primarily in Latin-based characters.There are a few ways to customize the font face of your ad units. If you'd like to quickly change the font settings for every ad unit generated from your account, visit the 'Ad Display Preference' section of your Account Settings page to select a new account-wide font face. This will affect all units you've created in the past, regardless of whether you used the Manage Ads feature. By default, your ads are currently set to 'Standard AdSense font family', which we've found has performed well across browsers and displays.
However, you can also select custom font faces for specific ad units that you've created with the Manage Ads feature. When creating new ad units, you'll be prompted to select between the default 'Standard AdSense font family', your new account-wide font face (if you've selected one), or another font face. You can also change the appearance of existing ad units, by visiting the Manage Ads page of your account and updating your font choices for specific ad units. Once you've changed the font face of an ad unit away from the default, those selections will be maintained even if you change your account-wide settings later.
Just as with color and placement optimizations, we encourage you to test these new font options to find the best combination for your sites. For instance, you can try matching the font face of your ads to that of your sites. Enjoy the new font faces, and feel free to leave feedback in our comments field below.

Introducing expandable ads on AdSense sites

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:45:00 +0000

Introducing expandable ads on AdSense sites
We're excited to introduce to you expandable ads, a new type of ad that can appear on your pages. Expandable ads are rich media ads that can expand beyond the original size of the ad unit, following a user-initiated action. This creates more real estate for the ad, allowing for more interaction from interested users. For instance, expandable ads may stream a movie trailer, show video game clips, or display various views of an item for sale.Expandable ads will be served as third-party ads and will be created by Google-certified rich media vendors for the top display advertisers in our network. And like other Google ads, you'll earn based on whether the expandable ads on your site are priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) basis. Keep in mind that you'll generate earnings from CPC expandable ads when a user visits the advertiser's landing page, and not when a user simply clicks to expand the ad.
We thought you might have more questions about the launch of expandable ads, so we've addressed a few key points below:Will expandable ads alter my site's layout or be disruptive to my users?No. In order to protect the publisher and user experience, we've created several policies around how expandable ads work:
Ads will expand only after a user clicks and interacts with the ad. Mouseovers or rollovers won't trigger the ad, in order to prevent accidental expansions.
An expandable ad won't expand more than double its width or height.
Once expanded, the ad will appear as a layer over the page content so that your content will not be modified or shifted in any way.
The user may close the expanded panel at any time.
All expandable ads must comply with our standard AdWords image ad policies.How can I show expandable ads on my site?You're automatically eligible to receive expandable ads if you've added the AdSense code directly into your site's source code and you've enabled image ads. Please note that expandable ads are currently only available to specific advertisers located in the U.S., who can bid on specific sites where they'd like their ads to appear.You won't need to upload any special "iFrame-buster" files from third-party vendors onto your own servers to allow these new types of ads to expand on your site. Although we don't currently offer expandable ads for all ad serving solutions, we're actively working to support more implementation methods soon, and we thank you for your patience in the meantime.Can I filter specific expandable ads shown on my site?Yes - like the other ads on your pages, you can use your Competitive Ad Filter to block contextually-targeted expandable ads. Please note that for third-party ads, we recommend using the top level domain (e.g. 'example.com' instead of 'example.com/sample.html'). Additionally, you'll still be able to use your Ad Review Center to block specific placement-targeted expandable ads. In the Ad Review Center, expandable ads will be classified under the "Rich Media" ad format.

Sunsetting video units feature

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:44:00 +0000

As you may know, we frequently review our products and features to ensure their effectiveness. After reviewing our AdSense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube content and ads on your pages, we've found that it hasn't had the impact we had hoped for. As a result, we've decided to retire this feature at the end of April so we can focus our resources on other opportunities to help publishers earn from their sites. If you'd still like to display video content from YouTube, you can do so through YouTube.com directly. Visit any specific video page and look for the code in the 'Embed' box, or sign in to your YouTube account to create a playlist. In addition, please note that this change won't affect the availability of other video-related ads options -- video ads may appear in your AdSense for content ad units if you've opted into image ads, and AdSense for video is still accepting applications from eligible publishers who produce video content. Starting today, the option to sign up for video units is no longer available to new publishers. If you're currently displaying video units, we recommend that you start removing the video unit code from your pages as soon as possible so you can optimize your available ad space in advance. Please be assured that any earnings you've generated from video units in the past will still be credited to your AdSense account.Once video units are retired at the end of April, any remaining Leaderboard or Skyscraper video units on your pages will direct users to YouTube.com, while other video unit sizes will automatically be changed to standard embedded YouTube players. These standard video players will display top YouTube videos, but you won't generate earnings from them once this change occurs. If you have less than three ad units on your page, you may prefer to replace your video unit with a regular ad unit. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we continue to develop our products.

Analytics integration for all

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:42:00 +0000

Over the past few months, we've been gradually inviting publishers to integrate their AdSense accounts with Google Analytics, and today we're happy to announce that this feature is now available to all publishers. Integrating your account with Analytics will provide you with more detailed information about traffic to your pages and how users interact with your site. Once you link your accounts, you'll find an AdSense-specific menu under the 'Content' section of the left-hand navigation bar on your Analytics homepage, containing these reports:
The Top AdSense Content report allows you to see more details about specific pages on your site and analyze ad performance. For instance, if you find that some of your pages generate a high number of pageviews but aren't monetizing as well as other pages, you can focus your optimization efforts on improving these pages.
The Top AdSense Referrers report can help you see how different incoming traffic sources contribute to your revenue.
Last, the AdSense Trending report lets you analyze how your site generates revenue during different times of the day and different days of the week.
You'll also notice that other sections of your Analytics account will show a new 'AdSense Revenue' tab. You'll be able to compare how much of your AdSense revenue is coming from new visitors versus existing ones, and view revenue based on user language. To take advantage of these new reports, sign in to AdSense and click the 'Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics' link on your Reports Overview page. You'll be taken to a step-by-step wizard that will guide you through the rest of the process. If you use AdSense in a language that's not supported by Analytics, you can still link your accounts and view your Analytics reports in a different language.We also recommend watching the video below, which will help explain the linking process:

Enjoy your new data, and don't forget to visit our Help Center if you have other questions about linking your accounts or reviewing your reports.

More webinars on the way

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:38:00 +0000

More webinars on the way
Continuing with the series of webinars we've been hosting recently, we'd like to let you know about several additional webinars taking place over the next few weeks.If you'd like webinars that take place in the evenings in North America or the early mornings in Asia, one of these might work for you:Understanding the payment cycleLearn about when and how you can expect to be paid.Date: Thursday, May 21, 2009Time: 6:30pm PDT (GMT -07:00)Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=577510522Channels and advanced reportingWalk through the process of creating channels for more detailed tracking of specific pages and ad units.Date: Thursday, June 4, 2009Time: 6:30pm PDT (GMT -07:00)Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=573170710If you prefer webinars at a Europe-friendly time, you may wish to attend one of these:Using Custom Search Engine with AdSenseFind out how your users and your revenue can benefit from Custom Search engine with AdSense for search.Date: Monday, May 26, 2009Time: 3pm GMT (PDT +07:00)Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=570572716Fundamentals of optimizationLearn about account and ad layout changes that can boost your revenue. (Recommended for new publishers or those who haven't optimized AdSense previously.)Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2009Time: 6:30pm GMT (PDT +07:00)Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=573202418As always, you can find dates, times, and details for our webinars in our Help Center.

Image ads join link units

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:37:00 +0000

Image ads join link units
If you use link units, you may have noticed a small addition to the page users see after clicking a link unit topic. We recently added an image ad to the bottom of each of these pages, after our testing showed revenue improvements for many publishers.
These image ads are contextually targeted, based on the link unit topic users clicked to reach the ads. If no image ads are available for the given topic, we'll only show the original text ads -- in other words, we won't show a PSA or insert a blank space in place of the image ad in this case. Advertisers can bid on these image ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, so you'll generate earnings for valid clicks and impressions. You can review the performance of image ads on your link unit pages by generating a link unit report on your Advanced Reports page. If you aren't using link units on your pages, we encourage you to give them a try. They don't take up much space and can help add to your AdSense revenue -- learn more in our Help Center, or visit your AdSense Setup tab and select 'AdSense for content' to get started.

Font size matters

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:36:00 +0000

Since February, you've been able to change the font faces of your ad units. We're now happy to announce the launch of a related feature you've been asking for -- the ability to change the font size of the text in your ad units. You can now select from small, medium, and large font sizes for ad units on pages in Latin-character languages. Just like with the current font face options, size options appear in every account but will only be applied to ad units on pages primarily in Latin-based characters for now.The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance. Here's an example of what the three font sizes could look like in a 336x250 large rectangle:
Your ads are currently set at the default size for AdSense, which is the equivalent of 'small'. You can select a new font size on an account-wide basis in the Ad Display Preference section of your My Account tab, or on an individual ad unit basis for new and existing ad units.
If you're creating new ad units, you can choose between the AdSense default font size, your new account-wide font size (if you've selected one using the instructions above), or a separate size. To update existing ad units you've created using the Manage Ads feature, visit the 'Manage Ads' page under your AdSense Setup tab. Any font size changes you make on an individual ad unit basis will be maintained even if you change your account-wide default in the future.Also, a bit of advance notice: soon, we'll also be changing the default font size across AdSense in ad units from 'small' to 'medium'. We've heard from some of you that the current font size can be too small, and our testing also showed that slightly larger font sizes improved performance. Any ad units set to the default font size will automatically be updated to display the larger setting. If you'd prefer to stick with today's font size, you can set your desired font size as 'small' across your account.We encourage you to combine these new font size options with the other customization options in your account to test the optimal layout for your pages. We're excited about this launch, and we'll be sure to follow up with another post to let you know once the default font size has been changed.

Default font size increased

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:35:00 +0000

As a follow-up to last week's launch of font size controls, we'd like to let you know that we've just increased the default font size for AdSense ad units. This change will affect your ad units if you haven't yet customized your font sizes, or if your ad units are set to 'AdSense default font size' -- you'll notice that the text in your ad units is now the equivalent of 'medium' instead of 'small'. We decided to make this change based on publisher feedback and our testing, which showed that this increased font size improved performance.If you'd like to change the font size in your ad units, you can do so on an account-wide basis or by individual ad unit -- just follow the instructions listed in our Help Center. Again, we recommend testing these new font size options with your existing customizations to determine which combinations perform best on your pages.

Default font faces to be updated

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:34:00 +0000

In the same way that you regularly try out changes to your AdSense ads to increase your earnings, we're also constantly looking for new ways to help you earn more. We've been analyzing the performance of the three available font faces (Arial, Verdana, and Times New Roman), and have found that each font performs best in different ad formats due to factors like character width. Based on these findings, we'd like to let you know that we'll be updating some of the default font faces associated with specific ad formats within the next few days. This upcoming change will only affect ad units in Latin-based characters which have 'AdSense default' selected as the font face. If you've set an account-wide font face, we hope our findings will encourage you to experiment with other font faces on an ad unit basis. Currently, most ad units set to the AdSense default font face are displayed in Arial, with a few in Verdana. Here are the new default font faces we're launching for our ad units:
Arial: 728x90, 336x280, 120x600, 120x240Verdana: 300x250, 160x600, 468x60, 250x250, 234x60, 125x125, 180x150Times New Roman: 200x200While we're optimizing the default font face based on performance across all AdSense sites, we also recommend experimenting on your own to determine the best font faces for your ad units and your sites. Just sign in to your account to manually select specific font faces on an ad unit or account-level basis.

Getting the most revenue from every impression through AdSense

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:32:00 +0000

We've been hearing your requests for new ways to generate revenue in AdSense, and new ways to maintain control over the ads that appear on your sites. With that in mind, we're pleased to announce plans to give you the ability to allow multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete for display ad space on your site. You may remember that we began to accept display ads served from qualified third-party vendors over a year ago, which helped increase the number of display ads competing on AdSense publisher sites. With this new change, participating ad networks can also bid in our auction to appear on AdSense sites. This new capability will help you generate the most profit for every ad that appears on your site, whether the ads come from AdWords advertisers or Google-certified ad networks.Who are these ad networks? They're ad agencies and companies that partner with advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads on sites they don't own themselves (much like AdSense). You'll now be able to allow advertisers from these networks to compete with AdWords advertisers for your ad space. All reporting and payments will still run through AdSense as they always have, and the available ad formats will be the same as those offered for AdWords ads.We take the quality of ads delivered to your site seriously, so we'll be certifying all participating ad networks for adherence to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. You'll have control over which networks can show ads on your pages -- you can choose to opt out of receiving ads from specific networks, or all networks completely. This means you can continue to show ads from only AdWords advertisers if you like. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing these account settings. We'll slowly begin allowing ads from Google-certified ad networks to appear on AdSense pages over the coming months, so you won't see an immediate impact on your ads or earnings. As new networks are certified, you'll see them appear in your account. This feature will initially be available to publishers in North America and Europe, but we hope to roll it out to additional parts of the world in the future.
Finally, some ad networks use tools similar to Google's interest-based advertising to show more relevant ads to users on the sites they visit. We'll allow certified networks who comply with user privacy guidelines to show ads using these tools, but they won't be permitted to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent interest-based advertising. You'll be able to opt out of receiving ads based on user interests from these certified networks, and we have changed our requirements for third-party ad serving to reflect this. We're dedicated to providing users with a positive experience, while helping publishers effectively monetize the ads appearing on their sites. We believe you'll find that more competition translates into better ads and increased revenue in the long run.

More filtering improvements

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:31:00 +0000

As part of our continued efforts to give you more control over the ads that appear on your sites, we'd like to share two additional improvements to the Competitive Ad Filter:
Faster filteringIn the past, the Competitive Ad Filter sometimes took up to several hours to block URLs you'd entered. Knowing you've wanted a faster filtering system, we're excited to let you know that URLs added to your Competitive Ad Filter are now usually blocked within 30 minutes. We hope that this will help you quickly make changes to maintain a positive user experience on your sites. Increased filter list sizeAt the same time, a growing number of you have let us know that you're running out of space in your Competitive Ad Filter. Now, you can add up to 500 sites to your filter list, more than double the previous limit. As you add new sites, please continue to keep the possible revenue impact of filtering in mind. You might also find it helpful to review our tips for using your Competitive Ad Filter. We're continuing to work towards enhancing your ad controls, and we'd love to hear any suggestions you have. Feel free to leave us a comment below.

Touch-ups for your ad units

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Touch-ups for your ad units

You may remember that last year, we added arrows to the bottom of cost-per-click (CPC) ad units. These arrows allow users to browse through additional relevant ads, helping them find exactly they're looking for. We've been testing slight updates to the look of these arrows, and our experiments have shown improvements in the user experience. As a result, we'll soon be making a few minor aesthetic changes, including darkening the arrows to make them more visible and orienting all arrows to point left and right. In addition, to help users understand what the arrows do, hovering over the arrows will soon show the labels 'previous ads' and 'next ads'. You'll see these changes appear in CPC ad units in all languages gradually over the next few days.

YouTube Promoted Videos to appear on AdSense sites

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:29:00 +0000

As the number of YouTube content producers continues to grow, many are looking for new ways to reach new audiences. That's why we're happy to announce the launch of YouTube Promoted Videos in AdSense ad units. Promoted Videos are YouTube videos -- from movie trailers to product demos to really almost any kind of video on YouTube -- promoted by their creators so they can reach a wider audience. (You may have already noticed Promoted Videos on YouTube.com, as they appear on partner watch pages and alongside YouTube search results.) Extending Promoted Videos to AdSense sites will enable these content producers to broaden their reach, while providing you with another way to earn from your ad space. At this time, these ads are only available in English to US publishers, but we're looking forward to expanding to additional regions and languages in the future.Promoted Videos feature a thumbnail image with three lines of text, and when clicked, will bring the user to watch a video or view a channel on YouTube. They're contextually targeted to your pages, and you'll earn from these ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. In addition, they can appear in the following ad formats, as long as you've opted these formats in to displaying both text and image ads: 300x250 Medium Rectangle, 336x280 Large Rectangle, 728x90 Leaderboard, 250x250 Square, and 200x200 Small Square. Just like other ads, Promoted Videos compete in our standard ad auction, so they'll help drive up competition among advertisers bidding to appear on your pages. When a Promoted Video wins the ad auction, it'll be shown alone in one of the eligible ad formats.All Promoted Videos are required to comply with the YouTube Advertising Policies, and the advertised videos with our Terms of Use and Community Guidelines. You can prevent Promoted Videos from appearing on your pages by adding 'youtube.com' to your Competitive Ad Filter list. Please note that currently, this method will block all Promoted Videos from your sites. Finally, we'd like to mention that these new Promoted Videos are separate from our video ads offering, which stream ads in video format and are classified as image ads. We're continuing to look for additional revenue opportunities for publishers, and we hope these new ads will help you earn more.

AdSense for mobile goes high-end

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:28:00 +0000

AdSense for mobile goes high-end
With the growth in popularity of high-end mobile phones with full (HTML) Internet browsers, like the iPhone and phones running Android, advertisers are increasingly extending their campaigns to mobile devices. Because these devices offer a rich content experience similar to desktop, advertising on them is a natural extension for many advertisers.Today we're launching a new feature for AdSense mobile publishers that will allow you to take advantage of the high-end mobile phone browsing experience. This feature offers publishers the ability to run larger AdSense ads visible on high-end phones. Before this launch, AdSense mobile publishers were only eligible to serve smaller text and image ads on their website content.We've done this by introducing a new JavaScript snippet that is easy to implement and specifically optimized for mobile to reduce latency on high-end mobile phones. Furthermore, this new snippet will allow publishers to select additional ad unit sizes from common AdSense formats.
However, if you're targeting all mobile devices, or if you're unable to make changes to your website, you don't have to update your AdSense code in order to enable larger AdSense ads to show on high-end devices. We'll automatically detect if the user is browsing with a high-end phone, and instead of serving a smaller mobile WAP ad, we'll return a larger ad optimized for high-end mobile devices.For more information on earning money from your mobile content or to get started with mobile AdSense, visit the Help Center or check out past posts on the Google Mobile Blog.

Spotlight on the Custom Search Element

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Spotlight on the Custom Search Element
Recently, google introduced Google Web Elements as a new way to easily add dynamic content to your site. In this post, we'd like to focus on one of the Web Elements which you can use to earn more revenue: the Custom Search Element.As our optimization tips point out, adding search functionality to your site can improve the user experience on your pages and overall make your site "sticky". Here are some commonly asked questions about the Custom Search Element to help you get started: Q: What do I need to do in order to start earning revenue with the Custom Search Element?The first thing you should do is activate AdSense for search in your AdSense account. Sign in to your AdSense account and visit the AdSense Setup tab. Then, choose 'AdSense for search'. Once you click the "Get started" button, your account will be activated. After you've activated AdSense for search, the next steps depend on whether you're creating a Custom Search Element that searches your own site or one that uses an existing Custom Search Engine to search across multiple sites of your choice.
If you're creating a Custom Search Element that searches your own site:
You can create your Custom Search Element from the Web Elements site at www.google.com/webelements/customsearch/.
Under "Configure", be sure to select "Search my site and use AdSense for search."
In the AdSense Publisher ID field, be sure to enter your unique publisher ID properly (should start with "pub-"). You can learn how to find your publisher ID in our Help Center.
f you're creating a Custom Search Element that uses an existing Custom Search Engine:
Link your AdSense account to your Custom Search account from the Custom Search control panel as follows:
First, go to your search engines at www.google.com/cse/manage/all.
Click the "control panel" link for the corresponding Custom Search Engine.
In the left-hand navigation bar under "Control panel", click "Make Money".
You'll be taken to a page like below where you can link your Custom Search Engine account to your AdSense account. All you need to do is input your AdSense account information.
Q: Do I need to create a Custom Search Engine in order to use the Custom Search Element?No. By default, the Custom Search Element wizard gives you the option of searching only your own website. However, if you wish to have your element search websites other than your own, you'll need to first create a Custom Search Engine at www.google.com/cse/manage/create.Here are a few examples of publishers who've implemented the Custom Search Element:Yin Yang House On the Yin Yang House site, search results using the Custom Search Element appear inline on the page, allowing users to search without leaving the current page context.
Digital Inspiration
Villiard.com
For publishers who like to tinker with code, you might find this post useful - it outlines how to further customize your Custom Search Element with CSS and JavaScript.If you'd like to share your use of the Custom Search Element, leave us a comment! We'd love to see what you've done.

A more customized search experience for your website

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:23:00 +0000

We've posted a couple times about how the Custom Search Element can help provide a more customized search experience for your users while enabling you to earn money. Today we're excited to announce two new features for the Custom Search Element that will enable you to further customize your website search to the look and feel of your site: themes and rich snippets. ThemesYou can now customize the layout and styles of your Custom Search Element. To select a theme for your Custom Search Element, just go to your Custom Search Engine account at http://www.google.com/cse/manage/all and click Control panel. On the Control panel page, in the left-hand menu, click Look and feel.
You can now choose from a number of layouts and color styles for your Custom Search Element. You can also preview your selected theme. Here's an example of the 'Shiny' theme:
If you'd like to tinker further with the look and feel of your Custom Search Element and you're familiar with CSS and JavaScript, take a look at this Custom Search Control documentation.Rich snippetsRich snippets are another new feature that allow you to customize the actual Custom Search Element search results with additional relevant content, like thumbnail images and actions. We like to think of rich snippets as a way to add more flair to your Custom Search Element search results. Here's an example of search results from a Custom Search Element which uses both themes and rich snippets. The thumbnail image next to each search result shows rich snippets in action.
Rich snippets require you to mark up the page with metadata. For more information, check out the Custom Search Developer's Guide.If you have any feedback for us on either of these new features or on the Custom Search Element itself, please leave a comment. We love hearing what publishers have to say about Custom Search!

A new AdSense interface: now in beta

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:22:00 +0000

A new AdSense interface: now in beta
Today, at the Content Revenue Strategies conference in New York City, we announced that a small group of publishers will begin testing a new AdSense interface in limited beta. Inspired by the feedback we've heard directly from you, the new interface includes features designed around your top three requests: Provide insights to help you make more informed decisions about your sites.The new AdSense interface includes more detailed performance reports and enables you to view daily stats in graphical formats. It also will provide you with additional metrics such as the amount you've earned from various ad, targeting and bid types. Here's a glimpse at what the new reports currently look like in our beta:
Offer you more control over the ads that appear on your sites.We're also continuing to make improvements to the Ad Review Center. Upcoming enhancements will give you more options to manage the ads that appear on your site, as well as a cleaner interface that makes it easier to find and review them within the Ad Review Center.Help you manage your account more efficiently.We've streamlined the AdSense interface to simplify common tasks, such as making a change to several ad units simultaneously. Additionally, to help you get the most out of AdSense, we've added more relevant help on every page, a message inbox for tips from our team, and alerts with important account related notices. In order to collect feedback on these enhancements from publishers in multiple countries, we're rolling out the beta test of the new interface today in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Japanese. Although we aren't able to extend invitations to additional publishers yet, we're planning to roll this test out to thousands of publishers over the coming weeks. We'll be sending email notifications to the beta test participants to let them know.Thanks again for all of your feedback so far, and we'll be sure to let you know when we're able to offer the new interface more widely.

Category filtering for French, German, and Spanish ads

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:19:00 +0000

Category filtering for French, German, and Spanish ads
We recently expanded category filtering to publishers in additional English-speaking countries, and we're happy to announce that the feature is now available for ads in French, German, and Spanish. With category filtering, you can prevent ads from up to 8 specific categories from appearing on your pages. Ads in these categories will be filtered if they're in any of the four supported languages, regardless of how they've been targeted to your pages. To set up category filtering, sign in to your AdSense account and visit your Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Once you click 'change', you'll be able to view the full list of categories you can filter. In addition, we'll show you the percentage of revenue and ad impressions you've been receiving from each category in the last 30 days, which can help you understand the impact that applying filters might have.For more information about category filtering, feel free to visit our Help Center. We're still working towards making this feature available in more languages, and we'll be sure to let you know about any updates.

A deeper look at channels: Targetable channels (Part III of III)

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:14:00 +0000

A deeper look at channels: Targetable channels (Part III of III)
During the past 2 weeks, we walked you through the basics of URL and custom channels. In the final episode, Laurence Moore talks about the two ways in which advertisers can target your website: contextual and placement targeting. You'll also learn how to make your channels targetable by advertisers and label them with information such as size, location, and audience so the advertiser can easily find your channels and make an informed decision when choosing to target your site.

Thank you for watching the videos in our channels series, we hope you found them useful. If you'd like to watch more videos from the AdSense team, visit our official channel on YouTube

Search for ads in the Ad Review Center

noreply@blogger.com (bujji) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:11:00 +0000

When we announced the new AdSense interface a few weeks ago, we mentioned how we've been working on building more functionality into the Ad Review Center to make it easier for you to find and manage your ads. Today, we'd like to let you know that we're introducing the ability to search for ads in the Ad Review Center. This option is currently available to a limited number of publishers using the new AdSense interface, but we're working on rolling this out more widely as we invite more publishers to test the new interface.The search feature has been designed to improve your efficiency when finding ads to review. You'll be able to search for ads by keyword, display URL, or destination URL. For example, you can now search for all ads that have been placement targeted to your site with the destination URL of one of your competitors' websites. In addition, you can search across multiple AdSense products, like AdSense for mobile content and AdSense for feeds, and also specify whether you'd like to view allowed, blocked, or new ads.
Although we aren't able to add more publishers to the test at this time, we wanted to give you a glimpse into one of the ways we're working to make the Ad Review Center easier to use. We'll be collecting feedback from the first group of publishers testing this feature, and plan to improve it and then expand to additional publishers in the coming months.