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Many of the pages on this site display text ads from Google's AdWords program. To display these ads, a site must join Google's AdSense program. Joining is free, but not all sites are eligible to join. Once you're accepted, however, it's very simple to place the ads on your pages and to start generating revenue for your site. AdSense will serve ads that are generally very relevant to the content of a particular page. Here are some tips based on my experiences so far with the AdSense program.
Tip #1: Don't put ads on empty pages.
When I reworked my site, I built a skeleton set of pages that had no content, just titles and some meta tags. I displayed ads on those pages, however. Although all you see are public service ads at first, the very act of displaying ads on a page causes the AdSense web crawler to quickly fetch that page for analysis. A page with good content will thus begin showing relevant paying ads fairly quickly.
If you don't have any content, then, Google will have to guess as what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant. You'll have to wait until Google re-crawls the site for the ads to correct themselves. Here is what Google had to say when I asked them about how often the AdSense crawler updates a site:
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Thank you for taking the time to update your site. New ads will start appearing on your site the next time our crawler re-indexes your site. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to control how often our crawlers index the content on your site.
Crawling is done automatically by our bots. When new pages are added to your website or introduced to the AdSense program, our crawlers will usually get to them within 30 minutes. If you make changes to a page, however, it may take up to 2 or 3 weeks before the changes are reflected in our index. Until we are able to crawl your web pages, you may notice public service ads, for which you will not receive any earnings.
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It's better to flesh out the page before you start displaying ads on it.
Tip #2: Don't be afraid to ask questions
If you're wondering about something, don't be afraid to ask Google. So far, they've always responded to my questions within a working day. There are two email addresses to use, depending on the type of question:
Their responses are always very polite, and they appreciate getting problem reports and suggestions.
Tip #3: Avoid non-English characters on English pages
This one is a bug, to be honest. My surname is French, and I prefer to write it out correctly with the accent grave on the first "e". Every page on my site would then include at least two accented letters, because my name shows up twice in the footer. On some pages my name shows up two or three more times.
Normally, this wouldn't be an issue. But on some pages the presence of the accented characters is enough to cause AdSense to display non-relevant ads in French. This happens whether the browser indicates a preference for French or not. When I reported this to Google, this is the answer they gave me:
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Hello Eric,
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.
We are currently working as quickly as we can to address this problem. As soon as we have more information for you, we will email you again.
We appreciate your patience.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
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Until this is resolved, I've decided to strip out all accents except on the pages that are actually in French.
Tip #4: Check your keyword density
Although Google doesn't release exact details as to how they determine the ads to serve on a given page, they do tell us that it's the text content of the page that matters, not the meta tags. Before serving ads on a page, then, you might want to check its keyword density. A good, free tool for doing this is found here:
http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
This lets you fine-tune the page before exposing it to the AdSense crawler.
More AdSense Tips
You can find more AdSense tips in The Unofficial AdSense Blog. Here's a sampling:
Note that Tip #6 should also refer to the section targeting feature.
You can find the very latest and useful AdSense tips in my Uncommon AdSense book.
Google AdSense Tools
iPhone AdSense Statistics Application
SenseApp is a program that lets you track your Google Adsense earnings on your Apple iPhone.
Google Adsense Guidelines
Adsense Starter Demos
- Google Adsense Tour - introducing you to the Adsense program.
- Getting Started Demo: learn to sign in, copying and pasting your code, setting up alternate ads, and using your Competitive Ad Filter.
- Help with Ad Code Demo: troubleshoot basic problems when implementing your code. Also covers how to implement your code using two different types of WYSIWYG software.
- Payment Demo: learn about the AdSense payment cycle, from a click on your ads to money in the bank!
- Optimization Demo: learn how to use ad size and placement to maximize your AdSense revenue.
Track Adsense Income, Statistics and Clicks
- Adsense Notifier - Firefox extension that displays your Adsense earnings on the Firefox statusbar.
- SysSense - personal desktop Google AdSense monitor. It keeps your current Google AdSense information in the Windows system tray.
- Adsense Widget - a Mac Dashboard widget that automatically logs into your AdSense Google account and displays the last 6-days of revenue generated from your Google advertising account.
- Google Adsense Yahoo Widget - displays the current income directly from your Google AdSense account.
- Stats for AdSense widget - allows you to view your Google AdSense™ reports directly from your Mac OS X Dashboard.
- Adsense Status - GoogleDesktop plugin to View earnings information from your Google Adsense account in the Google Desktop sidebar. Available information: page impressions, clicks, page CTR, page eCPM, and your earnings.
- Adsense Alert - desktop client monitors your adsense earnings.
- Performancing Metrics - a free professional grade blog statistics service that track limited adsense click data
- Adsense earnings RSS feed - a simple script that will create an RSS feed with your daily Adsense earnings to track via your regular feed reader.
- Google AdSense Charts and Graphs - chart your adsense data in a multidimensional line charts.
- AdSenseLog is a tool for checking and analyzing your Adsense ads data (Content, Search, Custom/URL channels and Referrals).
View / Test Adsense Ads
- Google AdSense preview tool - addition to the right-click menu for Windows Internet Explorer 6.x, allowing you to preview the ads that may show on any web page.
- Adsense Preview - Preview the Google ads that may show on any web page.
- Google AdSense Sandbox Tool - see what sort of Google AdSense ads will appear based on content or keywords. See up to 20 sample AdSense ads for the URL or keywords.
- Overture Keyword Tool - suggest keyword bid amount and keyword suggestions, which help you target high paying keywords.
- Google Adwords Keyword Tool - generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends.
Google Adsense Wordpress Plugins
Google Adsense Optimization Tips
Alternate Ads
- Alternate ads - allows you to utilize your ad space in the event that Google is unable to serve targeted ads to your page.
- Alternate Url - provides a 50/50 Revenue Share, full global coverage monthly payments automatic referral income, family safe ads, paypal supported and gives detailed stats.
- AlterNut Ad - pays you a flat rate every month in return for you displaying thier ad rather than the PSA. Invite only.
- Default Ads - load your affiliate or other ads into DefaultAds and generate a link to include in your Google Adsense alternate ad URL. They show their own ads 1 out of every 100 impressions for this service.
Adsense Chats and Forums
Miscellaneous
- Google AdSense Stats Syndrome (GASS) - the compulsive need to check AdSense stats every 15 minutes or so to see how much you’ve earned since your prior login. more.
This post will be regularly updated. Suggest a link in the comments. Check out the Google Adsense Books for sale on Amazon.
[This post is regularly updated]
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