The Google Insider

Google plans to crack down on AdWords clients who use low quality landing pages for their websites. Particularly those people who’ve set up “Adsense-only” pages that attract clicks from various keyword searches. The click arbitrage problem begins with advertisers who purchase keywords at the minimum bid price using Google AdWords.

Users who click that ad end up on an AdSense page which is usually filled with AdSense or other contextual advertising that pays the advertiser a higher cost per click than the advertiser paid for the keyword in the AdWord ad in the first place.

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Google has updated the AdSense product page again. When going to AdSense Setup in your control panel, you will now see this

They have made it a bit…more user friendly — in my opinion. Hopefully this will clear up anything for the new publishers and make it easier to access things.

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While webmasters have been publishing the AdSense program, Google has been quietly adding new Terms and Conditions to the program. There is now a 90-day referral time period for publishers to refer other webmasters to the AdSense program. If a referral webmaster generates over $100 in the first 90 days of signing up, the referree will get $100 in exchange. This new T&C is not very nice to the webmasters, but Google sees it differently and put it into place without really announcing it.

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I just noticed this morning that Google added a new option under the drop down menu for Views on the Overview page. There is now a ’since last payment - XX/XX/XX’ button which will display all you have earned since you were last paid (obviously). I think this is a pretty cool feature to show what you have earned since you were last paid and hence will give you a broader understanding of where you are financially in your account.

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Everyone has been wondering when Google Analytics will integrate AdSense into the application such as it has already been done for AdWords, but there have been a couple people that created some hack-scripts to get the job done until Google can get those features added. One script simply adds in some < script > code and then lets you add a goal and the AdSense clicks are tracked for IE users (there is a mozilla bug that causes this to break). There is another well developed application, on the other hand, though. Both are equally good applications in my mind. These are a couple simple hacks to get around the not-yet-integrated AdSense application into your Google Analytics account. Take a look at both and see which one fits your needs the best!

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As reported before, I was able to attend the eConference in October. The even was a great success and they are making another big push for it this coming year. As soon as early January, specifically January 7th, you will be able to sign up for a full pass. This is not limited to past attendees such as myself, but it is open to everyone. In the previous Xpo, Google AdWords had a booth setup and I also believe that Google AdSense did as well. I was able to get some inside details and talk to a couple of the reps that were at the booth. While at the booth, you can also sign up for contest prizes that happen everyday of the conference. Simply visit www.ecomxpo.com on January 7th to sign up and be part of the upcoming Xpo which will happen on April 4th-6th. I look forward to hopefully seeing some of you there!

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I just received this note from the Google AdSense team and thought I would pass it along so everyone can stay up to date with what is going on.

Note from the Google AdSense Team

Hello,

Over the past few months, AdSense has gone through quite a few changes – some big, some small, all designed to make the program that much better for our publishers. In case you missed any of these updates, we’ve outlined them below and provided links to resources with more information. We hope you’ll learn more about and take advantage of the new features and improvements to get the most out of your AdSense account.

If you have any comments after reading our updates, we encourage you to share them with us, so that we can continue to improve the features and services we offer through AdSense in the future.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

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New Revenue Opportunities

Onsite Advertiser Sign-up

Earlier this year, we launched site targeting, a new way of targeting ads to sites in the content network, that offers advertisers more flexibility and publishers more ad inventory. To make it easier for more advertisers to create ads targeting your site, directly from your pages, we are introducing the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature.

When you use Onsite Advertiser Sign-up, your ad units will display an ‘Advertise on this site’ link that guides advertisers to create a Google AdWords ad automatically targeted to your site, and your site alone. You can customize the landing page advertisers view when they sign up so that it features your logo and communicates important details about your site . By allowing advertisers to create ads targeting your site precisely at their moment of interest, Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up helps create greater demand for your ad space, and more revenue for you.

To learn more, you can take a tour of Onsite Advertiser Sign-up. Your ad units will automatically take advantage of this feature, but if you’d prefer not to participate, you can opt out by updating the settings on your ‘My Account’ tab.

Referrals

If you’re a fan of AdSense, you may already encourage people you know to take advantage of the opportunity AdSense offers to monetize their web content. While we appreciate the efforts of altruistic publishers who’ve referred users with no incentive, we now enable publishers to increase their revenue by spreading the word about AdSense and other useful products. Using the new referrals feature, you can generate earnings while you direct users to sign up for AdSense or to download Firefox with Google Toolbar simply by adding a referral button to your site. Visit the Referrals tab within your account for pricing details and instructions on adding a referral button to your site.

Improved Reporting

Custom Reports

One of the reporting features most often requested by publishers was the ability to save frequently used reports. Earlier this year, we released custom reports, to allow you to save report settings and access them with just one click. Any report you often generate from your Advanced Reports page can be named and saved as a custom report that you can quickly access from your Reports Overview page.

AdSense for Search Top Queries

If you have an AdSense for search box on your site, you’re likely curious what your visitors are searching for from your pages. With the AdSense for search top queries report, you can learn the 25 most common searches conducted through your AdSense for search boxes. Use this report to identify additional topics to add to your site, or to keep track of your most sought-after information.

Useful Resources

Stay Up to Date with the AdSense Blog

Every day, our AdSense specialists think of suggestions, tips and ideas we’d like to share with our publishers. Back in August, we started the AdSense Blog as an outlet for our team members to share their product knowledge in a wide range of areas: optimization, troubleshooting, payments. Check out adsense.blogspot.com for new feature announcements, technical tips, and answers to questions you may not have known you had.

New Publisher Case Studies

How do you take your AdSense program to the next level? Recently, we talked to a few of your fellow AdSense publishers—Askthebuilder, CamcorderInfo, and Weblogs—about how they improved their AdSense revenue over time. You can find the complete list of AdSense
publisher case studies to find new ways of making your website even more successful.

Troubleshooting Ad Issues with Wizards and Demos

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach him how to troubleshoot his ad issues, and you’re giving him more lasting assistance. Our new troubleshooting wizards aim to do just that by guiding you through a series of simple yes or no questions to help diagnose and resolve any ad issues you may have. We’ve also created a Help With Ad Code Demo to educate publishers about basic issues they may encounter when implementing the AdSense code into the HTML source code of their pages.

Use Publisher Tools to Improve Your Site

Discover new publisher tools that can help you make your site better than ever. When you use Google’s tools to drive traffic to your site, add interactivity for your users, and increase your revenue, you can put your focus where it belongs: on creating quality content.

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Yesterday, Google released the new Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up (OASU) program. This program is to take the initiative and let webmasters refer people to the AdSense and AdWords programs, sign up (normally for AdWords in this case), and place bids for that specific site. We have seen this used in many other PPC applications already that are currently in place by BlogAds and AdBrite. Google finally decided to take the step and become part of that process so they could more easily have advertisers bidding on specific sites.

Other articles are currently being written about this same topic, but everyone seems to have the same idea about it. I see it as a good thing because now publishers can have more control over their advertisers. I still hope, that one day, Google AdSense will let you control which ads are displayed on each site, 100%. Right now, there is very little control over what ads are displayed. The only limitation that are in place right now is the URL Filter, which only lets you get rid of specific advertisers. It will be very interesting to see where this new aspect of the program will take AdSense.

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