Time for AdSense, Blogger and YouTube Updates

In the last several months there have been quite a few changes for Adsense users. Over the next few months I'll be trying to explain some of the changes and give you my own thoughts on them or if I can, offer some answers. The Help Center has been updated with a new look and navigation system, and the dashboard in your AdSense account has been updated as well.

Recent additions include the Scorecard, which for some people seems to have created a small panic. The Scorecard really is just a way to see where you might be able to improve your site(s), and your AdSense earnings or traffic. Suggestions made in the Scorecard are just suggestions.

Putting AdSense Ad Code on Your Blogger Blog

If you're new to blogger, new to web publishing, or new to AdSense you might need a little help getting your ad codes onto blogger. For those of us who have been using this platform since it came out, placing ad codes seems like a simple thing, but for newbies it can be confusing. Particularly since blogger seems to be constantly changing the way things are done.

With blogger, there are multiple ways you can get your codes onto your blog. There are several types of gadgets that will work, or you can use the earnings tab, or you can even paste code directly into the text area. Keep in mind, pasting code into the text area may not always work. It will depend on the type of template you are using for your blog - usually a standard blogger template works best for that. If you use third-party free templates, or blogger's dynamic template, posting ads in the text area may not work at all. The instructions below are for using normal blogger templates (standard ones, not the dynamic ones).

Page-Level Ads

A Phone Conversation with Google?

So yesterday around the supper hour I received a long distance phone call from an area code I didn't recognize. Generally, spam calls (ie: unsolicited sales calls from telemarketers) don't show an area code or telephone number on our call display, they simply show as "private". Normally, I tend not to answer calls if I don't recognize the number, but we're in a bit of a family situation right now where we might receive calls from health professionals and we might not recognize the number, so I answered the phone.

 What exactly does this have to do with Adsense? It doesn't really relate "directly" to Adsense, but if you read on, you'll see that it might have an indirect affect on a site carrying AdSense ads. In my case, it probably wouldn't have affected my Adsense account since the site this call related to doesn't have Adsense on it, but yours might.

Approvals and Adsense - What's Not Happening

All publisher's (or would-be publishers) want to know why they aren't getting approved for Adsense, or why their websites or blogs aren't acceptable. And many times, that's not an easy question to answer, because the answers may not be based on a policy or standards.

While this isn't "official" information, here's what some of the TCs in the AdSense forum have been noticing much more of over the last six months to a year.  Blogs and websites containing some subjects are not being approved, even though they might contain originally written articles.

And to give a truthful answer, I'd have to say there isn't anything in the policies we can really point to and say "this is the problem" because the problem seems to be the subject matter the blog/website owner chose to write about. So, some of the most rejected blog contents we've noticed over the last year (in no particular order):

Gmail About to Be Disabled? STOP!

Another try by spammers/scammers to get your login information for your Google Account (and therefore, the access to your Adsense account).

The email you'll receive, on the surface, looks real enough. But how do you know it isn't?  To start with, I'd be suspicious of the email address the email was sent from. I don't know for sure what email address Gmail pros have, but most product pros have an email address that relates to their area - like an @google address.

The email I received purporting to be from Gmail came from an @service address. I'd be hesitant about that alone.

The second thing I noted is that the email wants you to click through a link - one that looks like it leads to a google support page, HOWEVER, when you hover over that link, you will note that the link doesn't go to a google page at all. It goes here:  http ://www  .pertiwi.cn/www_logs/   maill.   htm

That's not a gmail help page - it's not a google page at all. Most likely it's a page that will harvest your personal data.

Along with those two factors, the statement in the email that mentions the Google policies looks like it should lead you to a Google Policy page, but the link isn't active, and doesn't work.

The silliest part of this mail, the least thought out, I suppose is that they send it to your Gmail account (where it lands in spam in my box). If your account truly is disabled, you wouldn't be accessing your Gmail account at all, and would never see the mail anyways. If it were coming from Google, the mail wouldn't exist. You'd get that message for a disabled Gmail account on a web-page, not in your mail box, which you can't even log into.

If you can't login to your email and you do get a page with a disabled notice, check the links carefully before following any of them. It's up to you to ensure your own security. The best thing to do is check links in any mail before clicking on them.

If you find yourself with problems logging into your Gmail, you can ask for help at the Gmail/Google Product Forum.