Follow Google's Advice for Better AdSense Performance

By Chris Crum 

AdSense Optimization Tips

Google has been providing tips for optimizing AdSense ads to enhance their performance. The company has provided a three-part video series on this subject, which it has just released the final installment for.

The key items to note in this final video is that when positioning your AdSense ads for performance:

- Ad units placed at the bottom of the page don’t perform as well.

- Place Your Ads Where Users Will See Them

- Ad Units Perform better when they are placed above the fold

"So remember, position your ads above the fold and where users are more likely to see them," says Google.

Going a bit further, Google has put together a "heat map" to further emphasize good AdSense placement:

Looking back at the other installments of the series, part one talks about the size of AdSense ads. Google suggests using the following sizes:

- 300x250 medium rectangle
- 728x90 leaderboard
- 160x600 skyscraper

For more on AdSense optimization through size, view the following video:

Part two of the series looked at the color aspect (coverage here). Along with the video (below), they offered these tips:

- Use colors that either blend with or complement your site's colors. Make the ads a part of your site.

- Use lighter colors for borders, or no border at all.

- Try rotating colors or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.

- Save sets of frequently-used colors as a palette.

This video series has provided an educational look at getting better performance from AdSense ads, right from the horse's mouth. Google stands to gain from your ads working, so advice they give is likely to be in the best interest of all parties involved. If you have any other tips for AdSense performance that Google did no

Google AdSense Improvises

By: Navneet Kaushal 


AdSense was blamed for showing political ads in a lot of websites! No one was happy with them. But now they are planning to improve AdFilter and Blocking Ads. 

According to the Official AdSense Blog, they will very soon improve the speed of the AdSense Ad filter and at the same time enhance the blocking abilities of the Ad Review Center.

We also received questions about why political ads are able to run on Google and AdSense sites. The Google advertising program is managed by a set of editorial policies that we have developed based on various factors, including user and customer experience. While Google or its executives and employees may express opinions about specific political issues and candidates, Google's advertising system does not favor one political position over another. Our network provides advertisers with a way to reach their audience, whether they are companies selling products or political campaigns promoting candidates or issues. Just as Google's advertising system does not favor one car manufacturer's ads over a competitor's in our auction, we also allow ads regardless of the particular political position they represent.

We'll also continue improving the Ad Review Center, giving you ways to block entire categories of ads in addition to individual ads -AdSense

These changes are expected to be implemented over the next couple weeks.

AdSense Ads In Google Finance

By: Aaron Wall 


Google added an ugly AdSense block to Google Finance. It looks poorly integrated and noisy. They didn't look to take a page out of Yahoo!'s book on this front. 

Yahoo!'s ads offer more in the lines of branding, and they also sell custom research reports (likely on a CPA model).

Anyone who thinks Google has fully tapped out its revenue potential needs to be reminded that Google and YouTube are leading downstream destinations from Google.

Did you know that when a company ranks #1 on a Google Map with 10 results and #1 in the organic search results that the organic result only gets 60% more traffic? But there are 10 links in the onebox...which means that as a whole they probably get more traffic than the top organically ranked site does, especially on smaller browsers.

One interesting fact is that the majority of the users who got to the site via the natural link had resolution above 1024-768 and the majority of users who visited via the Onebox result had resoultion of 1024-768 or under. This makes sense because the lower the resolution of the screen the more real estate the Onebox listing gets above the fold.

Many of these onebox and universal search destinations (Finance, maps/local, product search, real estate, movies, travel, video, lyrics, books) can be monetized at much higher rates than whatever AdSense is yielding, and Google sees all the AdWords data, so they can tackle any new vertical they want (employment? education? healthcare? finance? ) and compete based on under-monetizing themselves in the short term, aggressive launch-time public relations, and giving themselves free traffic from the search results.

Google will take a leadership position in new markets like voice and video chat and voice search.

As long as Google does not destroy their brand, punt on user privacy, raise anti-trust concerns, or lose a major copyright battle they have lots of upside left. Google defines the new digital economy.

The Great Google Adsense Side Effect

The Internet is now built for Adsense

If the Internet consisted of real brick and mortar buildings there would be a construction boom going on right now like the world has never seen. The Internet is not in a recession or on the road to a depression, rather it is experiencing an economic and social explosion of activity.

The reason ... Google Adsense.

Most people think of Google Adsense as being a game-changer for advertising, but what Google Adsense has also done is to create a huge incentive to build sites around topics to place Google Adwords on. Where this seems to work best is with gadgets. There is no topic left untouched by the Adsense content builders, but gadgets are at the heart of this new Internet construction boom. 

The Gadget Content Explosion...

On November 5th, 2007 Google announced the name of its Google phone project ...Android.

Name announcements are where it all starts because domaining is at the heart of SEO which is important to getting free traffic which is critical to new Internet projects getting Adsense funding. Literally, hundreds of domains have been registered since this announcement with the Android name and other variations that mean the same. 

A few examples ....

helloandroid.com 
justanotherandroidblog.com
phandroid.com

All of those domains now rank in the top ten results when searching for "android blog" in Google!

Trademark Infringement? Nope! 

A more schooled business person might wonder about all of this trademark infringement and think cease and desist letters will be flying to all of these new sites. Think again my old school friend! The legal community may not be aware, but trademarking is no longer enforced by a large army of corporations on the Internet. The reason is because companies have finally figured out that Internet content centered around their brands is rather GOOD for their brands! 

The majority of the content I am talking about is of the good kind where these newly constructed websites become the hub for discussion, commenting, reviewing, supporting and in general getting down to the nitty-gritty of every new gadget (or every new anything) introduced to the world.  Google and the other search engines then crawl this content and in effect help turn these new web construction sites into thriving neighborhood hangouts where thousands of real people actually go. 

These people become the first drivers of new products and are the early adopters who will wait in line to buy. An example of this is the recently launched Blackberry Storm available for Verizon customers. Lines were out the door at Verizon stores and most locations sold out. The word of mouth on this product spawned from thousands of websites, many of which were created to focus exclusively on the Blackberry Storm. 

Search Google for "blackberry storm forum" (without quotations) and you will see these sites in the top listings:

blackberrystormforum.com
everythingberry.com
storm-blackberry.com (with Yahoo ads)

These sites were produced to build a community that clicks Adwords ads. They were created because of the Adsense program, but they still do serve a greater good in my opinion, which is to be an independent source of information and Q&A. 

The two most common types of sites created for Adsense are blogs and forums. Others include software downloads, niche directories and news headline type sites. Over time, domains with the product name followed by generic words that are typically searched for such as ...  forum, forums, blog, video and news tend to rise to the top of search results. Website builders around the world know this and build accordingly. 

Is the content of bad quality? 

Yes and no. There are of course many spammy scraper sites that steal content from others and then automatically update the sites. However, those are not the ones usually showing up in the top search results. The site winning the search result wars for "android blog", for instance, isgoogleandroidblog. blogspot.com which is the number one result. The site appears to be a real hub for Google Android content and reader comments and also contains a column of Google Adwords ads! 

Search for any popular gadget and you will see quality blogs, forums and news sites in top results that were created to cash in from Google Asense:

>> "Amazon Kindle blog" - amazonkindleblog.com
>> "iPhone news" - iphonestalk.com, iphonealley.com, iphone-ipod.org
>> "Wii blog" - wiiblog.net, wiispin.com (both created for Adsense)

The How-To...

1. Follow the announcements on the tech news gadget sites and grab domains as soon as names are announced.

2. Build a blog or forum ASAP on the topic. It is important to build first so that Google crawls you first.

3. Create quality content written by you or experts (your friends :). It is important to not plagorize other content on the Internet. Be distinct with your voice by using humor or technical savvyness. Do not use paid writers that write $20 articles unless you know they write quality. Quality is king, even when building for Adsense!

4. Participate in related forums and comment on blogs and news articles that relate to your topic. Be real though, do not be a comment spammer. This will get your site linked so that Google crawls it.

5. Update your site a couple times a day and make your content unique.