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* Bringing you a more powerful Ad review center Posted: 2012-03-22 08:20:01 UTC-07:00 Whether it’s via blog comments, forum threads, or in-person events, we’ve heard your feedback about AdSense ad controls and the enhancements you’d like to see. With that in mind, today we’re thrilled to announce that we’re rolling out an entirely new version of the Ad review center. It’ll give you more control over your ads and make it easier than ever to manage the ads showing on your pages. New controls The new Ad review center will show you ads of all targeting types (contextual, interest-based, and placement) that have appeared on your pages, and allow you to review them. With placement-targeted ads, you can still review them before they show up on your site. And now, rather than grouping ads together, you can make decisions on individual ads to control what appears on your site at a granular level. If you regularly review and block ads, we hope you’ll also love our new predictions feature. To help ensure that you don’t miss any ads you may want to block, we’ll highlight ads for you to review based on the types of ads that you typically block. Improved efficiency We’ve also made the Ad review center easier to use. When you’re reviewing ads, we’ll now first show you the ads that are getting the highest number of impressions on your pages -- or, if you’re holding placement-targeted ads for review, we’ll first show you those that are likely to get the highest number of impressions on your pages. Ads that don’t receive or likely won’t receive any impressions on your sites won’t appear in the tool. As a result, you’ll save time and be able to focus your efforts on reviewing only the ads that your users may see. In the new Ad review center, you can simply click on an ad to block it. To block multiple ads, highlight and drag the ads to block them all at once. We’ve also provided a magnified view when you hover your mouse over an ad, as well as the option to see an ad in full size, as we know that it can be difficult to see details in ad thumbnails. Ready to use the new Ad review center? If you’ve used the Ad review center in the past, the new version will be available in your account in the next few days. If you haven’t yet enabled this feature yet, visit the Allow & block ads tab to get started. Please note that this feature isn’t compatible with Internet Explorer 7 or earlier -- visit our supported browsers page for more information. For placement-targeted ads, we recommend keeping your review preference set to the default of 'Run ads immediately' and then reviewing them after they’ve started running. This is because ads don't participate in the auction while they’re held for review, which could potentially lower the winning bids and as a result, your overall AdSense earnings. For more information, visit our Help Center. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you more updates to the Ad review center -- so stay tuned! Feel free to leave us a comment with your thoughts and feedback in the meantime. Posted by Dan Stokeley - Product Manager * Learn about other Google products with our new Help Desk Hangouts on Air series Posted: 2012-03-20 12:14:14 UTC-07:00 You’re looking to grow your business, and we offer a ton of tools to help you do just that. But sometimes, you might need a little help learning all the options and getting started. That’s why this week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’ve launched a new series of Help Desk Hangouts On Air to put you in touch with teams who can help you get the most out of our products and features. To kick things off, we asked +Justin Cutroni of the Google Analytics team (and author of the blog Analytics Talk) to show us how business owners like you can use Analytics to track your website performance and see how users are getting to your site (email, social media, referrals). If you missed it, you can watch the full hour-long Hangout on the Google Business YouTube channel: Here are a few of the questions Justin addressed in the Hangout: Is there a threat in respect to data privacy? We take privacy very seriously at Google. The only person who has access to your Google Analytics data is you. You can also grant other people access to your Analytics data, but that’s up to you. Is there a plan to update the administration part of GA? We need more levels: creator, administrator, manager, reader. Excellent feature request, and it relates to the question above. We get this question often and know that the current model is limiting. We are working hard to figure out the best user model for Analytics. Is there a good WordPress plug-in for adding GA code to a blog? Plug-ins! Justin’s favorite, we learned yesterday in the Hangout. There are some great ones out there, especially for WordPress. Check out Google Analytics for WordPress. Can you tell us more about the benefits of using Analytics for tracking mobile apps? Great question. You can absolutely track apps with Google Analytics. We have two SDKs, one for Android and one for iOS, that make it easy to track how people use an app. If you’re going to use GA to track apps you should also understand Event Tracking and Custom Variables. These two features are very useful when tracking apps. Justin shows us a feature that tells you how often you show up in Google’s organic search results and the number of clickthroughs that you get. To learn more about how to get started with Google Analytics, visit our Help Center. And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout at 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday, as we discuss how to use Hangouts (something a bunch of you have asked us to talk about!). We’ll be collecting your Hangout questions today on the Google+ Your Business page. Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Google Places community manager * Recapping our recent North American AdSense in Your City events Posted: 2012-03-19 11:10:57 UTC-07:00 Recent months have been busy and exciting for the AdSense in Your City team! Since January, we’ve met with over 500 publishers across the U.S. and Canada. To date, the AdSense in Your City team has met with close to 1500 publishers in more than 30 cities and we can’t wait to host more events. We’ve had a great time working with our AdSense publishers and sharing our optimization tips and best practices for AdSense, DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business (DFP SB) and Mobile. It’s also great to see so many of our publishers networking with one another and making friendships. One publisher in Albuquerque excitedly told me, “This is the first time I’ve been in a room where everyone knows what AdSense is!” We hope that we can continue to provide forums for our publishers to get together and share their stories and insights. From snowy days in Portland, OR and Victoria, BC to a visit to the “Music City” in Nashville, TN, the team has brought back wonderful AdSense success stories and feedback. A publisher from Oregon, who attended our Las Vegas event in November, was snowed in during the Portland event but came to Albuquerque to meet with us again. After implementing our tips from Las Vegas, the publisher saw a revenue increase by 40%. We appreciate all of our publishers who have taken the time to attend our events, especially those who have traveled great distances to meet with us. Our team is looking forward to continuing to meet with even more of our amazing publishers. We’ll be announcing our next 15 cities soon, so stay on the lookout for our next update. If you want the AdSense in Your City team to come to your city, let us know by adding your North American city in the comments section below. Courtney Yamada, the North American AdSense in Your City team * Upcoming webinar on March 22nd: “GoMo for publishers” Posted: 2012-03-16 09:30:02 UTC-07:00 Did you know: 8 in 10 consumers instantly abandon a mobile site if the experience isn’t up to par?1 Mobile consumers have high expectations from content publishers today. With Google mobile searches growing 400% in the last two years, it’s increasingly important for publishers to satisfy the needs of a mobile user by building a mobile-friendly site. That’s why we recently launched GoMo for publishers, which brings publishers a new set of tools to help build mobile-friendly websites. Join Google on Thursday, March 22nd at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET, to discuss why it’s imperative to build for mobile and delight your fastest growing audience. We’ll show you all the tools you need to get you ready to go mobile. Sign up today and learn... 1. Why go mobile? o Your users have gone mobile in a big way, hear why you must follow suit. 2. 10 tips for building mobile sites o Mobile is different. Learn 10 practical tips for building engaging, uniquely mobile experiences. 3. Best practices in action o Hear from web publisher FindTheBest about the success they have seen from going mobile. 4. How to get started o Google is here to help. Learn about tools we’ve created to get you started on the path to delighting your users and maximizing your mobile revenue. Sign up for the webinar today. We look forward to seeing you on March 22th! Posted by Joseph Corral, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads Source (1) Limelight Networks, Inc. 2011 * Increase your earnings with Google Affiliate Network exclusive promotions Posted: 2012-03-15 08:35:01 UTC-07:00 If you aren’t already a Google Affiliate Network publisher, now is a good time to join and earn additional revenue from your website. Over 40 promotions will be available exclusively to Google Affiliate Network publishers from Friday, March 23 through Monday, March 26. As a publisher, you’ll earn a performance fee from orders that originate from your links. You can view all exclusive promotions on this blog post. How do I post these promotions on my site? To access any of these exclusive promotions, you need to be an approved publisher in Google Affiliate Network. 1. Apply for Google Affiliate Network with your AdSense Publisher ID (or sign in if you're already a Google Affiliate Network publisher). 2. Once approved, review the promotions available and click the "Apply Now" link for each one that you wish to promote. 3. Tracking links will be available in your Google Affiliate Network account by viewing the Home tab on March 19th. You can also search for “March Exclusive” links in the Links tab on March 23rd. Need help applying or want more information? Review the Publisher Beginner’s guide today. When can I post these promotions on my site? All promotions will be available starting midnight Central Time on March 23rd, and all will expire at midnight Central Time on March 26th. Please remember that you may not post any of these exclusive promotions until March 23rd. For additional questions, check out the Help Center or contact us. Posted by Jamie Ross, Google Affiliate Network Strategist * AdSense crawler error redesign Posted: 2012-03-14 08:15:01 UTC-07:00 As we explained in a previous post, there are many ways publishers can optimize their site for AdSense. One of the most overlooked is ensuring that our AdSense crawler can accurately crawl your site so that your ads are as relevant and useful as possible. Today we're making this task easier for you with our latest redesign of the crawler access page which you’ll find on the Account Settings page of your AdSense account. We redesigned the page with three objectives in mind: 1. Provide accurate and actionable information about your crawler errors. 2. Organize and display the information in a more readable way. 3. Provide clear and concise steps to help you fix the errors. We’ve accomplished the goals above by: o Keeping the information that pertains to you and removing everything else. o Incorporating expandable sections so information isn’t overbearing and indigestible. o Adding a new column which shows how many failed crawl requests occurred over a period of time. This gives you an idea of the magnitude of the error. o Adding a new ‘How to fix’ column specifically designed to help you solve the error. This AdSense redesign is merely a first step toward empowering you with the most accurate and relevant information. This in turn allows for better decision making which can lead to more effective AdSense optimizations, and as a result, increased revenue. Posted by Nurzhan Bakibayev - Software Engineer * Avoiding accidental clicks Pt. 3: Tips for placing ads on game play pages Posted: 2012-03-13 08:45:00 UTC-07:00 Today we’re sharing our tips and best practices for placing AdSense for content ads on game play pages in a way that doesn’t confuse the user and create invalid click activity. If you run a site with online games, a game play page refers to the page where an individual game is described and a user can click to begin playing. Make sure to also visit Pt. 1: Keeping the right distance and Pt. 2: Use the right product for more tips on avoiding invalid clicks and maintaining a healthy user experience. Let’s start with a quick recap on why it’s important to follow these policies to minimize accidental clicks. First off, in order to protect our network from artificially inflated costs, we carefully monitor clicks and impressions on Google ads. Invalid activity that we detect will be deducted from revenue at the end of the month and in some cases, may eventually lead to a disabled account in which the earnings will be returned to the affected advertisers. Also, with smart pricing, high numbers of accidental clicks will decrease publisher revenue in the long-run. This is because accidental clicks don’t result in conversions for advertisers, which will in turn reduce the amount that they’re willing to pay to show ads on your site. As a general guideline for online gaming sites, you can ask yourself the following question: Could a user who doesn’t speak the language of your page navigate from the game play description page to the actual game, with a minimal chance of unintentionally clicking on advertisements? The answer should be yes, and based on this, we’ve derived the following two tips: o Interstitial ad pages: Game play buttons shouldn’t lead to interstitial pages dominated by AdSense for content ad units with no obvious game play links. More generally, links intended to navigate the user to game play pages shouldn’t deceive the user into clicking AdSense ads. Please visit our Help Center for more information on placing AdSense ads on interstitial pages. o Inconspicuous play buttons: Game play buttons should be clickable and placed in an obvious location. To minimize user confusion, indicate how to play the game through text and image. Ad units shouldn’t surround game play links too closely. Please visit our Help Center to view the full policy regarding deceptive AdSense implementation. An example of acceptable implementation An example of unacceptable implementation For a full description of the above two policies and to review example ad implementations, please visit our Help Center. Following these guidelines will help you avoid accidental clicks and provide an optimal user experience. Posted by Awni Hannun - Inside AdSense 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. * The Google AdSense Forum Community invites you to our housewarming Posted: 2012-03-12 09:00:05 UTC-07:00 We hope that by now you've found the AdSense Help Forum to be the best place to ask questions, search for answers and share tips with other AdSense publishers. We've been listening to your feedback about forum features you'd like to see, and we're excited to announce that we’ve moved the AdSense Forum (together with all its content, users and user levels) to a brand new solution: Google Product Forums. The new Google Product Forums platform, which is built on Google Groups, offers members of the AdSense Community improved search across the forum, Help Center and the blog. At the same time, the most important features of our current forum, like levels and marking a Best Answer, will continue to be available in the new forum. Additionally, your browser bookmarks and links to the content in the old forum will still work, as you’ll automatically be redirected to the new one. Google Product Forums also includes some new features that you've told us you'd like to see. For example, you’ll be able to add a “Me too!” vote to a question to quickly share that you’re interested in the question. You’ll also be able to +1 your favorite topics. We hope you’ll enjoy the modern look and feel of the new forum. Visit the Getting Started Guide to learn about basic features of the new platform. Join the conversation and discuss this post in our revamped AdSense Forum! Posted by Kateryna Malinovska, AdSense Community Manager * Meet Australian AdSense publishers Tim and Victoria van Brugge Posted: 2012-03-14 00:10:09 UTC-07:00 Husband and wife team Tim and Victoria van Brugge run i-do.com.au, an Australian wedding directory. Their original business plan was to sell diamonds online, but in creating the wedding directory to build an audience of potential customers they discovered that media and advertising was an easier business model, and they've never looked back. Recently we sat down with Victoria and Tim to learn about how they use AdSense on their website. Watch this video to learn more. Posted by Amelia Walkley, Strategic Partner Manager * AlloExpat thrives with Google AdSense Posted: 2012-02-29 07:56:43 UTC-08:00 ‘PubTalk’ is a new program highlighting publishers’ perspectives on display products and industry trends. In this installment, we hear from Theresa Giovagnoli, co-founder of AlloExpat.com, on the site’s 10th anniversary, about why they’ve worked with AdSense for 6+ years and how they’ve benefited from implementing simple optimization solutions. AlloExpat.com is a worldwide expatriate social portal. It addresses the growing global expatriate community by being a one-stop information center and by connecting expats with professional expatriate service providers. Inside AdSense (IA): What role does AdSense play in your business? Theresa Giovagnoli (TG): We’re a very large portal and have dedicated websites and discussion forums for each country in our global network. We need a solution that effectively targets ads to a wide international audience. AdSense is simply the best and most efficient solution to do this. Thanks to a consistent revenue steam from AdSense, our web development team has been able to dedicate its attention to growing our global audience and content. IA: What is the one success you’ve had with AdSense that you’d like to share with other publishers? TG: One successful tactic we employed was recategorizing targetable custom channels. We are a global site with multiple regions. Earlier, all our regions were combined under one custom channel, but once we defined targetable channels by region, we saw CPC increase by 20%. I would highly encourage publishers to set targetable custom channels at the level that best defines their site because it allows advertisers to specifically target their website by segment or region which may lead to performance uplift. IA: Why do you love AdSense? TG: We have managed to implement AdSense in a non-intrusive way, generating a fair amount of revenue over the years. AdSense has played a key role in our development over the years and still does today. We’d never have come this far without it. Posted by Jennifer Chan, AdSense Team * Is your site ready for your mobile users? Posted: 2012-02-27 11:00:00 UTC-08:00 Last December, we posted about the massive shift to mobile we’ve seen in your users over the past two years. Still, 4 out of 5 online publishers don’t have a mobile-optimized website, and they risk losing their fastest-growing audience. Today, we’re launching a new suite of tools at howtogomo.com to help publishers build mobile-friendly websites. To help demonstrate the potential of creating a mobile-friendly site, we’d like to share the story of AdSense publisher Baby Gaga. Two weeks after launching their mobile-friendly website they saw a 64% increase in mobile visits. This leading destination for educational materials and social support for pregnant women also saw an 82% increase in mobile page views and a 50% increase in revenue from mobile (full case study). Today Baby Gaga’s mobile users don’t need to squint and they view more pages per visit. Visit howtogomo.com today to: 1. See how you rate. Use the GoMoMeter to analyze your site’s mobile user experience. 2. Start planning. Download the GoMo Publisher Guide for mobile best practices. 3. Find a partner. Learn about vendors who can help with implementation. As mobile continues to take off, we believe it's important for publishers to develop a strong mobile strategy now and make the most of this new opportunity. Baby Gaga’s decision to go mobile allowed them to improve the user experience for their mobile visitors and also make more money. We want to help you do the same. In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing additional materials to assist you in this process, so stay tuned to Inside AdSense for further announcements! Posted by Chris LaSala, Director, Strategic Partner Development, Mobile * Specific recommendations for individual ad units Posted: 2012-02-21 08:15:36 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-02-15 11:14:28 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-02-09 08:55:00 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-02-09 08:54:33 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-02-06 09:11:43 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-02-01 08:00:06 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-02-02 16:15:04 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-01-24 08:30:00 UTC-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: o Making the violation messaging clearer to ensure the actions you need to take are clearly highlighted. o 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: o 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. o 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: o 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. o 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 Posted: 2012-01-19 09:00:02 UTC-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: 1. Visit the Chrome Web Store and download the AdSense Publisher Toolbar. This will add the toolbar icon to your browser. 2. 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. 3. 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 Posted: 2012-01-17 09:10:00 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-01-13 09:00:03 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-01-12 09:06:02 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-01-10 09:30:01 UTC-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 Posted: 2012-01-09 08:15:00 UTC-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.