Inside AdSense

Specific recommendations for individual ad units

2012-02-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

We recently posted about personalized optimization tips you can receive via email or directly in your AdSense account. Today we'd like to introduce another form of optimization tips that we'll be rolling out over the next several weeks. These recommendations will show you how to make changes to your AdSense for Content ad unit type or format setting directly in your account in order to earn more.

To generate these new types of notifications, we use our technology to simulate the ad auction for a specific ad unit using different ad type and/or ad format settings. If our simulation shows that any of these changed settings consistently result in higher revenue for that ad unit, we’ll show a recommendation in your account. Please note that these simulations will not affect your live traffic or earnings, and you’ll only see a recommendation if our simulated auction demonstrated increased revenue for your account.

The recommendations are visible on the “Home” tab of your AdSense account so implementing a recommendation is quick and easy.

For ad type recommendations, simply click the “Do this now” button and your ad unit type will be automatically updated.

For ad format recommendations, clicking the “Create this unit” button will create a new ad unit of the recommended ad format on the “My ads” tab. To complete the implementation, replace the current ad unit code in your webpage(s) with the newly created ad unit code.

With multiple methods of bringing performance suggestions to you, we hope to help you simplify your ad management and maximize your ad revenue. For more information on personalized recommendations, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Gregory Block, AdSense Engineering

Mobile becomes a core component of AdSense

2012-02-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

We launched AdSense for mobile content before the smartphone revolution when everyone had a flip phone. Our goal was to help pioneering publishers monetize their mobile content. Since then, we’ve seen mobile technology advance and an increasing number of consumers are viewing content from “smarter” mobile devices. To make it easier for publishers to use AdSense to monetize mobile web pages, we've migrated all mobile ad unit sizes, including the mobile banner ad unit, into the core product.

All mobile ad sizes, including the 320x50, will be available through AdSense for content.

The new AdSense ad code automatically formats the ads for the device. We will continue to support high-end ad requests from our AdSense for mobile content product until May 1, 2012. We strongly encourage publishers who have designed mobile web pages for high-end devices to use the new AdSense ad code to avoid disruptions to service. Note that publishers with mobile websites built for WAP browsers should continue to monetize using AdSense for mobile content.

We continue to be committed to helping our AdSense publishers monetize their content as the mobile ecosystem evolves. For more information about AdSense or to learn more about how this transition may impact you, please visit our AdSense Help Center.

Posted by Vishay Nihalani, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

AdSense in Your City goes global

2012-02-09T08:55:00.000-08:00

Following the success of AdSense in Your City events in North America and the positive feedback we’ve received so far, we’re expanding this program to reach more publishers. That's right, we're now packing our passports and taking these events to international cities!

In addition to the recently announced lineup of US cities for upcoming AdSense in Your City events, we'll soon be hosting events in Amsterdam, Bogota, Melbourne and Vienna. There’s plenty more to come in 2012 as well, when we'll be visiting Auckland, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, Mexico City, Paris, and Sydney, just to name a few. Members of the AdSense team will share the latest product updates and offer 1-to-1 optimization consultations, and you’ll hear
from experts on areas such as DFP Small Business, Mobile, YouTube, and Webmaster Tools. You’ll also have the chance to meet other local publishers during the day to share your experiences.

Keep an eye out for more information about these events and be sure to opt in to receiving ‘Special Offer’ emails so we can let you know when we’ll be touching down at a city near you. We hope to see you at an AdSense in Your City event soon.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Top five policy resources to know

2012-02-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

Recently, we shared our 2012 resolutions in this post based on your feedback from our bi-annual publisher satisfaction survey. One of the key areas that we’re dedicated to improving is transparency around our program policies. This means clarifying the messaging that goes out in our notifications, but also pointing you to the right resources and contact forms to troubleshoot your policy issues.

Here, we’ve listed our top five policy resources to help you find the answers you’re looking for. By using the information listed below, you’ll not only learn more about our policies and how to avoid frequent violations, but you’ll also help us resolve your questions more efficiently as well.

1. Help Center
The AdSense Help Center is the best resource for you to gain policy knowledge and contact the policy team. We’re constantly adding and updating information to answer our most frequently asked questions. As you may have noticed, the Help Center has a new interface to better help you navigate topics of interest. You can read about all our policies by clicking on the sub-channels under "Policy & Traffic Quality Guidelines" on the homepage. We've included several examples in the "Content Policies" and "Ad Implementation Policies" sections to help you understand the policies more clearly. If you want to report or appeal a violation, use the "Troubleshooting and Issue Resolution" tool.

2. Blog
If you’re reading this now, you’ve already made the first step toward learning more about our policies. The AdSense blog contains a wealth of information from product updates, optimization tips, and upcoming publisher events. You’ll also find a special category for “Program Policies" listed on the right side which includes articles that deep dive into our policies to clarify common points of confusion (e.g. adult content, creating unique content) as well as best practices to help keep your account clean (e.g. invalid clicks, monitoring user-generated content). Get the latest updates sent to you by following the blog via email or feed.

3. Forum
The AdSense Help Forum is a platform for publishers to share best practices and interact with each other. The Forum can provide a wealth of information for AdSense questions related to our policies. Our Top Contributors contributed over 100K posts last year to the AdSense community, helping us to provide scalable support by answering publishers’ questions, and escalating urgent or unusual cases to the attention of Google employees.

4. Policy webinars
The AdSense policy team hosts online policy seminars from time to time in different regions. We provide policy trainings to clarify policies in detail and answer your questions. If you’re interested in attending future events like these, make sure that you’re opted in to ‘Special Offers’ in your email preferences within your AdSense account. Visit our Help Center to review our previous webinar recordings.

5. Email notifications & contacting us
Getting important messages to you is our priority, so ensure that your AdSense account has your most up-to-date email address. Additionally, you can view all policy notifications by visiting the Messages page, under the Home tab when you sign in to your AdSense account.

We know that you may occasionally need to escalate to us directly and you can do so by using the correct policy troubleshooter in the Help Center. Bear in mind that you’ll only receive responses from our team for answers which can't be found in our Help Center. Skim through previous policy blog posts or try typing in your question in the Help Forum to see if other publishers have had similar issues or questions. Chances are that we’ve addressed the most commonly asked questions, so you’ll be able to resolve your issues even quicker.

We hope the above resources will make your policy learning experience more enjoyable, efficient, and useful. Stay tuned for more policy information coming on our blog.

Posted by Lingjuan Zhang, AdSense Policy Team

Did you find this policy blog post helpful? You can share your feedback or tell us about a specific policy topic you'd like to learn more about here.

Watch our video to learn how to integrate AdSense ads with your quality content

2012-02-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

Placing additional ad units on your site can have a big impact on your earnings. However, sometimes publishers find it difficult to decide whether an additional ad unit makes sense for their site. We've created a short video below to help you make sure you're following best practices, as outlined on Google’s webmaster guidelines, when placing new ad units on your site.

Ultimately, great content is what will help your site stand out and engage your users. We recommend that you only place ad units on pages that are rich in original content and keep the user experience in mind as you think about where you place your ads. Take a look at the video below for more information!

Posted by Caroline Halpin, AdSense Optimization Team

AdSense now speaks Indonesian

2012-02-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

We’re glad to announce that Indonesian has just joined the family of AdSense supported languages. Let’s celebrate by raising our hands in a kecak dance, watching a wayang kulit show or cooking traditional Indonesian recipes.

If you have a website in Bahasa Indonesia, you'll now be able to earn money by showing Google AdSense ads. To get started, sign up for an AdSense account. We'll review your application and in the meantime, we recommend you get familiar with the basics of AdSense and our policies.

If you already have an AdSense account, simply implement AdSense on your site in Bahasa Indonesia to start displaying contextually targeted ads.

You can now also implement AdSense for Mobile content on your mobile sites in Bahasa Indonesia. Check out our Help Center to learn how to implement AdSense on a mobile site.

Selamat datang di program AdSense!

Posted by Emanuele Brandi, Product Sales Lead

More options for Google+ badges

2012-01-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted on the Google+ Platform Blog, cross posted on the Webmaster Central Blog)

UPDATE (2/2/12): The new Google+ badge is now out of preview and available to all users on all sites.

When we launched Google+ pages in November, we also released Google+ badges to promote your Google+ presence right on your site. Starting today in developer preview (and soon available to all your users), we're adding more options for integrating the Google+ badge into your website. You can configure a badge with a width that fits your site design and choose a version that works better on darker sites. You'll also see that Google+ badges now include the unified +1 and circle count that we added to Pages last month.

If you’re still considering whether to add a Google+ badge on your website, consider this: We recently looked at top sites using the badge and found that, on average, the badge accounted for an additional 38% of Google+ followers. When you add the badge visitors to your website can discover your Google+ page and connect in a variety of ways: they can follow your Google+ page, +1 your site, share your site with their circles, see which of their friends have +1’d your site, and click through to visit your Google+ page. These activities can help you expand your audience by enabling your users to share and recommend your content.

The Google+ badge makes it easy for your fans to find and follow you on Google+. With these additional options, we hope it's even easier to create a badge that fits your website.

Follow the conversation on Google+.

Posted by Lucy Hadden, Software Engineer, Google+

2012: Our resolutions to improve AdSense for you

2012-01-24T08:30:00.000-08:00

It's already a few weeks into the new year, but it's never too late to set resolutions. That’s why today we'd like to share the outcome of our bi-annual publisher satisfaction survey. If you’re opted in to receive occasional surveys from us, you may have seen or filled out this survey. Over 28,000 of you participated globally, and we received more than 33,000 comments on your favorite aspects about AdSense as well as changes you’d like to see.

The main areas of improvement that emerged from the survey are: AdSense Program Policies, AdSense Support, and Communication from AdSense. Your feedback is very important to us and we'd like to share some insights on what we've done in these areas so far and how we want to further improve them. We’re also working on improving in other important areas like payments and we'll continue to report back on those throughout the year.

AdSense Program Policies
Many of your comments in the survey showed that you’re interested in more transparency around our program policies and which ad implementations are allowed. We’ve started adding more resources like our regular blog posts about specifics of our program policies and we're also working on:

Making the violation messaging clearer to ensure the actions you need to take are clearly highlighted.
Providing you with more information on how to contact the AdSense policy team and where to find important resources.

AdSense Support
We know that it’s important for you to get quick answers to your questions, and that’s why we have a variety of support resources available. However, you’ve told us that you sometimes struggle to find the information you need, or would like to be able to address questions directly to our team. With this in mind, we’d like to address two main points:

After a ground-up rebuild of our AdSense Help Center we’ll continue to focus on improving usability and content quality in 2012. We’ll also be testing more personalized support options and want to make the available levels of support clearer for you.
In the coming months, we’re hosting events in various countries to give you the opportunity to meet the AdSense team in person, ask questions, and get optimization tips. We want to be more accessible for you, so opt in to our “Special Offers” emails in order to receive event invitations and watch out for more information on our Inside AdSense blog or the AdSense newsletter.

Communication from AdSense
As you might know, in addition to receiving messages in your AdSense account, you can subscribe to receive occasional emails from AdSense with performance suggestions, special offers, and newsletters. We asked for your thoughts on the emails we’ve been sending, and based on your feedback, here’s where we’ll be focusing on making improvements:

We’ll collect and share new case studies focusing especially on small to medium sized publishers, with examples from specific verticals or industries to make our optimization suggestions even more relevant for you and your website.
Following your suggestion to feature more local updates, we’ll incorporate local content in our AdSense newsletter, whenever possible.

A big thank you to everyone who participated in this survey! If you’d like to participate and share your thoughts with us in upcoming surveys, make sure you update your email preferences to receive “occasional surveys to help us improve AdSense”.

Posted by Sophie Emmerich, on behalf of the AdSense Publisher Satisfaction Team

Account performance at a glance with the AdSense Publisher Toolbar

2012-01-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

We’re always looking for new ways to make it easier for you to use our tools, help you save time, and better understand account performance. With this in mind, we’re happy to share with you a new Chrome extension called the AdSense Publisher Toolbar. When viewing your website, this feature will show you a snapshot of your AdSense account performance as a widget in the corner of your browser window. It also includes ad overlays that describe the recent performance of specific ad units, and gives you the option to access AdSense directly. At the moment this toolbar is only available in English, but we’re working to make it available in additional languages in the near future.

To start using this new toolbar, just follow these steps:

Visit the Chrome Web Store and download the AdSense Publisher Toolbar. This will add the toolbar icon to your browser.
You’ll then need to grant the toolbar access to your AdSense account. To do so, click the toolbar icon and then sign in to Google Accounts with your AdSense login and password.
Next, visit a website where you've implemented your ad code, and enable the toolbar by clicking on the toolbar icon again.

And that’s it! The AdSense account overview widget will appear and show you an earnings summary, broken down by recent and all time performance as well as your top channels.

You can also enable ad overlays directly on top of your ad units, which will tell you how a particular ad unit has performed today, yesterday and in the past seven days. Clicking on the ad overlay will bring you to the “My ads” tab in your account, where you can edit this ad unit. If you have ad units using the older version of the code, or ad units created on partner sites like Blogger, we’ll instead show information on the ad unit size or channel. Rest assured that clicking on the ad overlay generated by the toolbar won’t create invalid clicks.

For more detailed instructions on how to use this toolbar, visit our Help Center. We hope that this new feature provides a useful way to quickly check on your AdSense account performance while browsing the web. Stay tuned for updates as we work on adding new functionality to the toolbar.

Posted by Gregory Block -- AdSense Engineering

Understanding your reports on Google-certified ad networks

2012-01-17T09:10:00.000-08:00

Since launching a new report to show you how much you’re earning from Google-certified third party ad networks, we’ve received questions from publishers around how to make sense of the numbers they’re seeing. Some have let us know that they’re now blocking lower-performing ad networks based on revenue per thousand impressions (RPMs), a practice which can actually have a negative impact on overall revenue. Today, we’d like to take a moment to address your questions and provide more guidance around understanding your reports and blocking specific ad networks.

Let’s first talk about analyzing RPM figures. If you’ve ever tested color combinations for your ad units using channels, you’re probably used to comparing the RPMs of each channel to determine which one is most effective. Then, once you find the most effective combination, you remove all the other options and only use the optimal one. This works for channels, but it’s important to keep in mind that with Google-certified ad networks, the same approach doesn’t apply.

It’s true that in both situations, RPM represents the estimated earnings you'd accrue for every thousand impressions you receive. However, when you test layout options with channels and remove the ones that don’t perform well, this action doesn’t directly impact the dynamics of the ad auction. Picking a blue background over green won’t automatically remove certain ads from being eligible to appear in that ad space -- it just helps certain ad spaces perform better. With Google-certified ad networks, RPMs are dependent on the available ad inventory. Blocking an ad network will remove eligible ads from the auction, and so we strongly recommend against blocking ad networks solely based on RPM. Let’s look at an example:

Ad networks	Impressions	RPM
Network A	10,000	$1
Network B	14	$3
Network C	1000	$0.50

Network B has the highest RPM and appears to be outperforming the other networks. It’s important to note though that this metric is based on only 14 impressions and might not reflect the same revenue for the next 1000 or 10,000 impressions. The value of impressions can vary widely, so the RPM for a small number of impressions can be misleading.

Network C has the lowest RPM. However, blocking Network C because of this might have a negative impact on revenue. This is because our system will always maximize the value of every impression in an auction -- if an ad from Network C appeared on your pages, it was because any other eligible ads that could have appeared would have generated less revenue for you. By Blocking Network C, another network with a lower-paying bid might win the ad auction instead.

In general, blocking reduces the number of ads participating in the ad auction, which can then have a negative impact on your potential revenue. Please keep in mind that blocking “low paying ads” is a myth, as any ad that appears on your page has won the auction for that space and will earn you the most possible.

At the same time, we also understand that you sometimes need to prevent ads from appearing due to the content of the ad or advertiser. You have several options in your account, which are suitable for different scenarios.

With your feedback in mind, we’re constantly working on offering you more control over the ads appearing on your sites, so watch this space for further announcements! However, don’t forget to carefully consider which ads you’re blocking to ensure that you reach your full revenue potential.

Posted by Arlene Lee -- Inside AdSense Team

Making ads smart -- Adapting ads to the device

2012-01-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

As smartphones and tablets become more and more popular, your websites are being viewed on a wider variety of devices - with different screen sizes and features. We’ve recently discussed the importance of having mobile friendly sites and the best ways to monetize them, and also just released Custom Search Ads for Mobile to help you take advantage of this trend. As part of our focus on helping you monetize your content across all screen sizes, we’ll soon also be improving the way ads appear on different devices.

We’re making our text ads smarter and will soon display them differently so they perform optimally depending on where users are viewing them from: computers, tablets, or smartphones. The best part is that our ads do the right thing automatically - without any changes required to your web pages - by detecting what device your web page is being viewed from.

With this change, we’re taking advantage of the unique features of mobile devices to deliver more engaging, better-performing ads. Since the screens are smaller, we’re reducing the number of ads per ad slot and increasing the size of the text to make them more legible and noticeable.

We’re also providing a big button on each ad to make it easy for users to select the ads using a touch screen. Here’s how the 728x90 leaderboard will appear differently on the different platforms.

Desktop

Tablet

Phone

We’re continuing to look for ways to improve ad performance for publishers, no matter what size screen your users are accessing your site from. Stay tuned to Inside AdSense for more updates.

Posted by Priya Gupta, Mobile Ads Engineering

The AdSense in Your City team is kicking off our 2012 US tour

2012-01-12T08:45:00.000-08:00

The AdSense in Your City team is preparing for our first series of North America events in 2012. We’re excited to hit the road and meet with more publishers across the country. At the events, we’ll focus on how to maximize your AdSense revenue, introduce our free DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business product and offer suggestions for monetizing your mobile pages. We’ll also meet with each attendee to review your websites and offer customized AdSense solutions.

Many publishers have found the events to be great ways to meet and connect with other local publishers.

“I traveled hours to attend this event and found it well worth it. The presentation was great and the 1-on-1 session was invaluable. Also, networking with other content publishers at the event added even more value to the experience. A must attend for anyone looking to optimize their websites and increase AdSense revenue.”
-Craig, AdSense in Your City attendee, California

Attendance is limited, so sign up quickly for one of the following events:

Portland, OR - Wednesday, January 18th
Victoria, BC - Thursday, January 19th
New Orleans, LA - Thursday, February 2nd
Albuquerque, NM - Tuesday, February 28th

Once you register, event details will be sent to you prior to the event. We look forward to meeting you soon!

Posted by Courtney Yamada, AdSense in Your City team

Personalized optimization tips explained

2012-01-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

We’ve heard from many of you that the AdSense optimization tips we regularly discuss are helpful but you’re still not sure just how these tips apply to your sites. You understand that wide formats perform better, but which of your small formats should you swap out? And which format sizes should you replace them with? Over the last year, we’ve increased our efforts to bring publishers personalized optimization messages that address these kinds of questions with the goal to provide targeted, personalized and impactful tips to as many publishers as possible.

The criteria we review to determine eligibility for a tip varies depending on the opportunity but the same principle remains true for all of them: we will only contact you if we expect you’ll see a significant benefit from making the recommended changes. Several of the success stories shared on the AdSense blog are of publishers who implemented the specific suggestions we made for their websites. For instance, Surgery Squad, FunCheapSF, and CareerPlanner all saw AdSense revenue increases between 50-200% after making the changes recommended by a personalized optimization tip.

While we can’t guarantee the same results for all publishers, each tip is generated using rigorous analysis of our entire content network to identify opportunities for significant improvement in AdSense performance. We’re constantly analyzing the performance of different AdSense configurations across all site types, regions, and verticals to determine which tweaks and adjustments will work best for your site.

When we detect a specific improvement you could make to your AdSense implementation, you’ll receive a notification from us either in an email (to the address listed as your contact email and only if you’re opted in to Performance Suggestions) or directly to your AdSense account. These messages have been around for awhile but starting this month you’ll notice a new line indicating that the message contains a personalized optimization tip that’s unique to your website and ad layout. We're also continuously working on new signals and ways to get that information to you in your account.

Be sure to check your email and AdSense account for optimization tips. We want your site to succeed with AdSense and we hope these personalized tips will help you achieve higher levels of performance from our products. As with any of our optimization tips, we always encourage you to test to find the right implementation for your site and users!

Posted by Jane Brinkley-- AdSense Optimization Team

Western Union option expands to more countries in Southeast Asia

2012-01-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

We understand that payment options are very important to you, so we continuously work to improve them. Today we’re happy to announce that we’ve expanded Western Union Quick Cash® as an AdSense payment method to three additional countries: Singapore, Cambodia and Laos.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this form of payment, Western Union Quick Cash payments are free and will reach you faster than checks. Payments follow our normal payment schedule and are available for pickup in your local currency at your local Western Union agent the day after they're issued.

It’s important to note that at this time we can only send Western Union payments to publishers that have an individual account. Also, the payee name on your account must exactly match the government-issued ID card that you'll use when picking up your payments. For more information on how to sign up for and pick up Western Union payments, please visit our Help Center.

For those of you who don’t yet have Western Union Quick Cash as a payment method in your country, we appreciate your patience as we work to make this available. Please continue reading our Inside AdSense blog to learn about future launches.

Posted by Julia Peppiatt - AdSense Payments team

Happy New Year!

2012-01-03T09:30:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year from the AdSense team! We enjoyed celebrating the holiday and hope you did too.

Cheers to 2012!

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

Year in review: 2011

2011-12-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

A lot of great things happened this year in AdSense, so as 2011 comes to an end, we’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the highlights.

New Interface
We fully transitioned to the new AdSense interface and launched a number of new features including bulk edit, multi-dimension reporting and ad styles. We also launched a video series highlighting some of the functionalities of the new interface.

Social
2011 was a big year for all things social at Google, which included many improvements for our AdSense publishers. We introduced the +1 button, first on the Google search results, then on publisher sites and display ads. Based on your feedback, we made +1 buttons faster and provided reporting options. Most recently, we launched Google+ Your Business and Google+ Pages to help you grow your audience and start conversations with the right people.

AdSense in Your City
We met many of you in person through our AdSense in Your City events in North America and other similar seminars around the world. We’re continuing the program next year so make sure to check back for more details. Also, opt in to receiving special offers so we can send you details about AdSense events.

Payments
We expanded our payment options by offering Western Union in sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico, Palestinian Territories and numerous other countries. Your passion to help Japan after the devastating earthquake truly inspired us so we offered a way for you to donate your AdSense earnings.

Policy
We listened to your feedback about wanting to know more about our policies, so we dedicated monthly posts with tips on how to keep your account in good status. For example, we provided tips on creating unique content and information about invalid clicks.

Finally, we’d like to highlight our most popular blog posts of the year, as determined by your visits. Our post on new in-ads notice label and icon received the most visits from readers, and the post that you +1’d the most was our announcement about +1 buttons being added to display ads. Make sure to keep +1ing our posts to let us know when you like them and also +1 our blog in the upper right-hand corner if you’re a fan.

Thanks for your continued partnership throughout 2011 and for your support of the Inside AdSense blog. We look forward to seeing what 2012 brings!

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

Season’s Greetings

2011-12-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays from the Google AdSense team! Wishing you a season full of laughter, love and peace.

(Sending you holiday cheer from our Japan Team)

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

Smarter default font settings

2011-12-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

When it comes to customizing the appearance of AdSense text ads, we’ve heard from many publishers that they aren’t always sure what combinations to pick. As a starting point, we offer a set of default options for ad colors, font size and font face, which are based on positive performance across all publisher sites.

Today, we’re announcing an exciting improvement to our default font settings, which will optimize your ad units for your unique site and users. For each ad unit that’s set to show the default font face and font size, our system will now automatically select and show the best-performing option. This best-performing option will depend on a variety of factors, including the user’s viewing environment (operating system, browser) and the ad unit itself (language, size, number of ads, etc). We’ve tested the effects of these factors on our AdSense fonts and incorporated the best combinations into our default font settings. Our aim with this update is to help improve ad performance on your site by automatically applying optimal font settings to your ad units.

Please keep in mind that this change will only affect ad units which have “AdSense default font family” and “AdSense default font size” selected. You won’t be affected if you’ve previously set your ads to a specific font face or size, but we encourage you to give our new settings a try. To change the font settings of any existing ad unit, simply edit it under the My ads tab. If you’d like to change the preferences for future ad units you’ll create, visit the Account Settings page under the Home tab, and edit the “Default ad display preferences” section.

We hope you’re as excited about this development as we are -- we’ll continue to bring you the latest in our research around text ad options.

Posted by: Stephen Yuan, AdSense Engineering

Customize your AdSense personal contact information

2011-12-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

As you may know, we periodically send out emails with tips for increasing your earnings, updates on the latest product improvements, and information regarding your account. In your AdSense account settings you can select which type of messages you’re interested in receiving.

We understand that some publishers may prefer to receive AdSense-related messages at a different email address than the Google Account used as their AdSense login. From now on, every user on an AdSense account can specify a personal contact email, contact name and optionally a phone number. It’s important to note that this contact email doesn’t need to be associated with a Google Account, and adding it to your account won’t update your login information or change the login you use to access your AdSense account.

To customize your personal contact information, log in to your account and visit the Account settings page under the Home tab. Under Personal settings, click “edit” and enter the desired data in the contact name and contact email fields. We encourage you to also take the opportunity to review your email preferences and then save your settings. Once you make any changes, you’ll receive a verification email to the contact address to confirm that you can receive messages at this address.

If you’d like to learn more about the messages we send to publishers and how you can benefit from them, visit this blog post. We’re looking forward to keeping in touch with you!

Posted by Dan Banfield -- AdSense Engineering

New languages and categories in general category blocking feature

2011-12-15T08:45:00.000-08:00

We know that being able to control the ads that appear on your pages is important to you, which is why we're excited to share some new enhancements to general category blocking. This feature is already available in English, French and German and from now on, publishers in Spanish-, Portuguese-, Italian-, and Japanese-speaking countries will be able to use it as well. What’s more, we’ve just added 88 new categories to the list of topics that can be blocked from your sites, including apparel, business, family and sports.

If you’re not familiar with the general category blocking feature, it gives you additional control over the ads that are shown on your sites. You have the ability to scalably block categories of ads that you might not find suitable for your audience.

You can block up to 50 categories in your account, and your choices will be applied to ads of all targeting types and formats in the seven supported languages, regardless of the language of the site where they’re showing. Before blocking a general category, please keep in mind that blocking ads can have a negative impact on your potential earnings, as it removes eligible ads from competing in the ad auction. To help you make informed decisions and understand the impact of any blocking choices on your ad performance, we show you the revenue and ad impressions for every category from the last 30 days.

We hope that these extended options help you quickly and easily control the ads on your sites, and we look forward to continuing to enhance these controls in the future.

Posted by Gavri Smith -- AdSense Engineering

The power of Search Ads, now available on your mobile site

2011-12-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

Recently on the Official Google Blog, we talked about the momentum we’re seeing in mobile search advertising. We also announced a new mobile search ad product: Custom Search Ads for Mobile Sites. We wanted to give some more details about this new format and how you can begin using it to grow your business on mobile.

As increasing numbers of users access websites using their mobile phones, more and more desktop publishers are bringing their businesses to the mobile web. You may have seen our recent initiative, ‘GoMo’, which is designed to help publishers and businesses take their site mobile.

Currently, publishers can monetize their mobile sites using AdSense for Mobile Content. We wanted to also help mobile web publishers earn from their search traffic, and so with Custom Search Ads for Mobile Sites, we're bringing the power of search ads to the world of the mobile web.

Mobile websites that provide a search option will be able to show ads related to search queries. Users will see ads relevant to what they're searching for, and publishers will open up a new revenue stream from their mobile properties.

Many mobile websites contain custom search functions that ask users to search within a variety of specific parameters. With Custom Search Ads for Mobile Sites, these parameters are taken into account to help determine what ad is shown and deliver the most relevant ad for a user's query. For example, in the image below you can see that someone using Trulia, a real estate search engine, is searching for properties in Washington, DC, and the ads match this query.

Trulia.com implemented Custom Search Ads on their mobile site. When a user scrolls through their search results (in this case, for property in Washington, DC), they are served both search results and Custom Search Ads relevant to their query.

Moreover, mobile web publishers can customize the look and feel of the ads to complement their site’s design and layout. Some of the customization options include changing the font size, background color and gradient. Custom Search ads can also be integrated into mobile apps with the same customization features and options.

We're currently accepting applications from publishers to use Custom Search Ads for Mobile Sites. If you're a mobile publisher or app developer interested in this product, apply now on the Custom Search Ads page.

Posted by Chris Monkman, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

Set up a crawler login for increased ad relevancy on pages behind a login

2011-12-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

This is the second post in our two-part AdSense Crawler Errors series.

Recently we discussed ways to improve ad targeting and relevancy by making sure that the AdSense crawler can view all pages that have AdSense code on them. Sometimes though, it can become problematic when a publisher has a members only site that requires the user to log in to view the site’s content. In cases like this, the AdSense ads that are located behind the login aren’t as relevant and targeted as they could be.

If you’re a publisher with content behind a login page, be sure to set up an AdSense crawler login so that your ads are as well-targeted as possible. Doing so will give the AdSense crawler the ability to scan content on these pages, resulting in more relevant, targeted ads that can potentially increase your CTRs and revenue. Please note that adding a crawler login will only help to deliver better, more relevant ads to pages with AdSense code already on them, and will not have any effect on which pages of your site Google Search will index.

To grant the AdSense crawler access, log in to your AdSense account and click on ‘Account settings.’ From there, scroll down to the ‘Access and authorization’ section and click on ‘edit logins’ next to crawler logins.

Then click on ‘Add a Login.’ You’ll be prompted to fill in pertinent information that the AdSense crawler will use to log in to your site and crawl your content.

After that, you’ll need to log in to Webmaster Tools to verify your website, if you haven’t already done so. Once verified, the crawler will be able to log in successfully and scan your content to deliver more targeted ads.

For additional information, take a look at our help center article regarding displaying ads on login-protected pages.

Posted by Andrew Boni - Inside AdSense Team

How to monetize your mobile-friendly website

2011-12-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

In our previous blog post we talked about how to create a mobile-friendly website. Now we’d like to show you how to best monetize your mobile site with AdSense Mobile product offerings.

AdSense for Mobile Content
AdSense for mobile content allows publishers to generate earnings from their mobile web pages using targeted Google ads. Below are some key features.

Contextual targeting ensures ads match the content of your mobile site.
Google advertisers bid directly for your mobile inventory.
Mobile-specific ad formats are optimized for the small screen.

For mobile websites, AdSense automatically detects the type of phone viewing your site and delivers ads to match. For example, if someone views your site through a high-end smartphone, we'll deliver mobile ads specifically designed for the device’s full HTML browser.

It’s important to note that AdSense for mobile content ad units are meant to be used in mobile websites and not mobile applications - as noted in our policies. If you’re looking for an advertising solution for your mobile application, sign up for AdMob.

Custom Search Ads for Mobile

If you currently use Custom Search Ads for your desktop, we’re happy to let you know that publishers can now also apply to use this feature on mobile sites and apps. Custom Search Ads for Mobile are highly targeted ads that are based on user queries from a mobile website.

These ads typically monetize at a high rate and publishers are able to customize the look and feel of the ads to best integrate with the user experience on the page. The ads can be fixed to the frame or scroll along with the results.

If you're already an AdSense publisher and want to get started with ads on your mobile site, you’ll find the Mobile Content button under the ‘My Ads’ tab. If you're not a publisher yet, sign up.

Posted by Anja Kuncic, AdSense Optimization Specialist

Create a mobile-friendly website

2011-12-02T08:30:00.000-08:00

Did you know that there will be a mobile device for every person on earth by 2015, and that mobile searches have grown by 4x since 2010¹? That means that every day more and more of your users are looking for your content…on mobile devices. What’s their experience like? Can they easily read what’s on the screen without pinching and zooming? Do you have links that are difficult to click instead of user-friendly navigation buttons?

61% of users are unlikely to return to a site that isn’t mobile friendly². It’s important to remember that even if users can see a website on a smartphone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the site is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate. Your users are going mobile as we speak, and so the most important thing you can do to grow your business using the mobile web is to create a mobile-friendly website.

Here are ten tips to help you design a mobile-friendly site:

Keep it quick - Design your site to load fast and make copy easy to scan
Simplify navigation - Create clear navigation and search functionalities
Be thumb-friendly - Design your site so any size hand can easily interact with it
Design for visibility - Make it easy for your customers to read
Make it accessible - Mobile sites should work across all mobile devices
Make it easy to convert - Create clear ways for your users to make purchases or contact you
Make it local - Consumers look for local info on their phones all the time
Make it seamless - Convert as much of the functionality of your desktop site to mobile
Use mobile site redirects - Ensure that visitors who visit your website from a mobile device are redirected to your mobile-friendly site
Listen, learn and iterate - Make testing and optimization an ongoing process

To review a detailed set of these best practices, download a copy of the 10 Mobile Site Best Practices. Visit howtogomo.com to explore actual mobile site examples of each best practice and use the GoMoMeter to see how your site is faring on mobile*.

Finally, take a look at Google Sites for Mobile Landing Pages*, a free and easy-to-use tool that enables you to build mobile pages.

¹Gartner, 2010; Google Internal Data, 2011; Cisco, 2011
²Compuware and Brand Anywhere and Luth Research
*Note: These resources are currently only available in English, but will be available in other languages shortly.

Posted by Dairine Kennedy, AdSense Mobile Specialist

Taking your channels to a new limit

2011-12-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

As you know, channels in your AdSense account are powerful reporting tools. Custom channels help you track ad performance and enable advertisers to target their ads for maximum impact, while URL channels allow you to deep-dive into the performance of AdSense for content on your subdomains.

To date, you’ve been limited to a total of 200 custom and URL channels, and many of you have asked for more. That’s why today, we’re very excited to announce that we’ve raised this limit to 500 custom channels per product, and 500 URL channels for AdSense for content. You’ll see your available custom channels count clearly displayed in the custom channels table, and also highlighted in the “create new custom channel” pop-up.

This change will enable you to expand your testing, and you’ll be able to do more granular analysis of how different formats, ad styles, and ad types perform. In addition, you can use your increased allocation of custom channels to create new ad placements for advertisers to target directly. This can help increase the amount you earn from placement targeting, as advertisers will be able to review the information you’ve provided about your ad units to match their campaigns to your site and audience. As the holidays approach and advertisers look to create additional placement targeted campaigns, now is the perfect time to set up more custom channels and ad placements.

Log in to your AdSense account today and visit your My ads tab to get started.

Posted by Alex Benton -- AdSense Engineering