As 2006 winds down, we'd like to take a moment to reflect on some of the great things that happened this year in AdSense and on the Inside AdSense blog. We had to narrow down a long list to get these 10 highlights, not listed in any particular order. So relax and reminisce with us about the year just ending.

Inside AdSense goes international

The Inside AdSense blog expanded to 4 more languages this year -– a German version in March, then Dutch and Spanish in July, and most recently, Portuguese in September. Now more publishers around the world can stay up to date with AdSense news and get to know some of our team.

Click-to-play video ads

In June, we introduced this new ad type which can help engage visitors and increase potential revenue for publishers. Click-to-play video ads are now available for 4 ad formats, one of which is the new 200x200 Small Square.

Meeting our publishers

Whether it was at San Jose SES, WebmasterWorld PubCon 2006, or another venue, our team was happy to meet publishers like you in person and hear your feedback about AdSense. We look forward to seeing you again and meeting new publishers in 2007.

AdSense Help Forums

The launch of our English Help Forum in March brought publishers together in an online community to discuss all things AdSense. In just 9 months, membership to the English forum has already crossed the 10,000 mark. Publishers are also participating in the Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Portuguese Help Forums, which were also launched this year too.

Ivan the optimiser

In April, our readers met Ivan of the UK Optimisation team. Ivan's profile was the post more of you visited than any other this year, so we've given him the '2006 Reader's Choice Award.' When we informed Ivan of the good news, he said, "I'd like to immediately put an end to any rumours that I paid for traffic to my post to ensure I'd win."

Referrals

2006 saw a number of exciting developments for our referral program, such as the introduction of referral text links in response to publisher feedback. Later, we added Google Pack and Picasa to the list of referral products and expanded the program by making referrals available in a number of additional languages.

Optimization Month

August was action-packed with information from our AdSense optimization specialists. With topics ranging from running A/B tests to selecting ad placements to using webmaster tools, we hope you were able to learn useful tips for improving the performance of your ads (or 'Augtomizing').

AdSense for content availability

Just a few weeks ago, we added Croatian, Czech, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese to our list of AdSense for content supported languages. We hope that publishers with sites in these languages will start seeing revenue increases by taking advantage of our ad inventory.

AdSense for search on your own page

As Product Manager Shirin Oskooi explained in our September video post, we introduced the ability to display AdSense for search results in an IFRAME. Publishers can now embed their search results within their pages and customize the layout of the results page to match their sites.

Landing Page Quality

Our AdWords Team made an improvement by using the quality of a landing page as a factor in determining the price of an ad. For AdSense publishers, this has translated into less ads that lead to low-quality sites, and a better user experience.

We hope this year-end nostalgia has brought you some fond memories. Here's to a prosperous and happy New Year!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

We'd like to wish all of our publishers around the world a safe and happy holiday season. Because we'll be out of the office spending time with friends and family until Wednesday, December 27th, you can expect slightly longer response times to your emails. Of course, you may always feel free to direct questions to our Help Center or consult other publishers in the AdSense Help Forum.

In the meantime, we hope you'll enjoy our holiday 'greeting card' featuring a few members of the AdSense team.



Posted by Arlene Lee on behalf of the AdSense Team

While you're busy gearing up for the holiday season, let us tell you the stories of three new publishers featured on our Success Stories page. Well, maybe not the full stories, as we doubt we can keep you away from your holiday to-do list for very long, but allow us to give you just a taste ...

The Tale of Jeremy Bencken and ApartmentRatings.com

What started as a sideline for Jeremy Bencken has grown into the largest independent apartment-hunting site on the web. Jeremy found the 300 x 250 rectangle and 160 x 600 wide skyscraper formats -- both with colors that blend well with the site -- to be particularly effective. In addition, he placed ads at the end of apartment reviews to give visitors a useful next step once they finished perusing a review. With just these minor ad format and ad placement changes, he was able to improve his CPM by 45% and his clickthrough rate by 91% all the while maintaining a great user experience.

An Account of Scot Hall and Swapalease.com

Swapalease.com is one of the largest car lease assumption marketplaces in the world. Scot Hall found that after signing up, AdSense ads immediately comprised 40% of the site's online revenue without requiring a dedicated ad sales staff. After making only slight adjustments to ad size, format and placement such as ensuring that ads appeared "above the fold," Hall began earning up to 80% of his online revenue from AdSense.

A Walk Down Memory Lane with Chris Davis and Neopets.com

You've met Chris Davis before during Optimization Month on the blog. Chris discovered through channels and A/B testing that bolder colors actually worked better than blended colors for his audience, doubling both clickthrough rate and revenue. Additionally, he found that site targeting drew more brand-name advertisers and more image & video ads that now account for up to 40% of AdSense revenue.

If you're interested in learning more, visit our Success Stories page for a complete gallery of publisher stories.

Posted by Christine Lee - AdSense Product Marketing

We've recently received a number of emails from publishers asking how we feel about the placement of images near Google ad units. There's been some confusion on this issue, and so we turned to our policy team to set the record straight.

Can I place small images next to my Google ads?

We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn't actually being offered. That's not a good experience for users or advertisers.

Publishers should also be careful to avoid similar implementations that people could find misleading. For instance, if your site contains a directory of Flash games, you should not format the ads to mimic the game descriptions.

What if I place a space or a line between my images and my ads? Would that work?

No. If the ads and the images appear to be associated, inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads will not make the implementation compliant.

Does this mean I can't place ads on pages with images?

You can definitely place Google ads on pages containing images -- just make sure that the ads and images are not arranged in a way that could easily mislead or confuse your visitors. For example, if you run a stock photography site with a catalog of thumbnail images, don't line the ads up with the thumbnails in a way that could be misleading. Consider using a full border around your ads or changing your ad colors, for example.

What do unacceptable implementations look like?

Here are some examples that wouldn't comply with our policies.





Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

If you've glanced at your Payment History page today, you might've noticed that it's been revamped with a whole new look. Don't worry -- all of your previous payment data is still available and our payment process hasn't changed. We've simply updated the layout to make it easier to keep track of the financial activity in your account, and most importantly, help you determine when you can expect your next payment.



You'll now find your earnings and payments divided into two separate columns so you can better distinguish between them. Clicking on any details link will give you more information about the noted Earnings or Payment event. For example, the details link associated with a payment will show you the payment number, amount, date, and depending on your form of payment, the tracking number.

We've also added a Monthly balance column, which displays the running total of your unpaid earnings and credits at the end of each month. If this column shows an amount greater than $100 and you've removed all holds from your account, you'll be issued a payment at the end of the following month. You can see an example in the screenshot above -- since the publisher's unpaid earnings totaled $58.23 at the end of November, a payment will not be issued during December.

Have questions about our payment process and schedule? The Payments Guide is the place to find answers.

Posted by Suzie Rha - AdSense Publisher Support

We're excited to tell you that AdSense for content is now supported in Croatian, Czech, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese. If you manage a site in one of these four languages, you can now complement your existing AdSense for search boxes (and revenue) with contextually-targeted AdSense ads!

To get started with generating your AdSense for content code, just visit the AdSense Setup tab in your account. Please keep in mind that after you add the ad code to a new page, it can take up to 48 hours for our crawler to access your site. Once your site has been crawled, our system will automatically detect the primary language of your pages and serve targeted ads in the correct language.

Welcome (or Dobrodošlica / Vítame / 歡迎) to our new AdSense for content publishers!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance this Saturday, December 9th at 10 am PST. Although you won't be able to log in to your account for approximately 4 hours, we'll continue to serve ads to your sites and track your earnings.

By reader request, we've also included the maintenance start time in various cities around the world:

London - Saturday at 6 pm
New Delhi - Saturday at 11:30 pm
Ottawa - Saturday at 1 pm
Sydney - Sunday at 5 am

Have a great weekend!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Parlez-vous français? If so, head over to the new AdSense Help Forum for French-speaking publishers: Forum d'Aide AdSense. In the forum, you can share your AdSense knowledge, ask troubleshooting questions, and discuss a wide range of AdSense topics with other publishers. A Google representative nicknamed 'AdSensePro' will also occasionally read and respond to your posts.

If you don't speak French, don't worry -- the AdSense Help Forum is also available in Chinese, English, German, Japanese, and Portuguese.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

At 6 pm PST tonight (11/30), our engineers will be performing site maintenance for approximately 15 minutes. You won't be able to log in to your account during this short period, but rest assured that your ads and your reporting won't be affected.

We apologize for the short notice -- hopefully this will give you an extra 15 minutes to do some more online holiday shopping. Thanks for your patience!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

As you might know from our Payments Guide, one of the steps to getting paid is submitting your tax information. We've recently updated the Tax Information page located under your My Account tab with a new format that we hope will make it easier to determine which form is right for you. Also, you'll now be able to see when your information was last saved so that you can make sure all updates have been recorded in our system.



Every publisher's tax situation is different, but we aren't able to provide any tax advice. To help determine what's right for you, we recommend walking through the tax wizard in your account or visiting our Help Center for additional help. If you're not able to find the information you're looking for, we encourage you to speak directly with your local tax advisor.

Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Publisher Support

We've heard it time and time again: as publishers, you want to give your users a relevant search experience on your websites. You want the power of Google search, and you want to make it your own. And then, of course, you want to make money from this search engine, not spend time and money building it. Well, here's news you can use -- now you can do all this with Google's Custom Search Engine (CSE).

With CSE, you can create a highly customized and (free) tailored search experience for your users that reflects your knowledge and expertise. You place this search engine on your site and, if you've got an AdSense for search account, you can link your CSE to it and make money from the resulting traffic. In a few simple steps you can create a CSE that looks and feels like your own, prioritizes or restricts content based on what you specify, as well as open your search engine index to trusted members of your community so they can contribute to its comprehensiveness and relevance.

Here's an example from Macworld. In the first screenshot, you'll notice a search box in the upper righthand corner of the page. After performing a search with the query [macbook], the search results page shown in the second screenshot appears. The search results are integrated smoothly with the site layout and the Macworld publisher earns revenue from clicks on the ads in the "Ads By Google" section.





It's easy to build a CSE -- no Ph.D. in computer science required. Here's how it works:

1. Visit http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ and select the websites you'd like to include in your search index.
   
2. Then choose to restrict search results to include only those pages and sites, or you can give those pages and sites higher priority and ranking within the larger Google index when people search on your search engine.
3. From the CSE site, you can generate the code to place on your site and make the search engine, through an IFRAME, look and feel like your own. If you choose, you can easily link to your current AdSense account so you have a centralized place to manage your Google AdSense relationships.
   
4. Last but certainly not least, you can invite members of your community to contribute to your search engine index, in real time. Simply enter email addresses of people you'd like to contribute and an invitation along with Google Marker will be sent to your invitees.

You can check out a few more CSEs in action by visiting our featured examples page. You'll see some created by industry experts, bloggers, educators and techies. We're continuing to add customization and advanced features to the CSE too. We hope you'll try it out and let us know what you think.

Posted by Jennifer Hyman - CSE Product Marketing Manager

We'd like to wish our U.S. publishers a Happy Thanksgiving. We'll be out of the office sleeping off the tryptophan until Monday, so it may take us longer to reply to your emails. In the meantime, please feel free to visit our Help Center or discuss your questions with other publishers on our Help Forum.



(Turkey artwork courtesy of Suzie Dewey)

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

When your AdSense account reaches US $50, keep your eyes peeled for a PIN in the post.

Before we can send you a payment, we'll send you a PIN. Your PIN is short for your Personal Identification Number, and it's your key to verifying your AdSense account so that you can receive payments. Once you've entered your PIN in your account and your account balance reaches US $100, you'll be all clear for payment, provided you've removed all other holds from your account.

If you've reached US $50 in earnings, you can check when your PIN was generated by visiting your Payment History page and clicking the Please enter your PIN link. PINs are typically mailed 3-5 days after they're generated. They're sent by standard mail and usually take between 2-4 weeks to arrive.

Make sure you know what to watch for in the mail by taking a moment to study the example PIN mailer below. PINs are printed in postcard-sized envelopes with a Google logo.



If we've already sent you a PIN, your payments will be on hold until you enter it into your account. You can request up to two replacement PINs if you don't receive the first one, and all additional PINs will be duplicates of the original. However, you'll need to enter your PIN within 6 months - after this time period, your account will be disabled.

Have PIN questions? Look no further than the AdSense Help Center. Finding your answer should be easier than finding a needle in a haystack.

Posted by Neida Freitas - AdSense Publisher Support

Are you having difficulty implementing the AdSense code using your web editor? Would you like to integrate AdSense into your Blogspot or Page Creator site? If so, then we're happy to let you know about our new Activation Demo.

In this demo, we'll walk you through implementing AdSense using three common methods, including one where you won't need to copy or paste the ad code. If you're using a web editor that offers one of these methods, you can follow along. If not, you can create a new site using Blogger or Google Page Creator - the process is fast, easy, and free.

UPDATED link to demo

Posted by David Jones - AdSense Publisher Support

It's an oft-seen question from publishers: Are we earning revenue for ad impressions or for ad clicks? The answer is that it depends on whether cost-per-impression (CPM) ads or cost-per-click (CPC) ads are appearing on your pages. By default, CPC ads will show on your site and you'll generate earnings for valid clicks on those ads. However, your ad units will display CPM ads when advertisers bid specifically on your site using site targeting, and for those ads you'll generate earnings with each valid impression. Please keep in mind that CPM earnings are not the same as the values you see in your eCPM column; your eCPM is only a reporting feature that can help you compare ad performance.

To determine which type of ad you displayed on specific days, you can follow these instructions to generate a report. In your Advanced Reports, the ad type 'Site' refers to CPM ads, and 'Contextual' refers to CPC ads.



Want to show more CPM ads on your site? It's not possible to request CPM ads, but you can help advertisers get interested in your site by customizing your Onsite Advertiser Sign-up landing page. Advertisers can then create campaigns targeted specifically at your site, directly from your site. And don't forget to focus on quality, placement, and size -- take a look at some important tips from the AdWords team on what advertisers look for in site targeting their CPM ads.

Remember: keep publishing that high-quality content and the advertisers will come to you.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

What could be more exciting than the sights and sounds of Las Vegas? Meeting our publishers in person, of course! A few of us from AdSense are excited to be at WebmasterWorld PubCon 2006 in Las Vegas this week on November 15 and 16. Stop by the Google booth to meet a few seasoned optimization specialists who'll be happy to give you insights into how to better optimize AdSense on your pages as well as answer any burning questions you may have.

In addition, an AdSense Product Manager will be on hand at Safe Bets From Google eagerly awaiting to hear what features you want from AdSense, or take any other feedback about the program. And if that isn't enough, one of our very own will be presenting on Wednesday's contextual advertising optimization panel.

For those of you who'll be going, we wish you smooth travel to the City of Lights and hope to meet you there.

Posted by Christine Lee - AdSense Product Marketing

This Saturday, November 11th, our engineers will be performing routine system maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. Although you won't be able to access your account during this time, ads will still be served to your pages and we'll continue to track your earnings as normal.

While we know it will be hard to drag yourself away from your account for 4 hours, maybe this will give you a chance to clear away those cobwebs you told friends were "Halloween decorations." Take your pal Jack O. Lantern for a visit to that new neighborhood hot spot, the compost heap. When you've eradicated all the ghouls and goblins from your home, gear up for the next celebration by doing a quick search for turkey recipes (or Tofurky recipes, if you prefer).

And thanks for your patience!

Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

Did you receive a revenue boost through referrals? The referrals team is looking for publishers to participate in a case study, and we want to hear from you. Have you increased your AdSense earnings this way? It doesn't matter which products you're promoting on your site, or how long you've been a publisher. Feel free to send us an email and tell us about your success.

Posted by Laura Chen - AdSense Publisher Support

We know that you’ve worked hard to create quality content for your sites, and that you look for the same quality in the ads you’re displaying. That’s why we’re happy to let you know about a change in AdWords that will improve the quality of ads.

Recently, we have begun incorporating the quality of an ad's landing page into the determination of what ads appear on your site. The quality of the ad's landing page now affects the Quality Score that the ad receives -- this score helps to determine the amount an advertiser must bid to appear on your site. The lower the Quality Score, the more "expensive" it is for the advertiser to show up on your site. As a result, you should see fewer ads on your pages which lead to low-quality sites.

And what defines low quality? We've published a general set of landing page and site guidelines. We encourage advertisers to offer relevant, substantial content so that visitors can find what they are looking for when they click on ads. Ensuring that the ads that appear on your site are high quality is an important part of our efforts to make sure that we provide the best experience for your visitors.

Posted by Andrew Chang - AdWords Product Marketing

As you might already know, a great way to increase your AdSense earnings is to place multiple ad units on webpages that are rich with content. Here's a way to maximize your revenue with multiple ad units: Make sure the ad unit with the highest CTR is the first ad unit in the HTML code of your page. We've heard that there may be some confusion on this, so here's some clarification on how we serve ads to a page once we know which ads win the auction.

Currently, the first ad unit on a page always shows the top ads that win the ad auction. Also, if there aren't enough ads in our ad inventory to fill all of the ad units on a page, the first ad unit on the page will display ads first. This is why I recommend using custom channels to determine which of your ad units has the highest CTR, and then placing that ad unit first in the HTML code.

For the purposes of this post, the first ad unit on the page is defined as the first instance of the ad code within the HTML of the page. Keep in mind that the first ad unit in the source code is not always the first ad unit that your users will see when the page finishes loading in their browser. For example, if you use DIV tags, our system may recognize an ad unit which users see at the bottom of the page as the first ad unit.

Now that you know how to make the most out of multiple ad units, try this tip and watch your earnings grow.

Posted by Phoebe Ho - AdSense Optimization Team

Back in August, the AdSense team landed at the Google booth at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, CA. We had a blast meeting all of you in person, providing optimization advice on the spot, and listening to what you had to say about AdSense. Whether or not you were able to attend, I'm excited to share with you a video recap of the conference.



Didn't get a chance to meet our optimization specialists at SES? Don't worry -- you can read through their helpful 'Optimization Month' posts, or visit our Optimization Tips page to learn more about how you can optimize AdSense for your site.

Posted by Dan Friedman - AdSense Product Marketing

To follow up on our announcement two weeks ago, we'd like to let you know that Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is now also available to publishers located in Israel. Just log in to your account and follow these instructions to set up your bank account.

You can also find a complete list of countries where EFT is offered here. Don't see your country or territory on the list? Not to worry -- we're working hard to expand our payment options, and will announce any updates right here.

Posted by Alexa Bruce - AdSense Publisher Support

If you have a blog on the new version of Blogger in beta, we're happy to introduce you to the drag-and-drop AdSense widget! Using this new feature, you can easily add AdSense to your blog by following these instructions.

1. First, log into the new version of Blogger with your Google Account. Click on the Layout link next to the blog where you’d like to feature Google ads.

(If you don’t see the Layout option, it’s possible that your beta blog is still in the classic template -- visit your blog’s Template page and click Customize Design. You can then upgrade your blog to the new template in minutes.)



2. Next you should be taken to your Template – Page Elements page. Click on one of the Add a Page Element links shown below.



3. In the pop-up window, click the blue Add to Blog button underneath the AdSense option.



4. If you already have an AdSense account, simply sign in with your AdSense login; if not, you can create an account directly on this page. After signing in, you can select your preferred color template and ad format. When you're finished, click on the orange Save Changes button.



5. Now you can easily drag and drop your AdSense ad unit anywhere on your blog's template -- or delete it if you need to make changes. When you're all done, click the orange 'Save' button on the upper right corner and go view your new blog!



We hope you find this new feature helpful when implementing your ads. Let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Posted by Cathleen Jia - AdSense Publisher Support

Have you ever struggled to keep track of different versions of your documents or site layouts while collaborating with other webmasters? If so, you'll find Google Docs & Spreadsheets the best pain reliever ever -- it's our new web-based word processing and spreadsheet program to help manage your site's content and easily share it with others.


With Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you can edit and save in HTML to create mock-ups of your webpages. You're also able to access your files from any computer via a web browser, and easily send them to collaborators to review and edit. Even more exciting, you can view all past revisions to your file, so if you change your mind about that bright purple highlighting after you've put it into your document, simply revert back to a previous version.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets also provides an easy way to distribute content. Your users won't need to download anything from your site; just create your content in Docs & Spreadsheets or upload an existing file, publish it, and then link directly to the file from your website.

Aside from all the web publishing benefits Google Docs & Spreadsheets offers, it's also a great tool for managing a small business. You can collaborate and share information about your online ad activities, draft proposals and budgets, and keep track of your Google Analytics tags all in one place. Many of the entries on this blog wouldn't have turned out quite so well without team collaboration on the content using Docs & Spreadsheets.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is free, secure and easy to try out. Get started by uploading your desktop files. Check out the product tour for an overview of how the product works, or just sign up here.

Posted by Jen Mazzon - Google Docs & Spreadsheets Product Manager

Have you ever looked at your ad reports and noticed that your channel data and your aggregate data don't match, even for the same date range? You're not alone -- we often receive emails from publishers who are concerned about this issue, and we're happy to clarify what's going on. Depending on how you've set up your channels, you'll see a larger number of page impressions, clicks and earnings in your channel reports than your aggregate reports for any or all of the following reasons:

1. Your ads are being tracked on multiple URL channels.
   
   Let's say you've set up 2 URL channels - one to track example.com and to track www.example.com/page. The URL channel example.com will track clicks and impressions from all subdomains, subdirectories, and subpages of example.com. As a result, one click on www.example.com/page will be tracked on both of your URL channels, which means you'll see two clicks recorded in your channel reports. However, your aggregate reports will show you the correct number of clicks, one, with no data duplication. You can learn more about how URL channels will track specific pages in our Help Center.
   
   
2. Your ads are being tracked on both a URL and a custom channel.
   
   Now let's suppose you have a URL channel for example.com and a custom channel called Example Homepage, which you're using on the homepage of example.com. When you receive a click on the ad unit tagged with your Example Homepage custom channel, it will also be tracked on your example.com URL channel. Just like above, this means that you'll see two clicks logged in your channel reports, but only one in your aggregate reports.
   
   
3. Your ads are being tracked on multiple custom channels.
   
   So you've taken advantage of our new feature, and you're tracking each of your red leaderboards with 2 custom channels -- one called Red_ad_units and one called Leaderboards. One click on a red leaderboard will be tracked in both of your custom channels, so you'll see twice as much data when you compare your channel reports to your aggregate reports.
   

Of course, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't set up multiple URL and custom channels to track specific pages and ad units. But if you'd like to view the overall performance of your account, visit your Advanced Reports page, select the Aggregate Data radio button, and click Display Report -- you'll then see your reports without any duplicate data.



Now get tracking (correctly)!

Posted by Laura Chen - AdSense Publisher Support

Many of you might remember our April post featuring Ivan Heneghan, a member of the AdSense UK Optimisation Team. Ivan discussed a science website that was able to dramatically increase AdSense earnings through a few simple changes. Well, Ivan's back to share more details about that story with you:

When UK-based WebElements.com started using AdSense in late 2003, their earnings averaged out at a low daily rate. In January 2005, WebElements began to focus on optimisation, experimenting with different ad colors, ad styles, and page locations. They found success by adding link units to each page of their site, placing Large Rectangles directly before and after their content, and adding a Wide Skycraper to their left sidebar.



In the week following the optimisation, WebElements saw revenue increase by 500%. They then made other small placement changes to the site, which resulted in a spike doubling the revenue yet again -- as a result, the site was earning over 1000% its original earnings for some of the year.

Today, this ad revenue enables WebElements to further develop their site. The company advises that "it is important to experiment with colors, ad sizes, and locations on the page, as the audience for one type of web site may well respond to ads differently to another. It is worth experimenting with colors that blend with site design and others that show some contrast. It is also a good idea to use Adsense channels to run different color schemes in different channels at the same time and to wait for a week or so before deciding which colors work best. And, of course, content is king."

Posted by Ivan Heneghan - AdSense UK Optimisation Team

As of today, it is now possible to assign multiple custom channels to a single ad unit. This feature enables you to track your ad performance with greater flexibility and view more granular information. When generating your ad code, you'll be able to add up to 5 custom channels to a specific instance of ad code.



What's the benefit of tracking with more than one custom channel? Well, multiple channels can be very useful when you want to track one ad unit across several different metrics simultaneously. For example, let's say you run a sports website and you've placed a leaderboard at the top and bottom of every page. To track the performance of the ad placement, you've created two custom channels -- 'TopLeaderboard' and 'BottomLeaderboard' -- and regenerated your ad code appropriately.

But what if you also want to compare your football pages and your baseball pages at the same time? With multiple custom channels, this isn't a problem. Just create two new custom channels called 'FootballPages' and 'BaseballPages', and add them to the appropriate ad units. Now your leaderboards will each be tagged with two custom channels that let you know which position they're in (top or bottom), and the type of page on which they appear (football or baseball).

Please keep in mind that ad units tagged with multiple custom channels will log impressions or clicks in each channel. As a result, you'll see a higher number of impressions and clicks when you view your channel reports than when you view your aggregate reports.

If you'd like more information about setting up multiple channels, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Are you a publisher located in the Czech Republic, Finland, or Slovakia? If so, we're happy to let you know that Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is now available to you. Sign up today to receive future payments directly in your bank account -- remember, the 15th of any month is the deadline to update your form of payment for that month's payment cycle. If you're having difficulty receiving your test deposit, you might find our troubleshooting tips useful.

Posted by Alexa Bruce - AdSense Publisher Support

Wouldn't it be great to get your content in front of people while they're visiting Google.com or other webpages? More eyeballs on your site means more opportunities for your content to reach visitors, along with, of course, your AdSense ads. Google Gadgets enables you to do just that.

Gadgets are miniature devices that offer cool, dynamic content ranging from games to news clips to weather reports to just about anything you can dream up. They've been around for a while, but their reach got a lot broader last week when we made it possible for anyone to add gadgets to their own webpages. That means you! Here's an example of a flight status tracker, for instance, that can be placed on any page on the web.



You can search for free gadgets to add to your own webpages in our directory of gadgets for your webpage. To display a gadget, just pick the one you like, set your preferences, click "Get code," and copy-and-paste the HTML onto your own page. Add some 'bling' to your site and 'wow' your readers!

Creating Google Gadgets from your own content for others to use isn't hard, either -- anyone with even a bit of web design experience can make a simple one in HTML, and more advanced programmers can create really snazzy complex applications. But remember, it’s also quick and easy for people to delete gadgets and add new ones to their own pages. To help you make sure your gadget will be popular across the web, we provide a few guidelines to keep in mind. The more valuable visitors find your content, the longer they'll keep your gadget on their pages, the more often they’ll visit your site -- and the better that can be for your AdSense performance.

Here are a few other suggestions for successfully distributing your own content on the Google homepage or other pages across the web:

• If your website has a feed, visitors can put snippets of your content on their own Google homepages quickly and easily -- you won't even need to develop a gadget. However, you'll be able to customize your visitors' experience much more with a gadget than with a feed.
  
  
• By putting the "Add to Google" button in a prominent spot on your site, you can increase the reach of your content, because visitors who click to add your gadget or feed to Google can see your content each time they visit the Google homepage. Promoting your own gadget or feed can also increase its popularity, which contributes to a higher ranking in the Google personalized homepage directory.

Posted by Samantha Crow - Product Marketing for Google Gadgets

At the beginning of September, we announced that AdSense Help Forums were available in English, German, and Chinese. We’re happy to add two more forums to that list: AdSense ヘルプ フォーラム for our Japanese-speaking publishers, and Fórum do AdSense for our Portuguese-speaking publishers.

Are you looking for advice on how to set up your channels or optimize your site? Would you like to ask other publishers who live in your region how long it usually takes them to receive their checks? If you'd like to discuss anything AdSense, our Help Forums are the place to be -- visit today to post your questions!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Even if your site is well-designed, with colors that look great and ad formats that your users respond well to, you still might hear a nagging voice inside your head that says, "There must be more I can do!" If this sounds familiar, then we've got a cure -- link units work wonders when you're looking for additional ways to give your AdSense performance a pick-me-up. They offer your users fresh, new content and can be customized and tracked just like standard text ads.

If the voice in your head is still there, it's likely asking, "Where should I place link units on my pages?" Here are some ideas to get the ball rolling:

• Above or below a navigation menu or site search box -- but remember to keep your link units distinct
  
• Above the fold, at the beginning of pages with more focused content where people may be seeking specific information (article pages, category-level pages)
  
• In prime spots as designated by our heat map

Looking for more ideas? Our link unit example page might help.



Link units proved to be the missing link for several of our publishers- you might remember reading about how Engineeringtalk, Ask The Builder, and PCFreunde saw their AdSense earnings soar after adding link units to their pages.

With 12 different sizes, you're bound to find a size that fits snugly into those "hard to reach" areas of your site.

Posted by Christine Lee - AdSense Product Marketing

To continue the Australian theme from last week's post, we'd like to share a recent case study which focuses on an Australian publisher. Craig Davis, General Manager of TakeABreak.com.au, saw an increase of 30% in his AdSense revenue after he changed his layouts and introduced image ads. Now, AdSense revenue makes up about 10% of his company's overall revenue. Craig noted that AdSense was "a key element that helped us to move quickly from just another start-up to a leader in the online accommodation industry."

Read more about Craig's story here.



Posted by Julian Sonego - Country Marketing Manager for Australia

Over the past few months, we've drawn attention to the value of video, and specifically, of embedding video on your sites. We're happy to announce that Google Video is now available for Australia!

Our Australian friends can search for the most popular videos in Australia and embed them on their own sites, all within a localized (or rather "localised") interface. Not only is there the usual treasure trove of footage uploaded by individual users already on Google Video, but the AU team has worked closely with great partners like ABC, AFTRS (the Australian Film, Television and Radio School), Channel 10, Film Australia, Fairfax and SonyBMG. We're sure you'll find some great content amongst these partners and others to enhance your website.

In addition, there are now many ways for you to customize the video player itself and the surrounding page. This way, the player is integrated with your content and will help engage your users. You can:

• Resize the player to fit the design of your site by editing the pixel width and height
  
• Set the player to autoplay on page load, or start playing at a specific point in the video
  
• Get creative in the way you design the area surrounding the player (there's a great example here)
  

There's always something new on Google Video, so keep users coming back to your site by varying the videos you use on your site. Happy embedding!

Posted by Julian Sonego - Country Marketing Manager for 'The Land Down Under'

Provide a great user experience, and the money will follow. We've found this to be true time and time again with our own products and services. For publishers like you, this starts with offering content that's meaningful to your visitors. The more you can focus on your core asset -- your site's content -- the more successful you can be with AdSense.

We just launched a service that can help you spend less time, energy, and money on one of the biggest distractions for publishers: maintaining IT systems. Google Apps for Your Domain lets you offer powerful communication and collaboration tools including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk to everyone with an account on your own domain, people within your organization and/or members of your community. You can private-label the interfaces to make them your own, and best of all, everything is managed on Google's scalable, secure systems, just like AdSense. No servers to install or maintain, no spam upgrades to think about, and no special software required.

And sticking with our own credo to focus on the user experience above all else, Google Apps for Your Domain is free. Learn more and get started here.




Posted by Jeremy Milo - Product Marketing Manager for Google Apps for Your Domain

Here's an AdSense mystery worthy of intrepid detective Veronica Mars: Why are increases in clickthrough rate (CTR) sometimes accompanied by decreases in earnings per click?

Occasionally, we hear from publishers who are perplexed that their earnings don't change despite an increase in CTR. This phenomenon can seem inexplicable, and when it happens, publishers may suspect that 'smart pricing' has taken effect, or that Google is making revenue share changes. What's really going on?

AdSense is unique because it's designed to maximize eCPM for our publishers, taking into account both the advertiser's cost-per-click (CPC) bid and the likelihood that the ad will be clicked. Some ads are attractive to a broad range of site visitors and will be clicked on more frequently. While this can be great for your CTR, advertisers are often bidding less for these kinds of broadly targeted ads. Other ads are attractive only to a small niche of users. Advertisers will typically pay more for these tightly targeted ads, but those ads are also less likely to get clicked.

Depending on ad inventory, you may see some days on which AdSense will show a lot of high CTR/low CPC variety ads. On other days, you may see the reverse. If you see this correlation in your own AdSense reports, keep in mind that we're always working hard to maximize revenue for our publishers. One aspect of that is being able to best take advantage of the earnings characteristics of different kinds of ads.

Posted by Bryan Vu - AdSense Optimization Team

In honor of Fashion Week, this Saturday, AdSense will be workin' it out. No, not on the runway -- we'll be doing regular system maintenance from 10am-2pm PST. Even AdSense needs its beauty rest! ;)

You won't be able to access your account during this time, but don't worry, dahling - we'll keep serving those fabulous ads and recording all those stunning impressions they make on your visitors.

Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

This week we bring you two key improvements to AdSense that came about directly from publisher feedback.

First off, you'll be happy to hear that we've completely revamped the Channels page under your AdSense Setup tab. Besides cleaning up the design by housing each product on its own sub-tab, we've also made it easier for you to take action on your channels. Just select the checkbox next to a channel and then choose to activate, deactivate, remove, or rename the channel you've selected. You can also find more information about getting started with channels in our Help Center.



We're also launching the new 200 x 200 size ad format, better known as the small square. This ad format supports text, image and video ads, and we hope that you'll find it a useful option when integrating your ads into your site.



If you have other suggestions for future product features, we'd love to hear them!

Posted by Nikhil Achwal - AdSense Publisher Support

A few weeks ago, we told you that publishers can display AdSense for search results within their own sites. Now AdSense Product Manager Shirin Oskooi explains the benefits and provides a short demonstration in this video.



Interested in implementing search results within your own site? Just visit our Help Center for instructions.

Posted by Dobromir Montauk - AdSense Publisher Support

We're excited to let you know about the launch of a new AdSense blog: Portuguese-speaking publishers can now read the latest AdSense news and announcements at Por Dentro do AdSense: o blog oficial do AdSense em português.

From São Paulo and Dublin, the AdSense Portuguese team supports publishers in countries including Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, and of course Portugal. The new blog will feature local case studies and information just for Portuguese-speaking publishers, as well as optimization tips and feature updates to help you make the most of your AdSense account.

Subscribe to the new blog today and start receiving posts directly in your inbox!

Posted by the AdSense Portuguese blog team

In March, we asked for your feedback on referrals. With the launch of our new button design and the option to display referrals in more products and languages, the referrals team would love to hear more from you. Feel free to give us any type of feedback – whether it's how we can further improve the referrals program, or if you've seen great success with the new button design. We always enjoy receiving mail from you!

Posted by Laura Chen - AdSense Publisher Support

We're happy to tell you that Pack referral buttons are now available in additional languagues such as German, Portuguese, and Japanese. Don't forget -- when a Windows user you've referred to Pack downloads and installs it for the first time, you'll receive up to US$2 in your account.


To begin displaying Pack referral buttons on your site, simply choose Referrals from the AdSense Setup page of your account, then select Pack as the product to which you'd like to refer users on your pages.

Posted by Laura Chen - AdSense Publisher Support

I'd like to share this earth-shattering news with you: David Hasselhoff (of Knight Rider and Baywatch fame) has come out with a classic new music video that should not be missed. How did I find out about it? I saw a dynamically generated link to it from Google Related Links at the bottom of my blog. (And I've found some other gems that way that have to wait for another post.)

Let me give you what the MBAs call the 8-second elevator pitch (our buildings are not very tall around here) on Google Related Links. The idea is you surf over to http://www.google.com/relatedlinks/ and start creating a Google Related Links unit for your site. You pick the color, size, and types of content (related news, videos, searches, web pages) that you want to appear in this Related Links unit, and then copy the JavaScript over to your site just as you would do for an AdSense ad unit. Google crawlers will then crawl your site, see what type of content is there, and then dynamically show links in the unit that relate to your site.



While Google Related Links don't give you revenue directly, you can use them to keep your site fresh and interesting without any maintenance. Happy visitors mean repeat visits. And if you're feeling especially creative, try alternating between Google ads and Google Related Links in a given space on your page. This will encourage people to look in that space for interesting dynamic content.

Oh, and by the way, you're more than welcome to click the links in a Google Related Links unit on your own site. Happy surfing!

Posted by Shannon Bauman - Product Manager for Google Related Links

As membership in the English AdSense Help Forum crosses the 4,500 mark, we're very pleased to announce the launch of two new Help Forums: AdSense 支持论坛 in Chinese, and the AdSense Forum for German speakers.

In these communities, you can help other publishers optimize their sites, ask for troubleshooting advice, or just chat about AdSense features and your experiences with the program.

現在就向其他 AdSense 发布商学习吧!

Lernen Sie von anderen AdSense Publishern!

Posted by Jordan Blackthorne - AdSense Publisher Support

Then take a rest this holiday! After working hard to optimize your site during the past month, it's time to take a break and enjoy the fruits of your efforts. Our U.S. offices will be taking a break this weekend as well, so you can expect that our responses to any messages you send us will take slightly longer to arrive. We'll be back, relaxed and rejuvenated, on Tuesday. If you're too excited about all the optimizations you've made to take it easy, then take some time to browse our Help Center or Help Discussion Forum over the long weekend.

Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

It's hard to believe the month is already over. It seems like just yesterday when Mike Gutner first announced that August was Optimization Month. Since then, members of the AdSense optimization team and Googlers representing other products have shared their findings and best practices for how to optimize your AdSense earnings. We hope you've come through the month with an arsenal of insightful tips and tricks for optimizing not only your AdSense ads, but also your site content for your specific audience.

We'd like to leave you with the following:

1. Nothing warms the hearts of our team more than hearing success stories from AdSense publishers. Please tell us yours!
   
   
2. The road to enlightenment begins with the Optimization Tips page. If you haven't seen it yet or it's been awhile, be sure to check it out.
   
   
3. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime. The AdSense Help group is a great community to post optimization tips and swap best practices with other publishers.

August was Optimization Month, yes, but remember -- you can "Augtomize" any month of the year.

Posted by Carolyn Bang - AdSense Optimization Team

If you've taken the time to make changes to your site over the past month, it's important to monitor their effects. Here are my top three tips to ensure you make the most of measuring your results and gain a deeper understanding of what's happening with AdSense on your site.

1. Get accustomed to custom channels.

The single most effective way I've found for publishers to measure their results is by using custom channels. Custom channels are the ideal way to determine how a recent change in ad placement or ad format has resulted in improved performance. Many publishers fail to keep their custom channel list up to date each time they make a change -- or even worse, don't take the time to set them up at all. Not knowing if you've made the right decision for your site's visitors will make it even more difficult to take the next step, so use custom channels like a tracking device to ensure you're on the road to success.

2. Be analytical in your approach -- use Google Analytics.

Monitoring your AdSense performance need not be restricted to the features within your AdSense account. Learning about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your website will help you make informed decisions regarding ad placement and formats. As we mentioned last week, Google Analytics can help you make choices about improving your site design while incorporating the Adsense optimisation tips into your new layout. Measuring the results of such changes enables better decisions for your site's users, so why not measure your site performance with Analytics?

3. Make yourself available, your reports are now emailable.

If you're serious about measuring how your account is performing, you'll need to keep up to date with your reports. Why spend time trawling through data in your account when you can get it all sent directly to your inbox? Emailable reports are a recent addition to your AdSense account, which give you exactly the data you're interested in on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. What's more, you can send them to multiple email addresses. This way, you can keep your business partner up to date on recent successes. Emailable reports are easy to set up and even easier to access, with one click in your inbox. If you're not using this option already, I encourage you to to set up emailable reports today to monitor the effects of your changes straight away.

Posted by Robert Freeborn – AdSense UK Optimization Team

The “back to school” buzz is in the air, and just as it was key to organize your papers in middle school using your trusty Trapper Keeper, it’s important to manage your ads using your AdSense data. Doing so lets you to see the effectiveness of the different implementations you’ve tested out this month and make decisions about next steps. So let’s flash back to the good old days and apply what we learned in middle school.

Vocabulary: Understanding your data

Before you could use a new word from your vocabulary textbook, you needed to understand its definition. Similarly, there are several important statistical values on your Advanced Reports page for which you should know the definitions before doing any analysis. I recommend that you check out our glossary for each of the terms (Page Impression, eCPM, Clicks) to understand how these values are affected by the changes you make to your site.

Foreign languages: Translating your data

Learning a foreign language involves taking a great deal of new information and breaking it down into sizeable chunks to interpret it. As we mentioned in a previous post, URL and custom channels are a great way to take a more granular look at your site and track specific implementation changes you’ve made.

It’s also necessary to create an appropriate measurement for your data. Too much is confusing, and too little is not going to give you accurate results. Normally, good measurements include 30-, 60- and 90-day increments.

Finally, you’ll need to analyze the data. A great feature we offer is the CSV link, which enables you to download your data onto your hard drive so you can rearrange it to your specific needs. I recommend using Google Spreadsheets or Excel.



Art appreciation: Displaying your data

As your art teacher used to say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Staring at raw data can be tedious and won't help you visualize trends in your AdSense stats. This is why tables and graphs are so effective. A table can make your data more comprehensive and easier to read, while a graph helps you to observe visually what's happening to your various values. If you notice that one channel is performing better than another over a set period, it may be time to implement the same changes into your other pages.

Tip: Track the various implementation changes you’ve made on a separate sheet, and note the date. You can then review those dates later and compare them with previous sets of data to discover which changes had the greatest impact on your site.

Quarterly report card

I recommend that you perform this type of analysis every 3 months to ensure that you are optimizing your site to its potential. By tracking and managing your data, you will be on your way to becoming a more savvy AdSense user. And of course, don’t forget to thank your 7th grade teacher for imparting this knowledge.

Posted by Sunil Subhedar - AdSense Optimization Team

So you’ve optimized your pages and implemented our best practices. Now what? It’s time to take a look at your results and decide where to go from here. To close out Optimization Month, this week we’ll share tips on how to monitor the performance of your account, how to evaluate your results -- and how to figure out what to do next.

Now that you’ve implemented some of our optimization tips and best practices, hopefully your revenue is on the rise. But what if you see ups and downs in your stats? Never fear -- it’s quite common for revenue to fluctuate over time for any number of reasons, like which ads your users click on, or changes in ad inventory.

Seasonality can also affect revenue. If you run a fan site for a TV show, you might see a drop in revenue after the season finale due to a reduction in advertiser inventory or a decrease in the number of site targeting campaigns. Or, if you run an education site, you may see revenue decline during the summer vacation due to decreased page views. This is completely normal, and things will bounce back.

It’s crucial to keep these normal cyclical changes in mind when evaluating your stats. It’s also important to compare apples to apples. For instance, be sure you’re comparing days or months that received a similar number of page views. This will ensure that you are making accurate data comparisons. Using custom channels will also help you compare ad unit statistics at a very granular level to determine exactly which units are performing well, and which need to be modified or moved in order to boost CTR and eCPM.

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about innovative strategies other successful publishers have used, check out some of our case studies.

Remember that every site is unique, so it’s critically important to keep testing and experimenting to see what performs the best for your own site. Don’t be afraid to try new things! And finally, I leave you with the following words of wisdom: Duct tape is like The Force -- it has a Light side and a Dark side and it holds the universe together.

Posted by Chrissie Kawasaki - AdSense Optimization Team

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Optimization Month posts to bring you this update: Our engineers will be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday (8/26) from 10 am to 2 pm PDT, so you won't be able to access your account during this time frame. Please be assured that ads will continue to be served to your pages, and your account statistics and earnings will be recorded as usual. In the meantime, feel free to go back and review all the great tips our optimization specialists have posted on the blog this month.

As always, we appreciate your patience!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Optimization Team

We hope you've gained insight into the various tools and products Google has to offer for increasing the visibility of your site. As Boyar promised, we’ll close out this week's theme a little differently, by sharing with you the story of a publisher who used a number of Google products to increase his site's audience 50-fold in just two months.

Ryan, webmaster for TropicalYarns.com, had been using AdSense for content and AdSense for search to monetize his pages. However, he noticed that his site’s visitors consisted mainly of existing customers. Using Analytics, he was able to better understand his new and returning visitors. After pinpointing the most popular page on his site in June, he added an email newsletter sign-up form to that page and saw the subscription list grow by 20%. In just one month, he watched new visitors grow to 75% of his audience.



At the same time, Ryan used AdWords to advertise his site’s offerings. After experimenting for three weeks to optimize his ads, he was able to achieve a higher clickthrough rate and bring more engaged users to his site; in July, 14% of his site’s visitors arrived via an AdWords ad, and these visitors made up 22% of pageviews for the month. Plus, by using his Analytics reports to determine the search keywords which brought users to his site, he was able to make informed decisions about his ads. For example, because the search phrase "free patterns" drove organic traffic to his site, he knew he didn’t need to run ads for that phrase.

Since Tropical Yarns is a retail store, Ryan also decided to experiment with products such as Google Base and Google Checkout. By listing more than 1,000 products on Base and offering customers a way to purchase them online, Ryan reached out to new users; although the store is located in South Florida, interested buyers from all over the United States can now visit the site to make purchases.

Recently, Ryan has been experimenting with Google Video to engage users on his site – future plans include a short commercial for the store, videos of classes, and more. Ryan's story serves as a great example of how you can improve your site's content and visibility through many Google products.

When asked about his overall experience, Ryan commented that "one by one, each of the dozen Google products we used has increased awareness of our website and helped to drive more quality traffic. No single item was overnight magic, but doing them all has proved to be a huge success!"

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Optimization Team

As an AdSense publisher, you've probably put a lot of effort into making your website the best it can be -- optimizing your ads, building good content, and driving high quality visits. But there's one crucial step left: to see just how effective these things are. How many visitors are you getting each day? What pages are they visiting? Where do they come from, and which keywords brought them to your site -- both from pay-per-click efforts and from natural search?

Many website owners push their site live, and then leave it at that, remaining in the dark about all these questions. Google Analytics can enlighten you. We think it's much more fun to have the answers to these burning questions, and that you owe it to yourself to know for sure. After all, this is the payoff for all the hard work that's gone into creating your site. When you launch or make a change to it, there's that initial excitement of wondering who's going to check it out. And Google Analytics can help you with all of this.



It's as easy to set up as AdSense. All you need to do is add a couple lines of code to each page in your site, and to gain valuable insight with graphical representations of visitor levels and detailed, easy-to-use reports that show:

• pageviews of each of individual web pages
  
• the average time spent on each page
  
• new vs. returning visitors
  
• visitors' geographical location and language
  
• their browser and platform choices
  
• click path data
  

Perhaps this gives you an idea of how Google Analytics can help you measure the success of changes to your site, and confidently make design choices. The best part? After retreating into invitation mode since it launched last November, we're happy to tell you that Analytics is now available for everyone, so you can get started analyzing your site right away.

Happy tracking!

Posted by Jeff Gillis - Product Marketing for Google Analytics

You're an AdSense publisher, and you've got great content, but you want a) more people to know about it and b) your loyal readers to know when you post new content so they can visit your site easily -- maybe by the click of a button. By building up traffic, you can get more eyeballs on your content and of course your AdSense ads. This is where Google Toolbar comes in.

There's more to Toolbar than just web search, pop-up blocking and auto-filling web forms. With the recent release of Google Toolbar 4, millions of Toolbar users are now adding custom buttons directly to their browsers. You can help users visit your site (and more) with just a click.



By adding your website's custom button to the Google Toolbar, people can instantly:

• Visit your website
  
  
• Search your website by entering a query into the Google search box and clicking your custom button
  
  
• Get the latest feeds from your website by clicking the drop-down menu next to your custom button

Sound daunting? It shouldn't -- creating a button is actually quite simple. Just go to our Getting Started page and submit your button for display in our Button Gallery. We already have over 700 custom buttons. Who knows? Maybe yours will end up on my Google Toolbar!

Posted by Joyce Sohn - Toolbar Product Marketing Manager