Optimizing Ad Placements

In recent months Adsense has done a complete overhaul of the Help Center files. While I haven't found all of these changes to be helpful, in some cases they might be useful for newbies.

The Newbie Central section has changed quite a bit, but it highlights some of the most important things newbies should know, and understand before getting the ads onto their sites.  The introductory page gives you a short list of the places where you should start - just click the picture or link on their introduction page (linked)  and start learning.

Adsense has been adding some other basic help pages for those just beginning with Adsense. Two of these useful sections are the Ad Placement Optimizers: the One-Click Optimizer, and the Optimization Lab (which is not just for newbies).

One-Click Ad Optimizer

The one click optimizer offers suggestions for ad placement for a variety of site types: news sites, classified sites, game sites, forums and blogs. Possibly because these are the types of sites we most frequently see questions about, though most of us helping in the forums don't seem to use these different types of sites.

Before creating these optimizers, Adsense spends a fair bit of time learning what works well for certain types of sites - so there is some research behind these ad placement suggestions. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they will work for your site, it means they should. Every site is different, and sometimes the best ad placements for your own site might not be the same as what they've suggested. Placements that work will depend on your site layout, and your contents, as well as your visitors. If you already have a visitor base, then you need to pay attention to what your visitors want.

If your site is fairly new, then it might be a good idea to check out the optimizers and see how your current ad placement lines up with what Adsense says is effective. You may want to try some of their suggestions on different pages of your site. If you decide to do this, then make sure you create channels for these new ad placements so you can track their effectiveness yourself.

The Optimization Lab

The Optimization Lab has more help for getting the most out of your ads. There are simple instructions on how to increase your CTR and increase the CPC on your websites, however, if you are a newbie you will also need to pay close attention to the policies.

One of the possible ways to increase the CTR is to wrap your text around an ad unit. The Adsense Optimzation Lab gives instructions in the form of a div code to do this, but keep in mind that if you implement this, you really need to have more than "5" pixels of space between the ad and your text. This is especially true if you are using a lot of images close to the ad placement, or if you are using text ads with no borders in your text area. The ad unit must NOT be mistaken for part of your text.

What it doesn't give you are the instructions for using that div code everywhere. Basic websites built with html can put their ad codes within their text areas, usually without much problem. That allows them to use just this div code supplied by Adsense to set the ad to the right or left side within their text. But most blogs will not not accept the adsense code within the text areas - at least blogger will not. And some wordpress blogs may not either.

In order to do this, you'll need to parse the adsense code for blogger (do a web search - lots of blogs have already written about this). This parsed adsense code is then placed in between the two div codes given by Adsense and inserted into the correct spot in your blog's TEMPLATE, not in the text area.

What happens then is that the ad will display in that spot on each post you have without you having to place the code each time.

Also be aware that if you have your blogs set to display more than one post on a page, you will not be able toplace  ad units in your sidebar (use link units instead), header or footer areas because each of your first 3 posts will already have an ad in it, and you are only allowed to display 3 ad units.

If you normally display more than 3 posts on a page, also do not use this method for displaying your ads. If you have 5 posts on a page, this code will try to display 5 ads - one in each post. Adsense will then only display one public service ad, and no other ads.

This method of inserting the code into the template is really only good if you have your blog set to display one or two posts per page, but it will work fine for static websites (ie: sites that are all individual pages, rather than a blog with multiple posts on a page).

There are other things in the optimization lab you might want to look at - and a few to be careful about.

In the "Boost Impressions" section one of the things they list is to use Adwords to increase site traffic. Please, please, please do NOT run over to Adwords and start buying ads to increase your traffic.

Adsense and Adwords used together can cause publishers a lot of grief. Most new publishers signing on at Adwords have NOT taken the time to understand how these work together, and what you need to do to MAKE it work. If you are considering using Adwords to drive traffic directly to a page loaded with Adsense ads, then forget doing that. The purpose of Adwords isn't to get people to go click on your ads. It's purpose is to advertise your SITE, PRODUCT (which is NOT adsense), or SERVICE.

The page that your Adwords ad leads to must meet certain quality guidelines (available at adwords), and your website must also meet certain quality guidelines...if it doesn't, you can lose both your accounts. As well, your ad itself must not be misleading. If your ad says "get a free laptop" it better lead to a page where someone gets a free laptop. So how many free laptops have you got to give away? Oh...none? Well then that ad is misleading. Change the wording so it says "sign up to get a free laptop", in which case the page it leads to has to have a spot for someone to signup for a free laptop.

There are many misleading advertisements that end up on our websites as publishers. I don't know about the rest of you, but I report these ads when I find them, and so do many of my readers. If my readers click an ad for a free calendar template, it's because that's what they're looking for and if the click doesn't take them to a page with a free calendar template they're gonna complain.

Make sure well before you sign up for Adwords that you understand all the requirements from both the Adsense side and the Adwords side, otherwise you may be risking your account.

Invalid Clicks? How, Where, Why?

An excellent place for most new publishers to begin understanding policy and issues that may cause invalid clicks is the "AdSense Policies: A Beginner's Guide" page in the AdSense Help Center, and well worth taking the time to read for some established publishers. You might be surprised at some of what you'll find on this page.

One of the first things AdSense mentions in the "Clicks and Impressions" section is that they monitor these very carefully. There's  an unspoken idea there, and if you think about it long enough you might understand what that hidden message is.

If AdSense is monitoring clicks and impressions "very carefully", it's probably a good idea for you to also monitor these yourself - "very carefully".

Monitoring the activity on your website or blog is one of the ways you can help to head off a lot of ad clicks that AdSense may consider to be invalid. You monitor site activity using Google Analytics, and any third-party site analyzer that records IP addresses, visitor activity, and times, and if you pay for webhosting, most hosts will have some sort of server logs for your site. Now is the time to familiarize yourself with some of these - simply do a web search for website statistics or counters and read through some of those available. Select one that fits your needs and learn how it works, and put the necessary codes on your site. Keep copies of logs or statistics, because these will be useful in analyzing your site and monitoring your traffic.

When you analyze your stats there are things you should watch for:

•  one visitor clicking multiple ads in one visit (1 or 2 ads, probably okay. 7-10 or more ads, probably not okay but don't panic, just report it - 30+ ads clicked by one person...start panicing and remove your website from the allowed sites list, also report the IP addresses and times to adsense)
• many visits coming from a single IP address. This can cause problems with Adsense if those visitors are also clicking ads.
• many visits coming from the same referrer and you don't know why. Check out the referrer and find out why the visitors are originating from that site. Someone posted your link to a blog or group, that's probably okay depending on the purpose of the group. Someone posting your link to a link farm or link exchange - not okay. Contact the site and get them to remove your link.
• visitors coming from your own IP address and clicking ads. Definitely not okay. Even if it isn't YOU, it is someone in your household. Or,  if you use a wi-fi connection and don't lock it down, it could be anyone close enough to logon to the internet using your IP. Make sure you password-protect your wi-fi logon, and don't share it with anyone. You may also want to check your connections even if you are using cable or dial-up. We ran into a situation where a neighbour had cut another neighbour's cable near the pole and inserted a splitter box. The neighbour was then able to use the cable connection belonging to someone else without paying for the services...and causing the other neighbour to have enormous internet bills.

If you discover anything you find suspicious or unreasonable on your stats, then you will want consider reporting this instance to AdSense. Please, please don't go reporting single unidentified click - that's not what we're talking about here. And you don't need to report every single click you aren't certain about. If you pay attention to your site activity, you'll soon be able to recognize things that are unusual or out of the normal ranges of your site activity.

You can report these using the Invalid or suspicious activity form, found on this page in the Adsense help center.

On the "AdSense policies: a beginner's guide" page you'll also note a small paragraph about traffic: "Be aware of how your site is promoted". Read it carefully, and follow the links in that paragraph because you may find that reading will save you a great deal of grief.

While AdSense doesn't tell you that you can't promote your site, there are certain types of promotional opportunities that AdSense frowns upon - things like traffic exchanges and link farms whose sole purpose is to send people to your site to register impressions or clicks. If you are planning to buy any sort of advertising to grow your site, you'll need to be very careful about what you buy, where you buy it, and what your purpose is for purchasing it.

If you are buying "traffic" ONLY to get your AdSense ads seen and perhaps clicked, then that's a very bad idea. For the most part, you will probably pay more for the advertising needed to do that than you would get in return by way of clicks. If you are purchasing advertising because your site has a product or service you want to promote (ie: that service or product should certainly not be AdSense, nor should it be any sort of illegal product) then purchasing advertising might be of some value to you outside of AdSense.

In any case, garnering traffic through purchases means the advertiser (in this case you if you are buying traffic/ads) who also uses AdSense must following the Google landing page quality guidelines given to AdWords advertisers, even though you may not be purchasing your advertising through AdWords. These guidelines include a quality component that says landing pages (ie: the page your advertisement leads to on your site) must contain:

• original and relevant content (so, don't advertise free websites if you aren't indeed giving away free websites on your site/page and don't have content copied from other sites or RSS feeds)
• AdSense lists things like making sure the purpose of your site is clear to visitors, and that your content is not copied from other sites.
• transparency - the user should be able to find out about your company or website easily (about us page) or be able to contact you easily (contact info), you should have a clear privacy policy, your site should not download anything automatically to any user or visitor, if you have a "download" button or link the user should know what they're downloading (clearly stated on the page) and the download link should begin a download, not route them to multiple other pages.
•  navigability - the navigation should be clearly displayed on your page and should be simple for visitors to find; all the links should work and go to the correct page.

The landing page guidelines are quite clear on the fact that originality is what they expect - "relevance and originality are two characteristics that define high-quality site content." I don't think they can be any clearer than that. Users should easily find what your advertisement states and they should be able to find that on your landing page, and you should not have content that is not original (created by you).

There are many other valuable hints on landing page quality for AdSense publishers who wish to use advertising to promote their websites: such things as browser behaviours, collection of personal information; using too many popups, popunders, floating box elements and the like; fast loading pages, portal or doorway pages, etc.

Here's where things may take a little twist. How does all of the above apply to publishers who are disabled for invalid activity? Almost any violation of policies, including those above, could widely be construed as invalid activity. If you are not in compliance with all policies that AdSense and Webmaster Guidelines list (and the Landing Page Quality Guidelines), then any earnings you accrue could be considered invalid. In otherwords, clicks on AdSense ads on pages that are not in compliance with policy could possibly be listed as invalid clicks.

Having an account disabled for invalid clicks doesn't necessarily mean AdSense thinks you've clicked your own ads - of course you may have, in which case you'd already know that you did. But for those publisher's who have no idea what these invalid clicks are (or where they came from), the email they receive is a rude awakening, and often comes much too late. Even if they are able to discover the cause, the chances of getting the AdSense account re-instated are almost nil.

Minor policy violations (like no privacy policy, or inadvertently placing an ad too close to content) may receive a warning notice, however, this warning should be taken very seriously.

Publishers should not only correct the issues listed by Adsense in the warning notice (throughout their entire site, not just on the page given as a reference), but should very carefully review their sites to ensure there are no other issues. Besides carefully studying the AdSense Program Policies and Webmaster Guidelines, if you have purchased traffic or signed up for free traffic, you'll want to consider the quality of that traffic as well. When it comes to traffic, all is not equal. Traffic from sources unacceptable to AdSense is worse than no traffic at all and can also lead to invalid clicks.

These are only a few of the possible causes for invalid clicks, but some that AdSense Publishers can exercise some control over.

AdSense's Unacceptable Content Rejection - What is it?

It seems like this is the question everyone's asking right now. There are more and more of these rejection questions showing up in the AdSense Help forums, and most people seem uncertain about what this rejection means. For the most part,  Adsense isn't all that clear about what to do in order to correct this, and won't spell out precisely what the issue is.

In some cases, the unacceptable content is easy to spot when you compare the person's website against the AdSense Program Policies, but it isn't always as simple as that - particularly when English is not the publisher's native language.

Some of the reasons for unacceptable site content that we've been able to come up with in the forums are as follows:

1. - content that doesn't meet adsense policy (read the policies here: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48182)
2. - content that doesn't meet the webmaster guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769) Although the Webmaster Guidelines are listed as "guidelines", AdSense publishers are required to follow these guidelines, making them as important as the Adsense Program Policies. When you are applying to become a publisher, or when you are a publisher, the Webmaster Guidelines are no longer guidelines - they are a requirement, so you'll need to consider these as rules you must follow.
3. - content that isn't original (articles and content you didn't write). Since the inception of "Caffeine", AdSense has been systematically disabling blogs and websites with copied content, auto-written contents, contents of little to no value (re-purposed content from other websites), written content that doesn't make sense or reads as gibberish, and has been rejecting blogs and websites of this nature in the last few months. If you apply with a blog or website with contents such as this, be prepared to receive a rejection notice. What you need is original content that you've created yourself.
4. - no content, or very little content. AdSense requires each blog or website to contain sufficient content. If you have a blog with one or two posts, that's not going to be good enough for AdSense to approve. If your website has only one page, then you'll probably get rejected, unless it's a very big place with a LOT of original content.  If you apply with a site that has "no content", then your "content" is non-existent, which makes it unacceptable content.
5. - blank pages in your website. AdSense doesn't want to see your proposed website, or a website under development. They want your website to be complete, and easy to navigate. It shouldn't have a redirect for the domain URL (unless you've used a 301 redirect), it shouldn't have a frame on the URL that calls the website from another URL (it needs to be a direct URL), it shouldn't have links that don't work or are broken, and it shouldn't have links that lead to blank pages with no content, or with only "ipsum lorem" text. That's the latin text you often see on template pages when you purchase a template or get a free site template. That text is nothing but gibberish - it's meant as a place holder, and you need to replace that with your own text.
6. - copyright infringements (images or other contents you don't have permission to use). Adsense expects it's publishers to "go the extra mile" and create their own unique contents, including images. If you can't create your own images to use with your text (websites and blogs need text, not JUST images or videos), then they expect you to get permission from the image owner BEFORE you use the images, and you'll need to give credit to the image owner. Images specifically marked as being in the public domain don't require permission for use, but you do still need to have a site with mostly original contents, so using a site full of public domain images and nothing else is likely to get a rejection.
7. - a website that isn't six months old and doesn't have six months worth of original content. Adsense requires sites from many countries to be six months old before getting approval, and although we don't have a list of specific countries to point to, it appears that there are many more countries AdSense has added this requirement for.

While there may still be other reasons for unacceptable content, these are the most common ones we've come across. It's up to each publisher to ensure their content follows the guidelines and policies set out by AdSense and Webmaster Guidelines so if you receive this rejection, you'll need to spend some time going through your website or blog and digging through your content to find the areas you'll need to amend, remove, or add to.

If you have taken the time to study your site and the policies and still can't figure out what's wrong, then you can ask in the AdSense Help Forum to see if someone else can see the issues at hand, but it's really the publisher's responsibility to at least try to figure out the problems first. Help is always available, but learning how to decipher your site's problems will help you keep your account in good standing in the future.

AdSense Stole My Money!

Wow, I bet that got your attention!

No, AdSense didn't steal my money, but we are in fact seeing a lot of posts like this in the AdSense forums. And there is a reason for it. Since about April of this year (2010) there have been some display issues with some of the reports pages within your AdSense accounts. Those of you who get cheques every month and don't actually check your stats all that often may not have noticed these issues at all, but they are probably there, in  your accounts. In the past month or so a second display issue has cropped up, also relating to earnings, but on a different page.

The first issue (the one from April) is on your Payments History Page. When you open that page it displays the "default" view, which is usually for the past three months. The earnings displaying at the end of the previous month (right now since it's Sept. that would be earnings for Aug. 31) are probably wrong - some are off by only a little bit, while others are off by a larger amount.

What we're finding in the forum is that people are looking at the default view, and seeing earnings over the payment threshold (that's $100 US) but aren't getting their cheques or payments...and of course wondering why. In order to see your actual earnings (ie: the correct earnings) on the Payments History Page you'll need to reset the view method from the default 3 months to "all time". To do that, select "all time" from the drop-down box at the top of the Payments History Page and let it load. Now check your earnings for the end of August (or the last month earnings are recorded for). There's a good chance that it is under the $100 threshold - in some cases it might only be a few cents or a few dollars under, but being under at all means you won't get your payment until those earnings are at least $100 or more.

The second more recent issue appears on the Reports Overview Page. That's the page you land on when you enter your AdSense account. If you are noticing the earnings in the "Since Last Payment" option disappearing and re-appearing and fluctuating wildly from hour to hour or day to day, then you are probably being affected by the display issues for this report. And it is a display issue - when your earnings are validated at the end of the month and posted to your Payments History Page, they will be the actual earnings. Unfortunately, at the moment, you really can't hang your hat on the "since last payment" report on the Reports Overview Page.

These issues can be found, with their work-arounds, on the "Known Issues" page for AdSense. Publisher's should bookmark this page, or add it to their Google Reader and check it regularly - particularly if you are seeing anything unusual in your AdSense account. If other publisher's are experiencing the same issues you are, you may find the answer on the Known Issues Page in the AdSense Help Center. Even though the issue might still be inconvenient, you'll probably be relieved to find you are not the only one experiencing it...and that AdSense is aware of it and working on it.

The two display issues mentioned above are being worked on by the techs and engineers. It's probably pretty easy to think the one that began back in April should be fixed by now, but the AdSense systems are fairly complicated and getting the same thing to work the same way for everyone probably isn't as easy as we think it should be. The "Known Issues" page will also tell you when these issues are corrected, so don't forget to check it.

Important Reminder for AdSense & AdWords Users!

A while ago I wrote an article about protecting yourself and your AdSense account from phishing attemps. Well today, I want to remind AdSense publishers NOT to click on any email link unless they are absolutely certain the email has come from AdSense or Google, and never REPLY to any of these type of messages with personal information.

The other day I received an email which wound up in my spam box; the email indicated it was from "Google Team" - this was the first red flag for me. Emails to me from Google or Adsense have not ever come from "Google Team".

When looking at the "Re" line of the mail, the word "your" was misspelled "yuor google Account". This was the second red  flag. The third red flag was all the spelling errors in the body of the email, and then there was the fact that this email expected me to reply with:

My User Name
My Login Password
My Current Country

No contact I have received from Google, Gmail or AdSense has ever asked me my current country - they are in fact already aware of this information. Had I requested an address or change of country from them directly, I would expect that question, but not in an unsolicited email.

This email also indicates that I need to "update to a fully supported browser". My browser(s) are supported, and are already updated, and updating my browser would have nothing to do with my account unless I were having problems accessing it...which I don't.  I also don't use the Chrome browser, and it is not listed under my services and products in my Google account.

Finally, when checking the email headers, the sender address and the email reply address are not at all related to AdSense, or Google.

Anybody who responded to an email such as this one would soon find all of their accounts associated with their Google account compromised - this includes Gmail, AdSense, AdWords, Blogger and any other Google product and service you use under that particular Google Account.


Emails such as this are the reason people sometimes find themselves unable to access their AdSense, AdWords or Blogger accounts.

Be very careful before you give out any information such as your User Name, Login Password and other personal details. Never, ever give this in an email you are not sure about. If you receive an email and you don't know or aren't sure if it came from Google or AdSense, then use the help forums and ask someone to confirm it's validity.

You'll note...the date on that email was Saturday, August 10th. Here it  is Thursday Sept. 2nd...and my accounts are perfectly fine without having completed this "validation" and my gmail account hasn't been deleted, either.

UPDATE!! 

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS!

Well, it appears that the above noted "phishing expidition" just wasn't enough for some folks. I guess they weren't all that happy with my decision to ignore them.

This morning (Saturday, Sept. 11 - an interesting date choice for this) I received yet another of these mails. The text of the mail is below:

from    newsdatainfogoogleaccount@gmail.com
to  
date    Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 5:27 AM
subject    Final Warning
mailed-by    gmail.com
signed-by    gmail.com
  

Our technology & science team has recently launched Google web software to protect and secure all Gmail Accounts. This system also enhanced efficient networking and fully supported browser. You need to upgrade to a fully supported browser by filling out the details below for validation purpose and to confirm your details on the new webmaster Central system.

Account Name:                        

Password:

Country:

Note: Your Account will be deleted permanently if you failed to provide the details below within 72hours. Gmail will not be heard responsible for your negligence.
 

The Google web Service. 

Just to be clear - Google did NOT send this if you received one. GMail did NOT send this. Nobody associated with Google sent this - IGNORE it. Mark it as spam and DO NOT give these people ANY of your information.