AdSense: Hidden Third Party Tricks and Consequences
July 27, 2005
A few days ago, JenSense had put up an entry about how some third-party javascript tools could very well mess up with AdSense, and make your site unvoluntarily go against their terms of service:
A warning to all AdSense publishers. It makes good business sense to dump all your cookies and take a spin around your website and see if any AdSense ad units pop up where you did not place any.
WebmasterWorld member morpheus83 happened to notice some strange behavior on his website - a mysterious 336×280 AdSense ad unit showed up on his site. An ad unit he didn’t place, and one that reveals a different publisher ID than his own. But on subsequent page views, that AdSense ad unit was nowhere to be seen. But lo and behold, it eventually showed up again.
A little digging around found the culprit - a third party javascript placed on the site to “tell a friend” about the site. These javascripts are popular with webmasters, and in 2003 this website already had 2,000 members signed up and using the service. Members recently received an email asking them to switch to a new code.
The update on this is that one’s account can indeed be suspended for such a trick. So, AdSense users, beware.
Graywolf’s AdSense Tips
July 26, 2005
What may seem like an evidence and “newbie knowledge” to anyone already well-versed in the subtle use of AdSense can however be another man’s treasure – namely, the basic, needed information all in one place. There lies the interest of this Google AdSense Tips, Tricks and Secrets blog entry by Graywolf on Wolf-Howl.
There lies, nicely worded, everything one needs to know in order to get started with AdSense the right way, and avoid mistakes that may not be definitive, but can however become a really useless burden.
Among other things:
- How ads will come out on general or niche sites
- URLs and channels
- Site design and integration
- Using images
- … and some more
AdSense: Design and Clicks
July 20, 2005
Lee from GeekReview shares a few tips about how to tinker ads and website design in order to optimize one’s AdSense revenue:
On the basis of my experience, heres a few tips to increase your CTR:
Keep it simple
A flash design with lots of bells and whistles might impress people, but such designs rarely seem to be condusive to ‘clickers’. If they have to use their head too much, they will simply move onto the next site.
Don’t make things too obvious
The default ‘Ads by Google’ display is very very common, and most users have become aware of it. Additionally, unless your design matches it, it sticks out like a sore thumb and can spoil an otherwise nice layout.
By blending the ad layout with your site, it can not only enhance the site design, but also help steer people to click. Google gives you plenty of options here, so use them!
You can read more about it here.
Open Source Adsense Tracker
July 17, 2005
I caught sight of this link through SEOBook, and it looked interesting enough for me to pay more attention to it. Even though I use Adsense for one of my blogs only and haven’t made any substancial profit yet, being able to get better logging tools can be a good thing, even if only for checking and own curiosity purpose – as well as identifying what ads do fare the best.
Here is thus Adsenselogger. I haven’t had the opportunity to install and test it fully yet, but it sure sounds like a nice ide. Among its features are listed:
- Tracks your Adsense clicks and impressions from unlimited domains.
- Tracks referring servers.
- Tracks target of Adsense ad clicked.
- Displays updated Adsense Ad and Search earnings every 15 minutes.
- Detailed reports (active top 10,000 pages…)
- See what Adsense ad formats that performs best.
- Earnings and clicks are logged to database for further analysis
- Easy to use interface
- Automatic notifications on script updates.
- … and more
