AdSense ads appear on your page

Will the AdSense ads appear on your page?

Publishers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or also on a large network of sites.

Will AdSense ads you see on Google appear your pages? To get an idea, find web pages that have material similar to the content you're planning to create and look at their AdSense ads.

You can also use AdSense's preview tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different countries.

Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative opportunity.

Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.

Get more Adsense Clicks

New way to get more AdSense clicks

How to counteract AdSense blindness

If you've been online long enough to remember how banner blindness developed, you'll love Jay Young's brand new technique for encouraging more people to click on AdSense ads.


CONTENTS:

1. New way to get more clicks on AdSense ads
2. Ken Evoy gives away ANOTHER ebook
3. Seven easy ways to create bonuses
4. Thought for today: Quality of life


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1. New way to get more clicks on AdSense ads
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Remember what happened with banner ads? In the early days of the Internet, a high percentage of website visitors clicked on the banners, curious to see what was being advertised.

However, after a while people developed "banner blindness". They learned to tune out banners and just didn't even see most of them any more.

In the same way, if you use boring AdSense ads, you get "AdSense blindness". So webmasters use different techniques to force their ads to stand out, to keep people clicking on the ads.

Jay Young has come up with an absolutely brilliant idea.

He wraps colorful, eye-catching graphics around his AdSense ads, making it impossible for you to miss them.

After testing and finding out how well this works, he's made it easy for you to do it, too.

I think this idea is absolutely brilliant.

Be quick for this. Grab it at the introductory price before it goes up on Tuesday.

I have.

Have a look and see what you think...

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/adsense-backgrounds


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2. Ken Evoy gives away ANOTHER ebook
====================================

Hot on the heels of giving away "Make Your Site SELL" - http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/myss - Ken Evoy is giving another ebook.

It's a book which is vitally important for affiliates, "Make Your Content PREsell!".

Ken is a PREselling evangelist. He wrote the only book on the topic.

PREselling is one of the most misunderstood skills in affiliate marketing. To succeed as an affiliate, you MUST know how to PREsell. It can make or break your affiliate business.

I strongly recommend you grab this free ebook.

Get it here now...

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/mycps


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3. Seven easy ways to create bonuses
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A popular super affiliate technique is to give away bonuses to encourage people to buy using your affiliate link.

But how much time are you prepared to spend creating bonuses?

Dan Lok describes seven ways to create bonuses quickly and easily...

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/articles/500/1/Seven-easy-ways-to-create-bonuses


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4. Thought for today: Quality of life
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"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to that person's committment to excellence, regardless of the chosen field of endeavor." - Vince Lombardi.

Keyword research for AdSense pages

8 ways to do keyword research for AdSense pages

1. If you have a Google AdWords account, pretend you are planning to advertise using different keywords, and see how much you'd have to pay. That will give you a good indication of the popularity of the keywords.

Here's how. Follow these steps. In step 2, "Create Ad Group", click on "Calculate Estimates" and "Recalculate Estimates". These show you the maximum you would have to pay per click to advertise for particular keywords or key phrases.

For finding new key phrases, you can use Go to Google's AdWords and find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords or key phrases you're interested in. Here's how.

Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and play around with the free Keyword Tool.

For example, try putting in a keyword or phrase, such as "book" and click on "Get More Keywords". Pretend you're willing to pay the maximum per click the tool allows - 100. (You can choose any currency. I chose US.)

Over on the right side of the page, make sure that "Cost and position estimates" is selected.

The tool will calculate for you the estimated average CPC (cost per click) for a whole lot of words and phrases. Try entering a different word, say "debt" or "free", click on "Re-calculate" and watch how the CPC changes.

You DON'T have to choose a topic which has expensive keywords. Often topics that have expensive keywords are very competitive. You may do better choosing a less competitive niche with cheaper keywords.
Sign up for AdWords.

2. Keywords Analyzer is a superb tool which can generate thousands of key phrases that people are typing into search engines. If you have a Wordtracker account, you can also import data from Wordtracker and analyze it. It shows you, for example, how many advertisers have ad campaigns at AdWords for each phrase. If you're using AdSense, the more advertisers the better!

3. Have a look at the top 100 keywords on 7search. This will give you a quick idea of keywords that people are willing to pay big money for. You can also type phrases into the 7Search Keyword Suggestion Tool. This is just step one of your keyword research. You'll want to dig deeper.

4. At FindWhat pay-per-click search engine you can do a search for any phrase and quickly see how much advertisers are paying per click.

5. You can experiment typing words into Yahoo! Search Marketing's View Bids Tool. Let's say you type in "asbestos cancer". The top three advertisers often pay about $12 per click. So that might be an good choice for a topic - provided you're a specialist on mesothelioma AND provided that your research shows that it's an in-demand topic.

For "debt consolidation", the top two advertisers often pay more than $9 per click.

6. The free Web Marketing Keyword Bid Research Tool speeds up your research at Yahoo! Search Marketing. Type in a keyword and learn how much advertisers are paying per click and also find out how many searches were done on that keyword last month.

However, you need to know that Yahoo! combines singular and plural phrases, and robots are used to check bids. Both of these factors tend to distort the results you'll see. Checking Yahoo! Search Marketing is good for quick, rough research, nothing more.

7. You can use Wordtracker to look for the 1,000 most popular keywords. You can also use it to compile a useful list of keywords relating to one topic. If you buy it for a day or a week, you can do a lot of research in that time. It's the tool the professionals use.

Wordtracker has a free trial, but it's fairly limited. You can subscribe for as little as one day and do an awful lot of keyword research in that time. I have an annual account because I use it so frequently for keyword research.

8. The brainstorming and research tools in Site Build It! are my favorite way to do brainstorming for keywords that are in high demand and low supply. SBI is a superb tool - actually, a suite of tools. It's an all-in-one web hosting, site-building and web marketing tool. Type in a keyword and SBI Manager will present you with dozens of profitable keywords - ones with high demand and low supply. It can present them in order of profitability. Drill down, and you'll get dozens more profitable keywords.

SBI also has an "Analyze It" tool that helps you build keyword-rich pages that rank highly in search engines. It's simply superb. I use it and love it.

Site Build It! is an excellent choice for quickly building large, simple sites designed to rank highly in search engines - which makes it perfect for generating lots of AdSense revenue. Check it out.

QUICK SUMMARY: Build useful, simple sites - one topic per page - using valuable key phrases that are high in demand and low in supply. For researching, building and promoting easy-to-build sites that rank high in search engines, there's one suite of tools that's head and shoulders above all the rest - Site Build It!

Profitable keywords

You want profitable keywords: high demand, low supply

Keep in mind that some topics attract much higher payouts per click than others.

For example, if your site is about topics such as debt consolidation, web hosting or asbestos-related cancer, you'll earn much more per click than if it's about free things.

On the other hand, if you concentrate only on top-paying keywords, you'll face an awful lot of tough competition.

What you want are keywords that are high in demand and low in supply.

So do some careful keyword research before you build your pages.

Increase your AdSense earnings

How to increase your AdSense earnings

If you hear about people achieving high payments per click with AdSense, remember that's only part of the story. for high total earnings, you also need lots of page views and a high click-through rate.

Here are some ideas on how to achieve those three things:

If you're starting afresh designing a site specifically for AdSense revenue, you'll want a simple design that makes it easy to paste Google's code into a horizontal or vertical space on the site. For experienced webmasters, that's easy.

To increase your click-throughs, design a simple, uncluttered page with the AdSense ads displayed prominently.

Use white space, so that the AdSense panel catches the eye.

Where possible, use ads high on the page. They catch visitors' attention.

Experiment with borderless ads high on the page. (You can create borderless ads by setting the border color to the same as the background color. Look in your AdSense control panel under "Ad settings".)

Try placing AdSense high in the left-hand column. That works well for super affiliate James Martell.

On very simple, one-column pages, making your article wrap around AdSense ads near the top-right of the page works remarkably well for me on a non-Internet marketing site.

Stick to only one topic per page - that makes it easier for Google to serve up highly relevant ads on your pages.

Plain, bland pages with few competing links result in higher click-through rates on the AdSense ads.

If you want to target certain high-priced keywords, use them in the file name, in the heading on the page, and in the first paragraph - in other words, use search engine optimization techniques.

If you change those keywords, Google will change the ads that appear on your page.

If you have trouble getting AdSense to serve relevant pages, check your anchor text - the words used in links on your page. Try changing some of those words.

Watch out for cases where Google has guessed wrong, and is displaying ads that won't interest your visitors. Figure out which words are involved, and rewrite those words. Help Google by sticking closely to the topic.

Don't worry about losing traffic via those clicks. If you can earn maybe 30 or 50 cents or more per click, you WANT to lose visitors!

You'll also want keyword-rich pages, optimized to rank highly in search engines, so you can serve lots of pages.

Try using ads at the top of the page and again at the bottom. At first, this wasn't allowed but AdSense changed the rules and it's now OK.

One of the beautiful things about AdSense is that you can generate revenue from informational sites even if there are no obvious related affiliate programs. With more than 100,000 advertisers, there's a good chance that Google will find ads that match your pages, better than the big ad networks can.

Don't be tempted into trying to create thousands of spammy computer-generated articles. Human beings review sites for AdSense. Build useful, interesting sites. Google likes them.

One way to create articles quickly is use Gary Antosh's approach. He pays people to write articles for him - by the truckload. So far he has bought hundreds of them and paid only $5 per article. See How to buy articles for $5 - the details

Another way is to use works that are copyright-free. Here's a book that describes how to find such articles: The Public Domain: How to Find and Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More

However, that technique isn't likely to be useful for long. At the very least, it would be wise to add your own introduction and conclusions to make your pages different from everyone else's.

Several websites now sell packages of articles on a wide variety of topics. I belong to several of these membership sites. It's an excellent way of saving time. It's so much easier to rewrite an article you've bought than do all the research and writing yourself.

These articles are often referred to as PLR articles or private label rights articles because you own the right to alter them in any way you wish. Here are some good sources of PLR articles.

You can use PLR articles to quickly add lots of keyword-rich articles to your site for the search engines to find.

For long-term success, write your own original articles on a topic you're passionate about. That way, you're writing for humans AND search engines

Serious tracking to maximize AdSense profits

Serious tracking to maximize AdSense profits

How do you find out which AdSense ads get the highest number of click-throughs? How do you find out which ads are best at generating clicks that pay?

AdSense provides what it calls channels, and you can experiment to find out which pages on your site are generating the most revenue, which colors work best, what ad placement works best, whether you should use borderless ads, etc.

However, if you have a large site, you'll find AdSense tracking via channels is seriously lacking.

AdSense Tracker is a powerful php script that keeps detailed logs of all impressions and clicks on AdSense ads on all your websites without altering the ad code itself. The data can then be used to analyze the effectiveness of your sites, track different ad sizes and styles, or even individual pages.

You can track every click-through so you'll know what your visitors are looking for. This makes it easy for you to build more perfectly targeted, profitable pages.

It can track unlimited domains and pages. It's resource intensive and should be hosted separately.

If you just have a small site you probably don't need it. AdSense Tracker is a tool for professionals.

Affiliate programs versus AdSense earnings

Affiliate programs versus AdSense earnings

Affiliate programs are often compared by looking at the EPC - earnings per click.

However, if you want to compare affiliate programs commissions with AdSense earnings, a more precise way is to calculate the payout you receive per 1,000 page views (CPM).

Here's how to calculate your CPM:

Let's say you earn $180 in affiliate commissions from 30 thousand (30,000) page views. $180 divided by 30 = $6. You have a CPM of $6. Not very inspiring, but not uncommon.

The AdSense stats display the effective CPM you earn.

Remember, AdSense doesn't have to replace your affiliate commissions. You can earn affiliate commissions AND AdSense commissions from the same page.

If you have a very efficient site with a high conversion rate, AdSense may not be right for you - or perhaps it would be suitable for SOME pages, but not others. Remember, the more choices you give people, the more likely you are to confuse them.

However, if you're creating a large information site, or if you have a site that does not have a brilliant conversion rate, AdSense could prove to be a very profitable addition to your site.

(Strictly speaking, CPM means COST per 1,000 impressions, but the calculation works OK whether you're spending money or earning it.)

Sites using AdSense

Sites using AdSense

Sites using AdSense include large information sites, affiliate-driven sites, forums and blogs.

"Chat" sites are considered not suitable. Some blogs are being rejected, but information-rich blogs are being accepted.


GoogleGuy explains AdSense

GoogleGuy, an anonymous Google employee who contributes to discussions on the WebMasterWorld.com forums, explains how AdSense will help information sites:

"...sites that provide solid content, especially niche sites that don't want to hunt down their own advertisers, should really benefit ... there's a whole universe of people who ... mostly produce informational sites, and the chance to recoup their costs without much effort is nice. I hope AdSense does encourage more diversity and voices on the web, because now smaller sites can work on what they're interested in - the content of their sites - without worrying very much about the costs of self-publishing information."


How to choose sites to block

You'll probably want to block some of the AdSense ads from appearing on your site. As well as blocking rubbishy sites, you may want to block tough competitors.

The ability to block sites is especially important for sites that are not purely affiliate-income driven. For example, if you're selling a service or a product you won't want competitors' ads on your site.

You can find such competitors by doing some searches on Google for key phrases that are important on your site and looking at the AdWords ads that appear.

Why are the wrong AdSense being displayed ads?

Why are the wrong AdSense being displayed ads?

Sometimes, Google seems to get it wrong. You create a page and ads you've seen elsewhere and were expecting to see on your page just don't turn up. Instead, you see vaguely relevant or totally irrelevant ads.

Here are four possibilities:

1. Your page isn't perfectly optimized for the keywords. It's very important to get the key phrase in the file name, for example "product-xyz.html", in the title, in the heading, in the first paragraph, in the body, at the end, and put it in the meta tag description, too.

2. Advertisers can choose to advertise just on Google's search engine. They can opt out of advertising on the AdSense content network. Perhaps the advertisers you're interested in have opted out. To check, type a few phrases into Google and try to find some sites that are displaying Google ads and see which ads appear.

3. Advertisers can choose which countries will see their ads. If you're in Canada, for example, you may not see an ad that people in the U.S. will see. To find out where ads are being displayed, download the free Adsense Preview Tool.

4. This is very rare, but weird stuff can happen for no apparent reason. If all else fails, contact AdSense support. I've always found them prompt and helpful.

12 mistakes affiliates make - and how to fix them

12 mistakes affiliates make - and how to fix them

Affiliates struggling to earn $100 a month often find it hard to believe that other people could possibly earn as much as $10,000 or even $100,000 a month in commissions.

Believe it. Big commissions do happen. And you can expect to hear about even bigger commissions.

Forrester Research predicts that affiliate programs and affiliate networks will produce $280 billion annually in e-commerce sales by 2008.

In most programs, 5% of the affiliates generate the vast majority of the sales. If you're not in that 5% and want to be, you'll have to change what you're doing.

Here are 12 mistakes you could be making, and how to fix them.

1. Are you telling people how to make money on the Internet when you don't know how yourself?

Perhaps - just perhaps - you can succeed at this, but it's the most obvious trap into which new affiliates fall. You join a few affiliate programs and set up a site offering Internet marketing tips, work-from-home tips, instant-business tips, or be-your-own-boss tips.

The advantages of doing this include having great products to promote, high commissions and lots of help from Internet marketers.

However, if you do this, you face two massive challenges.

1. You'll have hundreds of thousands of web pages out there competing with yours.

2. You're competing with the planet's best marketing EXPERTS. Some of the brightest brains in Internet marketing are working full-time to grab the attention of your target audience.

I'm not saying you can't succeed in this field, but if you're new to affiliate programs, this is definitely NOT the best place to begin. If you're struggling, find a less well traveled path.

You don't have to abandon your existing website. Just launch a new one based on a new theme. Later, when you've learned more and really have something to offer, it will be time to revamp your marketing tips site

How AdSense matches ads to web pages

How AdSense matches ads to web pages

Google is doing a good job of finding ads that are highly relevant to the web pages.

Google says:

"We go beyond simple keyword matching to understand the context and content of web pages. Based on an algorithm that includes such factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web, we know what a page is about, and can precisely match Google ads to each page."

Occasionally Google gets it wrong. It places great importance on the file name. So be sure to use important keywords in the file name of each page, such as "contextual-advertising.html" for an article on contextual advertising.

Also, watch out for your anchor text - the words in the links on your page. We've found that sometimes if irrelevant ads are being served, you can fix the problem by rewriting anchor text.

You can check the relevance of the ads by looking at the text ads near the top-right of this page.

How much can you earn?

How much can you earn?

Let's say you have a goal of earning $100,000 a year from AdSense. Is that possible?

Let's see ... $100,000 274 pages which earn $1 a day
OR
548 pages which earn 50 cents a divided by 365 = $274 a day. So your goal is to produce either:

day
OR
1096 pages which earn 25 cents a day

The following are hypothetical cases. To earn $1 a day per page, you need, per page...

400 visitors, 5% click-through rate (CTR) and average 5c payout.
Or 200 visitors, 10% CTR and an average 5c payout.
Or 100 visitors, 10% CTR, and an average 10c payout.
Or 100 visitors, 5% CTR, and an average 20c payout.
Or 50 visitors, 10% CTR and 20c average payout.
Or 25 visitors, 20% CTR and 20c average payout.
Or 20 visitors, 10% CTR and 50c average payout.
Or 10 visitors, 20% CTR and 50c average payout.
Or 5 visitors, 20% CTR and $1 average payout.

Let's assume you choose a goal somewhere around the middle, say aiming for 50 visitors per page and want 274 pages earning $1 a day. You'd need 274 x 50 = 13,700 pageviews a day.

Does that sound too tough? If so, you'd better look for more profitable keywords and ways to improve your click-through rates.

Let's try a different scenario. You choose more profitable keywords and make your $1 on average per page from, say, 10 visitors. 274 x 10 = 2740 pageviews a day.

That's looking easier to achieve. If your average visitor sees 3 pages, you now need 913 unique visitors a day.

Is that too tough to achieve in your niche? If so, create two sites, each attracting half that number, 456 unique visitors, a day.

Can't achieve those click-through rates and payouts? Then you'll either need more pages on your sites on more niche sites.

Some affiliates have a goal of writing one article a day and building one site a month.

Need a little more help reaching that $100,000 goal? Add affiliate commissions into the equation. Add a newsletter for repeat sales.

Choose the goal which best matches your site or sites.

Then start building keyword-rich pages containing well researched, profitable keywords, and get lots of high quality links to your site.

Please note, because of the AdSense rules, these are all hypothetical cases. I'm not allowed to give real cases. Real CTR rates and payouts vary hugely.


It's fast

Google usually approves web sites in less than a day.

After your site is approved, within a few hours a special Google spider will spider your site. Then it's time to paste the code into your site and the text ads will appear.

You can choose between either horizontal or skyscraper AdSense ads.

Experiences with AdSense

Experiences with AdSense

The payment you receive per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise using Google's AdWords service. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents per click and as high as $10 or $12 in profitable niches, perhaps even more sometimes. You earn a share of that.

So your payment rates can vary enormously.

The rules forbid me from revealing my stats. However, in the tests I'm doing on five sites, the results have been startling - far better than I expected. The results are much better than I receive from many affiliate programs.

In the past, I've talked to affiliates who were happy to receive $5 or $6 CPM (per 1,000 page views). My results from AdSense leave such affiliate revenues far behind.

I've increased my use of AdSense. It's a winner!

If my results are typical, it helps enormously if you build very simple, uncluttered pages so that the ads catch the visitor's eye more than anything else

How to Apply to Google's AdSense Program

How to Apply to Google's AdSense Program

Who is Eligible to Apply to Google's AdSense program?

Google AdSense is currently open to any English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, or Turkish language websites, and add new languages are added all the time. You don't need to be based in the United States to participate.

Google AdSense offers payment to publishers in US dollar checks, and also offers local currency options for publishers in 43 countries.

Applying to the Google AdSense program is extremely easy and just takes a few minutes. Simply visit the Google AdSense home page.
Hearing Back From Google

Google says it will just take two or three days to receive your acceptance or rejection. Google often responds even more quickly.

Naturally, Google reserves the right to reject sites -- and they do. For example, they will reject sites on drugs, pornography, or gambling. They will also reject personal pages, sites with excessive advertising or other content-targeted or text-based ads, incentives of clicking on the keywords, profanity, or hate of any sort.

We recommend you read all of Google's Program Policies before you apply.

And if you haven't yet checked out our free Google AdSense Web Tool, we recommend you do so now -- before you apply. This tool allows you to peek at which Google AdWords may be displayed on your site. It also provides six suggestions for using the AdSense Web Tool to maximize your AdSense revenue.

Adsense injection

Adsense injection:

I was looking for a simple simple Wordpress plugin that just inserted Adsense code randomly into a pre-existing blog. All the ones I found would only replace an Adsense comment with Adsense code. That’s great if you want to go through every article you have and post little adsense tags, but for a site that has some bulk to it, it sucks.

It also increased banner blindness by keeping the ads in the same place time after time.

My new Adsense Injection plugin just takes a random paragraph (or br tag) break in your article and inserts adsense code. It does one per story on multi-post pages (home, archive, category) and let’s you pick how many to show on single post pages. It lets you pick how many total ads to show at any time as well (0-3) and it lets you set the formats and colors you want it to randomly select from.

I’m using it on this blog if that gives you an idea of how it works.

Version 2.0 Let’s you show YPN ads as well as Google, although I can’t test it because they wouldn’t give me an account in their precious beta launch. : (

If you want to keep ads from displaying on specific posts, use the tag in the post HTML somewhere. I do that on a few posts on this site. Go look for them. It’s like a treasure hunt where no one wins!

If you want to keep ads from displaying above a certain point in a post, use the tag in the post HTML where you want it to start.

Here’s an example of how to fill out the Adsense Injection Options page. Use your own adsense ID.

UPDATE 2.0
Checkboxes for
Do not show me my own ads
Put google_adtest= 0.

I guess you can screw up your stats by looking at your own ads. Lame.
You can now pick either YPN ads, Google Ads or randomize them.
adsensestart tag now exists for people with images and whatnot
You can ad multiple ads on single page posts to really cram ads down people’s throats. Yeehaw!

UPDATE 1.9

Added a center alignment option. I also made the plugin work for people who don’t use the wysiwyg editor. It splits the post on

UPDATE 1.8

Bit of a stupid paragraph tag ruining bug fixed today. If you were having problems before, this should fix it.

UPDATE 1.7

Put a new ad size in the code. Also, Danny from k2xl.com had the cool idea of putting a tag in a post or page that would prevent AdSense ads from being displayed. Now, if you put in a post or a page, no matter what the other settings are, no ads will be displayed in that post anywhere. Category pages, archives, the home page, there just won’t be any ads on it. Thanks Danny! Awesome idea!

UPDATE 1.5

New version doesn’t mess up paragraph tags if they have class attributes.

UPDATE

Apparently my site couldn’t take the stress of a global Wordpress Dashboard link. Dang. Thanks for the link! Hope it works now!

UPDATE 1.4

Apparently running AdSense in your feed is against their TOS. Apparently this plugin also displayed ads if you were running your feeds in full text. I don’t do that because then they just get scraped by spammer dicks. This new update removes Ads from your feed if you were running full text. It also gives you the new 200×200 block

UPDATE 1.3

I think a lot of people are really going to like this update.

I added a set of checkboxes in the admin panel that will let you opt out of displaying adsense ads on certain types of pages:

If you want to NOT display ads on your home page or on static pages, then just go click the corresponding box in your Options>Adsense panel. That oughta keep your grubby mitts out of my code!

UPDATE 1.2

I added the one huge banner, I think it’s 460, for everyone who likes running banners instead of little boxes that disrupt blogposts.

I also added an Admin only checkbox on the options page so you can preview your Adsense Injected blog for yourself without letting your users see. It actually previews your blog with Adsense for anyone with a user level above 8 — but if you know what that means you can probably change it on your own.


About Google Adsense

Welcome to the first website totally dedicated to helping you get the most out of Google's new AdSense program.

Google's AdSense is perhaps the fastest and easiest way to generate revenue from a website that contains great content.

Our names are Audri and Jim Lanford, and we're very excited about AdSense. In case we haven't yet met, you can click here.

Since it's a Google program, not surprisingly, it's not based on get-rich-quick or pie-in-the-sky ideas. Instead, it's a legitimate, well-conceived and executed program that will help many website owners achieve their goals.

Here you'll find everything you need to know about this new program to maximize your revenue and your AdSense results.

If you don't yet know anything about AdSense (or you'd like to know if it can benefit you), click here to discover the answer to the question: What is AdSense?

Or check out our free, special Google AdSense Web Tool. This tool allows you to peek at which Google AdWords may be displayed on your site. It also provides six suggestions for using the AdSense Web Tool to maximize your AdSense revenue.

Be sure to sign up for our free Mini-Course, 'Dollars and AdSense.' It's dedicated to helping you get the most out of Google's new AdSense program. We take you 'behind the scenes' and show you real-life examples of what's working and what isn't (and why), what pitfalls to avoid, specific tactics to improve your AdSense revenue, and much more.

Or you can click here for 10 easy tips to maximize revenue with AdSense.

Making Perfect Google AdSense

And be sure to check out our new edition of our ebook and audio, '10 Quick Steps to Making Perfect Google AdSense.'.

We've added a page to help you take advantage of Google's new Alternate Ads.

Finally, check out these Internet marketing recommended resources that will help you make the most of AdSense.

Don't miss out on perhaps the most exciting new source of revenue for small, medium or even large websites.

Google Adsense Secrets

Its no big secret that some folks are making some significant money in Google's AdSense program. Experienced website publishers are making $100 to $1000 per day and some even more. In the AdSense program, website owners publish information folks are interested in, Google generates ads which match the topics and content of the pages published, and if readers find the ads interesting, they click on them and the publisher is paid for the interested readers he sends to the advertiser.

In spite of what you read, it is not the quick way to buckets of easy money. In my experience, when people tell you they have some special secret to for making fast easy money they are always trying to sell you something. More often than not, the product for sale is usually worthless information. I am selling nothing, so I will be frank and honest and tell you the honest and real truth. Yes, AdSense is truly a great opportunity, especially if you own an already popular website.

On the other hand, the days of throwing up a low quality web site made of material copied (often illegally) from other sites and making easy money are gone. What few of these junky MFA (Made For AdSense) arbitrage sites that remain are under attack from Google. Advertisers find these sites undesirable places to put their ads. Google does not like their business model (nor the fact that they make advertisers unhappy), and is actively seeking to find such low quality sites and remove them from the AdSense program. The minimum acceptable quality bar for MFA sites keeps being raised all the time, so why build a junk site and constantly have to fight to keep it above the minimum standards?

The reliable way to make money on AdSense is to create high quality pages of unique information that are of value and interest to readers. Create a website which is the proverbial “better mousetrap” and in time you will generate the necessary interest, traffic and ad revenue. Publishing a website is much like publishing paper and ink magazine or newspaper – in that readers want a quality publication that is interesting and entertaining. Like the older media forms, advertisers like high quality attractive publications – and they don’t like slapped together junk that no one finds interesting or useful. If you are going to build up a business this way, its worth your effort to take your time and do it right. Never forget that in the end, the essence of your AdSense business is selling advertising space and your publication must be a place where your advertisers want to put their ads.

Here are some of my essential secrets for starting and operating a successful web based business using AdSense:

1. Don’t bother to chase high paying keywords – it’s a waste of time. More than 100,000 folks have already bought the e-books and other materials that say this is the way to go, and its all bogus information. The payment per click numbers presented are the maximum you might be paid, but there is nothing that requires Google to pay you that amount. If Google decides your site is of a low quality, and the sales leads you generate are of a poor quality as well, instead of paying you $10 a click for asbestos cancer clicks, they can pay you 2 cents – its called smart pricing and is done all the time. In addition, there are already thousands of sites competing for these high dollar keywords – and you will be fighting thousands of others who already have a head start on you to get to the top of the heap. Instead, select a topic that has less competition and still has plenty of advertisers wanting to sell goods related to that topic. If possible, it is best to select a topic you know about and are interested in yourself, as you may be writing quite a bit about it while building your site.

2. Research and choose your website topic carefully. Some topics just don't lend themselves well to profitable ads. A Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton site may attract traffic, but you probably wont have good advertising to go with the topic and the traffic probably will not be folks who are interested in what advertising may be on your page. Ask yourself what are companies advertising out there? Not so much on TV, but in smaller media – yellow pages, newsletters, magazines, etc. These are your competition. There are literally hundreds of small niche hobby and special interest magazines – consider their topics as potential areas of interest for a web site. Take a look and see what kind of advertisers they have.

The goal is to pick a topic where people are actively looking to purchase things and the ads become just as important as your content, so they're clicking around all over the place to find what they're looking for. If you've got a site providing information for people who are looking to buy something, they're much more likely to click your ads. Pick a topic where people are looking to buy goods and services, not hobby chat, humor, celebrities or other less profitable topics. Anything can make money but when people are in a buying mood those ads are as good as gold and your topic can make all the difference.

The motivation of visitors coming to your site really matters quite a bit. If someone is looking for a recipe they will find it and continue on. If your reader is looking for information on the latest misadventures of Lindsay Lohan or some other celebrity, they will also find it and move on. On the other hand, if someone is looking for a information on hotels and places to visit in a certain city, then they are more of the mindset that they will look at your ads and visit the advertisers with the intention to pull out a credit card and make a reservation or purchase. This type of mindset in your visitors is good for you as well as the advertiser.

3. Focus on building a high quality site. Map out a strategy for what you will have and the site you intend to build. Your content matters to your readers! Sites that have a couple hundred words of meaningless drivel on every page are shallow and of little interest. Those sites that rely on a shallow rather than deep content model are more vulnerable to competition than more authoritative deeper sites are. Google knows that the web is overloaded with sites built of pages that are shallow, rather than deep, and on the Google search side, they know the difference. Sites that are designed purely to benefit the publisher aren't likely to prosper indefinitely. What useful information will your website provide to your visitor? Sites with shallow content are also not likely to attract repeat users, which means they're throwing away revenue opportunities from return visits.

4. For AdSense to work you need traffic, and a boatload of it. If your site cannot generate traffic, you wont be able to make much of a profit. AdSense is all about selling interested traffic to the advertiser – and if you don’t have much traffic, you don’t have much to sell. It is important to concentrate first on a positive, quality user experience for your readers. Good content generates interest and clicks, professionalism and quality generates clicks, relevance generates clicks: all these are the things you need to be successful. Well organized and laid out sites, with good honest SEO will bring the right kind of traffic. Building a quality site is like building a building: brick by brick it goes together to form the intended finished product. In time you will get the bookmarks, the good incoming links, the high positions in the search engines and the traffic that all those things bring. Once you have that traffic coming to your website, if your website is well optimized with AdSense, then the money flows.

Adsense Notifier

One wonders how many thousands of web bloggers looking to make large amounts of income overnight were caught up in the Adsense 'dream' over the last few years, either building multiple dummy sites or trying to find out what keywords put forth the highest click thru payment. Okay wait, before you get all wide eyed, we do not have the 'Adsense Secret'. Nope, this article isn't about increasing the amount of money you will make by any outrageous means of gaming Google's Adsense program. Forgid about it! It's actually about an add-on tool that's pretty cool and will save you a bit of time while handling your online business.

If you happen to be one of millions of net abusers that jumped the 'Explorer' ship because you were mad as hell and you weren't gonna take the browsers vulnerability anymore, (or you're just convinced that by refusing to support Microsoft products you're really sticking it to the man!) then swam your way to Mozilla Firefox shores, Adsense Notifier is yet another useful add-on with the simple purpose of showing you your earnings in real time. Er uh alright, big whop. Hey not so fast with the smart talk. Don't pretend you enjoy logging into your Adsense account every five minutes to check the status of your earnings. With this tool all of that information is available at the bottom of your browser and is automatically updated as often as you want it to be, all depending on the time increments you set it to. For the impatient blogger or website owner it may not create income, but it surely soothes the addiction of wanting to know what your numbers are at any given moment.

Adds with Google

So you've decided you'd like to create a website, and you'd like to earn a little money off it. Well, adding targeted Pay-Per-Click ads, like Google Adsense, to your site offers a quick and easy way to earn revenue without the hassle of seeking out and managing advertisers. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Selecting a Topic
First and foremost, it is important to pick a topic that you are passionate about. If you enjoy the topic, you won't mind putting a lot of time and energy into creating a quality website. Also, starting a project with prior knowledge of the subject makes it easier for you to generate targeted, well-written content – a must when using Google Adsense successfully.

Choosing a Domain Name
Be sure you choose a domain name that is memorable, on topic, and easy to spell. This will help establish your branding, attract repeat visitors, and ease your marketing campaigns in the future.

Designing the Site
It is essential to carefully plan out the structure of the website – how the information will be broken down, what navigation items you would like, and what you would like to highlight on the homepage. Once your structure is ironed out, the next step is to design the site layout. Keep in mind you will need to leave room for the Google ads, which can be shaped like skyscrapers, banners, or squares.

If you do not have an eye for design or have any web development ability, you should hire a professional web designer to create the site for you. Based on your abilities, the web designer may train you on how to add more articles to the site by modifying the existing code, or he or she may develop a Content Management System (CMS) for you. A CMS allows you to create additional sections and articles through a user-friendly interface similar to Microsoft Word. You do not need any web design skills to input more data, and the additional pages will maintain a consistent, professional look.

Creating Google Adsense Ads
Once your site is developed, sign up for a Google Adsense account. You can then customize the shape and colors of the Google Ads using Google's Ad Format Wizard. Many times, trial and error will reveal which color scheme is most profitable for your site.

Promoting Your Site
The final step is to get the word out. You'll need to draw visitors in to your site to read that quality content and to click on those relevant Google ads. So you should submit your site to major search engines like Google and Yahoo. You should also submit your link to the Open Directory, dmoz.org, which provides data for other search engines. To attract targeted visitors, exchange links with other sites that pertain to your topic. Be sure to also promote your site offline. For example, write press releases, tell your friends, or advertise in relevant publications.

Creating a targeted, informative website takes time and persistence. But if you're willing to put the effort into making a quality site, you can earn money on a continual basis with Google Adsense.

Adsense Program Tips

Google just released a Newbie Central for their AdSense program, those ads webmasters can include on their site to earn money for every click on the ad from a visitor (if you're using the program, part of the advertiser budget will go to you, and the other part to Google). I wanted to add some tips from my own experience:

1. Ads can work well in-between other stuff. On a games site of mine, some of the games don't contain ads next to the game area; the AdSense ad will only be shown in-between game rounds. This is the time the visitor is not concentrating on performing a task but might take a small break, and be open to the option of visiting new sites.

2. Put too much emphasis on AdSense and your site may be linked to less. The more available space you dedicate to AdSense on your site, and the less you differentiate between ads and content in your design, the more money you earn with the program, right? Not quite. While pushing the AdSense may result in short-term gains, it might also convince some visitors that the site is too crowded to be worth visiting again. And some of those visitors may also be bloggers or other people who might otherwise help to promote your site with links to it. And the less your site gets linked to, the less traffic it gets, meaning AdSense revenues may go down in the long term.

3. Even if you get huge traffic, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games site than on a technology blog. I also heard people say that AdSense does quite good on product oriented blogs; say, one post solely about the iPod; another post solely about Gadget XYZ, and so on.

4. Image ads can be relevant and work for you, but they might also apall some visitors. Google's AdSense program gives you the option to choose between a couple of different ad formats. Two main groups are text ads vs text & image ads. When you choose the latter, Google will deliver what they deem works best for your content (or so one would hope, and it would be in Google's best self-interest to serve you the best possible ad, it seems).
   
   However, Google doesn't really know your layout preferences, and they don't really understand when your audience thinks ads are "too much"; and considering image ads include Flash animations (which you can't disable, once you go for image ads), Flash animations may well push some people away. One thing you can do is to only show image ads in areas where they don't disturb the content, e.g. at the end of posts. Also, you might want to listen to visitor feedback on the ads being served; I received emails before that the blinking ad on this or that site made a person want to leave the site, at which point I blocked the specific advertiser via the AdSense Setup -> Competitive Ad Filter option.

5. When it comes to context sensitive targeting, you can increase or lower the importance of certain parts of your page. To help Google find a matching ad for your content, you can use the HTML comment syntax by encapsulating more important parts with
   
   

   
   ... your important site content here ...
   .

   Or, to lower the importance of a section, use:
   
   

   
   ... your not so important site content here ...
   

   (Google notes that it may take up to 2 weeks for this change to your site will be taken into account by the AdSense.)
   
   What if your site doesn't have any good matchable content to begin with, though? Say, the page just includes an image. Well, for the reasons of search engine optimization but also ad optimization you might want to consider using at least a descriptive title, an explanatory footer containing the important keywords or keyphrases (the kind of footer that actually helps the human visitor by explaining what the page is about). In the case of image content, reasonable alt and title attribute texts should be used as well.*
   
   *Whatever you do, don't resort to "keyword-stuffing" as it doesn't help your visitors and may get your page ranked lower in search engines.

6. Be aware of risks when you change ad layouts too much. I once had a system on the server to randomly differ between various AdSense layouts on the same page. Doing so I was hoping to add some good variety to keep the ads at least somewhat interesting and notable. Shortly after I stopped doing so and simply included a rather big static area for the AdSense to "do what it wants," the AdSense revenues for that site increased. Now, I don't know if this was a coincidence of some sorts, as revenues often go down or up even when you don't do anything, but it might well have been that there was a connection between adding too much homemade randomization, and lowered revenues.
   
   At another time, during the redesign of this blog, I switched from one ad format to another for the end-of-posts AdSense ad space. This, combined with perhaps other layout changes, suddenly cut the ad revenues in half for the blog. It took me some time to realize that I had some ad channels* set up for the specific old layout size, and by changing this I must have kicked out all those advertisers who were pushing their ads through the channel.
   
   *This setting can be found at AdSense Setup -> Channels.

7. Use competing ad systems when AdSense doesn't seem to work for a site. At CoverBrowser.com, which shows galleries of comic and book covers and so on, I tried including AdSense ads in "non-annoying" places in the layout (including trying to use AdSense affiliate links via AdSense Setup -> Referrals), but this didn't seem to work at all. However I then tried "affiliating" the "buy" link below individual covers, utilizing the eBay affiliate commission system offered by AuctionAds.com*. (Disclosure: Patrick Gavin, co-owner of AuctionAds, paid me for consulting before on other projects, like Sketchcast.com.) This worked a lot better, and as it was simply connected to an existing site feature, it also didn't add clutter.
   
   A good start to find other ad programs is to search for adsense alternatives on Google... you will see a lot of lists which are dedicated to competitors. (Note that some of these competitors may be US-only.) You may also want to join an ad or blog network like The Deck, Federated Media (disclosure: I was part of Federated Media before), or 9 Rules. Before joining such a network – which might require you to show them your traffic stats and so on – check if their typical ads and campaigns fit with your site layout and your general ad type preferences.
   
   *CommissionJunction also offers an eBay affiliate system but CommissionJunction has really low usability, in my opinion; setting it up is confusing.

8. Sometimes you may get a sudden increase in traffic, hence ad clicks, but you can't locate the source of the traffic. I'm using Google Analytics to track my sites, though AdSense is also a good first indicator of traffic explosions... because it will show the combined page views of all your sites (provided you include AdSense on all of them), as opposed to Google Analytics, where you need to check site by site individually.
   
   However, sometimes even with Google Analytics, you won't be able to locate the source of your traffic because there's no specific new popular referrer being shown (a referrer is the site linking to your site, provided people click on that link). In these cases, it may well be that your site has been discussed in a TV show or similar, as the show won't "link" to you (but audiences will be entering your domain manually into the browser when they like what the saw on TV). When you feel that there has been a traffic explosion sometimes you may get additional email feedback in regards to your site, and it makes sense for you to ask your visitor: where did you first find out about the site? Maybe the can let you know about the name of the TV show, or magazine, or other "offline" source responsible for the peak. (I sometimes sent pointers to the BBC Click show for instance, with partly enormous effect.)

9. Consider using AdSense even when the page doesn't get any traffic yet. Who knows, some day the traffic suddenly explodes, and you might not realize fast enough and thus miss out on the action (as sometimes, traffic goes as fast as it comes).
   
   On the other hand, reversely I would suggest to never do a site just to make ad money with it. That kind of motivation may lead to spammy sites that don't help anyone really. (If a project is great, it's great even if it doesn't make any money.)

10. Making money with AdSense takes time. In my experience, it may take many months to years for a site to gain enough traffic to make OK money through AdSense... if ever. I have almost never experienced any site making quick and easy money with AdSense (though you may be getting quicker results than me of course, as it depends on so many variables!).
    I think for any site getting a couple of thousands of visitors a day, you might want to start playing around with AdSense to see where it takes you (if you didn't already include AdSense anyway just to see what happens, and following up on tip #9). As you are paid in US-$, the actual benefit the ad revenue will bring depends on your local costs of living as well (you might even ponder moving or going on an extended holiday trip if your local costs of living are too high for your site revenues to cover).

Unofficial Google Censorship FAQ

Does Google censor search results?
Yes, they sometimes do, in different countries, like Germany, France or China. Sometimes, specific content is censored globally (including US results, e.g. in the case of certain censored newsgroup messages).

Do other search engines censor too?
Yes, Yahoo, MSN and others censor search results in different countries.

What’s search results censorship?
For the scope of this FAQ I’ll define censorship as missing results which are filtered for reasons of politics or regulations, not because they’re spam, non-family friendly, or copyright-infringements (though your mileage may vary).

Can we be sure it’s censorship, don’t localized search engines always show different results?
Because Google mostly discloses their censorship, we can differentiate between normal differences among local engines, and differences due to censorship. Using the “site:” operator appended with a domain we suspect to be censored in a local search engine, we can verify specific missing sites.

What other forms of filtering are there in Google results?
Google also sometimes removes sites if they are infringing on copyright (someone can send a DMCA – Digital Millennium Copyright Act – complaint to Google), or infringing on Google’s webmaster guidelines (e.g. if a site includes hidden keywords visible only to the searchbot, but not users). If you have Google’s SafeSearch enabled, Google may also not show certain sites containing adult content (note that in some countries, the user cannot toggle a SafeSearch option in the preferences). Additionally, Google may show up warning pages before delivering certain content, which happens on YouTube or Blogspot blogs. Also, Google does usually not allow explicit adult content on any of the hosting solutions they provide (e.g. YouTube, Blogger). And then, Google sometimes removes adult content from its Google Zeitgeist report as well as its Google Suggest feature.

What does Google censor?
It depends on the country. In Germany, Google censors certain Nazi websites like Stormfront.org, for example. In the US, Google censors sites containing child pornography, Google’s Sergey Brin stated. In China, Google also censors human rights groups, like HRW.org (Human Rights Watch), but many other things as well, like “台独” (Taiwan independence), names of current and past presidents, names of locations, historical events and so on. Due to the broad scope of Google China censorship, the list of queries hitting on censored results is huge, and often unrelated to sensitive issues (except that the censored sites appear in the results).

How many web pages does Google censor?
Google knows, but they won’t tell you. The figure might be somewhere inbetween millions to hundreds of millions of web pages. Using the “site:” operator, you can do some comparisons; e.g. a Google.cn search for site:news.bbc.co.uk returns 0 pages, whereas a Google.com search for the same returns a page count of around 2,250,000, meaning there may be over two million pages missing on BBC alone (note that Google’s page count estimator is only a rough value, and it often differs in localized results for other reasons than censorship; still, this methodology gives some good first indicators as to the amount of missing pages).

Does Google censor less than other Chinese search engines, or more?
This is hard to measure and partly depends on the search queries you will try. In general, Google was the last to commit to Chinese censorship requests, and they’re fairly consistent in disclosing censorship. However, other search engines sometimes show more than Google when it comes to “sensitive” terms, e.g. MSN.com.cn returns many image results for “胡锦涛” (China’s president Hu Jintao) whereas Google.cn doesn’t show a single image for this query. [Update: Google now shows images for this query.]

Did the Chinese have search engines before Google entered with Google.cn?
Yes, whether or not Google is in the market, Chinese had and have a variety of search engines to choose from.

In which of its different search services does Google censor?
There’s censorship to be found in different Google services, including Google web search, Google image search, Google News, Google Groups (Google’s Usenet discussion group search), and Google Maps (e.g. on request of the Indian or US government). Google also sometimes removes content from Blogspot or YouTube for different reasons, with the difference here being that Google acts as host, not just a messenger of other people’s content.

Does Google disclose the censorship?
Google prints a disclaimer at the end of search results in most cases, though this wasn’t always the case before early 2006. The disclaimer may read “In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed N result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org,” or “In response to a legal complaint we received, we have removed one or more messages. If you wish, you may read the legal complaint,” or (a translation from Chinese) “In compliance with local laws and policies, some search results are not showing.”

Do other Chinese search engines disclose censorship too?
Yes. For example, MSN shows a “Some of the results have been removed” disclaimer in China when search results are censored. Yahoo does not (or not always) disclose censorship, though they did at one time with the message “We have already helped you filter out excess web pages” oir “according to relevant laws and regulations, a portion of results may not appear,” according to reports from Human Rights Watch.

Is Google’s disclosure easily visible?
Google decided to put the censorship disclosure at the end of search results (not at the top), a place where many, but not all people, will see it (some people just look at the top results). But clearly if you look out for you can easily find it.

Is Google transparent about their censorship?
Google discloses what they censor when you hit on a specific search result (they didn’t always do this, but they regularly do since 2006). However, Google Inc does not respond to questions regarding how specifically they censor, how the process of censorship is implemented, which blacklists they use, which words are censored, which specific discussions they have with governments, and so on. Google also ignores issues of censorship in their official Chinese blog (according to Human Rights Watch), and in the censorship defense statement made in their official English blog, they do not mention the word “censorship” at all.

Since when does Google censor results?
This is hard to tell. Personally I’ve spotted censorship way back in 2003, but it’s likely it’s going on longer than this. In China, Google self-censors since January 2006. (According to Google employee Matt Cutts, via Search Engine Roundtable, one of the first DMCA removal/ counter-notification processes against an anti-Scientology site was implemented in 2002.)

How did Google justify their China self-censorship?
In general, Google says that it’s their “policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so.” In regards to China, Google argued that filtering their results clearly compromises their mission, but that failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world’s population compromises their mission more severely.

Others, like Bill Gates (according to Times Online), supported Google’s position by arguing that state censorship is “no reason for technology companies not to do business in China”, adding that “access to the outside world is preventing more censorship.”

Did Google fail to offer Google search at all before the self-censored Google.cn?
Not really. Almost always, next to about a couple of times of a complete shut-down courtesy of the Chinese government (shut-downs that were removed due to user protest, as Sergey Brin stated in an interview with Playboy), Chinese users had access to Google.com and the Chinese Google search engine available at google.com/intl/zh-CN/. However, according to Google’s figure, Google.com was only accessible from China in 90% of all cases. Additionally, according to Google’s Sergey Brin (via CNN), some universities weren’t able to afford the international bandwidth costs necessary to pay for Google.com.

Has it become easier now for the Chinese government to block Google.com?
Some argue that this is the case, because a public outcry over a blocked Google.com is less likely when there is a censored Google.cn alternative available.

How can I check if a Chinese result is censored?
Set your preferred browser language to Chinese (e.g. in Firefox, Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Choose) and visit www.google.cn. Alternatively, you can directly access www.google.cn/webhp?hl=zh-CN. At the bottom of censored search results, you will see the Chinese text “据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。” in italics.

How does Google censor?
From what little you can see from the outside, it seems Google censors based on domains, sub-domains, full URLs, or keywords. For example, all of the roughly 2.25 million pages of news.bbc.co.uk are censored in Google China web search, hinting at a URL blacklist. In Google image search China, the keywords “胡锦涛” (Chinese president Hu Jintao) or “六四” (colloquial Chinese for the Tiananmen Square Massacre) are fully censored, hinting at a keyword-blacklist.

Is search results censorship evil?
Whether or not results censoring is evil depends on who you ask. The two basic opposing opinions are:

1. censoring may not be great but it’s the lesser of two evils
2. censoring is evil so needs to be avoided at all circumstances

The proponents of censorship in the Chinese government for example may argue along the lines of 1), that censorship isn’t great but that free speech would lead to greater problems for such a large country where order needs to be provided. Google Inc also argues along the lines of 1), saying that censorship isn’t great but that not getting deeply involved in such a large country as a company leads to even greater problems in the long run. Others argue that 2), a principled approach – allow no evil at all – makes more sense in the long run. Sergey Brin once told CNN that he thinks “both kinds of viewpoints are perfectly valid.”

Is Google China censorship compliant with Google’s informal corporate motto, “don’t be evil"?
I’d argue no, because in order to enter China Google introduced a new philosophy of balancing evil scales. So the most optimistic interpretation is that they now accept smaller evils for a greater good – a more pessimistic interpretation is that this won’t even result in a greater good. However, neither of the two interpretations conforms to a strict “don’t be evil.”

Is Google China censorship good for Google’s business?
Only time will tell. According to The Guardian, Sergey Brin in 2007 admitted that so far, “On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative,” mostly due to the reputation which suffered from the public perception of Google’s move. (I’d argue that user trust is an important asset for businesses which handle user data, possibly even more so in the future.)

Does Google only censor what can’t be seen in that country anyway?
No. Sometimes Google censors sites that aren’t accessible anyway in a specific location, at other times, they censor sites that are otherwise accessible (if you enter the site’s URL directly into the browser address bar).

Does Google rank pro-government sites higher on request?
Not directly, but indirectly: if an anti-government site is the #1 result, and a pro-government site is the #2 result, then censoring the anti-government result like e.g. Google China sometimes does pushes the pro-government site higher up the ranking.

Does censoring a search result get rid of the site in question?
One thing to remember is that censoring in search results means “killing the messenger” because you’re not removing the actual site in question, you’re only removing the words of someone telling that it exists. Some countries ensure that the site itself is shut down, or blocked by ISPs, while others often consider a removal of its “traces” in search engines sufficient (e.g. in Germany).

Does Google censor all material the country’s government deems “sensitive"?
No. E.g. in China, much sensitive material is removed, but there’s also a lot of sensitive material that’s being shown in Google.

Do Chinese users prefer the self-censored Google.cn over the almost non-censored Google.com?
Not really, according to information from Google’s Sergey Brin, who in 2006 said that “virtually all the company’s customers in China use the non-censored service.”

Can users from China circumvent the Google censorship?
Yes, users can switch from Google.cn, Google.de or Google.fr to e.g. Google.com to circumvent most censorship. However, outside the responsibility of Google, local sites may be blocked by ISPs, in particular in China. However – again in particular in China – there may be some risk involved when you actively try to circumvent censorship (I have no specific information about this).

Does every Google employee agree with Google’s censorship politics?
That’s likely not the case – it is far more likely that even within Google, opinions are divided. Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2006 pondered “Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense." Before Google censored in China (according to UC Berkeley News), Sergey argued that “Google does good in China by making it possible for the Chinese people to have broad access to information.” In 2004, the Google Team somewhat proudly posted that “For Internet users in China, Google remains the only major search engine that does not censor any web pages.”

What do locals think of local censorship?
In Germany, some people are pro-censorship when it comes to material such as holocaust denial, while some are against censorship. In China, the opinions are also greatly divided. Human Rights Watch writes (footnotes removed):

Opinions differ in China – even among people who chafe against official restrictions on their freedom of speech – as to whether Google’s compromise was acceptable. When Google.cn was first rolled out, a number of Chinese bloggers concerned with free speech issues were quick to condemn the move. One labeled the new service the “Castrated Google.” Others, such as Michael Anti, were more philosophical, pointing out that while Google had made a compromise, it had done so after considerable weighing of the human consequences, and made a conscious decision not to provide services that would put itself in the position of having its local employees – with no choice but to comply – into conflict with the Chinese government demands to censor content or, even worse, to hand individuals over to the police.

Some Chinese bloggers have also expressed concern that the existence of the censored Google.cn will make it easier for Chinese ISP’s to block Google.com without excessive public outcry, because some form of Google search remains available. Indeed, in late May and the first days of June – the most politically sensitive time of the year due to the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre – several Chinese Internet users in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou reported that Google.com was consistently inaccessible while the censored Google.cn remained accessible as normal.

Chinese Hong Xiaowan argued in this blog’s forum that “Google should [change] their Censorship based on the locations. Different [countries] have different laws, different cultures.” He adds that Chinese want to be rich, free and safe, just like citizens of the US. He says that things aren’t simple in China – “If you think you are protecting the human rights, in fact you are hurt them.”

Isaac Mao, also Chinese, in reply to Hong Xiawon comments: “Google’s decision of self-censorship was made after Google’s business operation in China. Google’s motto and principles was changed by the local employees and local managers, then impacted to their founders by mistake. (...) The ultimate way is keeping its universal value. If ’non-evil’ is a motto, it’s applied anywhere and even anytime. Otherwise, it will lose its value totally. Many people here in China, especially those geeks, hate the comprise by Google. Didn’t Google listen to them? [Remember], they are also opinion leaders to the market, no wonder the market share will lose.”

How did human rights or freedom of speech organizations judge Google’s censorship in China?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) demands: “If U.S. companies find that oppressive governments block or impede their Internet services, they should not simply give in to the threat.”

The Human Rights Watch boss Ken Roth told CNN: “Google’s in the vanguard in the United States, and it’s compromising along with the rest of them in China. I’m surprised. I would have expected better from Google.”

Amnesty International says: “’The argument that the companies are ’bringing the internet to China’ is spurious: the internet has been in China for ten years. These companies are simply trying to get a slice of a vast and growing market. And it’s at a great cost: their activities are aiding and abetting government censorship rather than challenging it.”

Reporters Without Borders argued: “US firms are now bending to the same censorship rules as their Chinese competitors but they continue to justify themselves by saying their presence has a long-term benefit. Yet the Internet in China is becoming more and more isolated from the outside world and freedom of expression there is shrinking. These firms’ lofty predictions about the future of a free and limitless Internet conveniently hide their unacceptable moral errors.”

How did search bloggers judge upon Google’s censorship in China?

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch wrote: “Ultimately, I want Google to pull out and fight back. I can see the argument for being engaged in a country, for trying to help promote change over time. But I feel like Google should be big enough and principled enough to be engaged by not being engaged. That might do far more good now than years down the line.”

Ionut Alex. Chitu argues: “Somebody told me that google.com is still available in China. So users have 2 options: [1] go to google.com and see results they can’t access [or 2] go to google.cn and see only the results they can access. I think this changes things a lot. Google doesn’t censor results, they just remove ’inaccessible links’ (’dead links’ in China).”

John Battelle of Searchblog said: “Sure, I understand the logic. But, well....in your heart, is this what you wanted to do? No? Then why did you do it? (...) I think they convinced themselves it was the right thing to do. They thought themselves into it. And deep down, they aren’t sure they did the right thing. At least, that’s what I want to believe.”

Nathan Weinberg of InsideGoogle said: “I believe Google has the right to censor its searches. That is the cost of doing business in China. But to cloak it in their typical PR-bullshit, to claim that it is in the best interests of Chinese users and not their bottom line, to not once acknowledge that this is the result of laws that should never be, that disgusts me. People have died for this, and how dare you ignore them.”

Miel van Opstal, co-blogger at InsideGoogle, wrote an open letter to Google, arguing: “The [pre-Google.cn] service might have been slow, but at least it produced results unfiltered. Maybe browsers stalled, maybe Google News was down. Maybe images were only accessible half of the time. At least they were accessible, the other half of the time. At least the info was there. That was something to be proud of. I can’t speak for all the Chinese searchers because I don’t live there, but I’m pretty sure they’ll think you’re a lame service now. You used to be different. Slow, stalling, but different. You were a link with the outside world. Now all you do is promote the same brainless information the other search engines pre-chew for the Chinese people. What extra value is there now, except for the ‘us-too’ feeling that you have for joining a club of engines and deliver the exact same politically corrected results? I dare to say: none.”

Other commenters argued that Google has a legal obligation to its investors to grow its business, justifying their Google China move.

Does Google lobby against censorship?
In the past, no. While Google’s help entry on the subject states that it is their “policy not to censor search results,” they also argue that they will censor content to comply with local laws or regulations. In Germany, for example, Google joined the Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers. In China specifically, according to the Associated Press, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that Google “haven’t lobbied Beijing to change its rules” adding that he thinks “it’s arrogant for us to walk into a country where we are just beginning to operate and tell that country how to operate.”

However, Google in January 2007 along with Microsoft, Yahoo, Reporters Without Borders and others aimed to create a code of conduct “to promote freedom of expression and privacy rights.”

How can I help Google censor results?
This depends on which local version of Google you’d like to see “sensitive” information removed from. E.g. in China, the Ministry of Information website or the Ministry of Information branch handling the shut-down of unregistered Chinese sites, as linked from the Google.cn homepage. In Germany, your best bet is the complaint form of the Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers, of which Google, Yahoo and others are part of.
If you feel a Blogspot blog contains “sensitive” content, you can flag it by using the top-position “flag” button. At YouTube, you can use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link. When it comes to mere filtering, you can also file a DMCA complaint with Google or report a site to Google’s web spam team.

If you’re a Google employee, you can of course help optimize local filter algorithms to censor more sensitive information than before, or provide better support to countries who don’t have censorship in Google yet.

How can I fight against Google censoring results?
Unless you mobilize huge masses of users who boycott Google, you can’t make them just quickly stop what they’re doing, though every voiced protest (via news reports, letters to Google, demonstrations in front of the Googleplex etc.) will cause the company to see similar issues in a different light in the future, or reconsider their move. Additionally, making censorship more transparent helps defeat its original purpose of hiding information, so it gives less incentive to governments to try impose such censorship regulations. For example, you can report on censorship methodologies, or mirror censor content on your own server.

If you’re a Google employee, you can voice your protest to your co-workers more directly and actively convert your responsibility into action. You can also help make the issue more transparent to the outside world by talking about censorship specifics, not generalizations.

As a citizen, to make the country in question stop their censorship behavior, you can protest against local laws (e.g. organize demonstrations) and vote for those politicians opposing censorship (or get active in politics yourself). However if you’re in e.g. China this may cost you your freedom (the Chinese authorities jails many of its critics).

Does censorship really matter?
Ideas have effects on lives, and removing access to the ideas (for you can’t ever remove an idea itself), does have a very real effect on us. Depending on where you live this may be a mere theoretical issue. In other countries, your freedom of speech is heavily limited in everyday communication. German writer Heinrich Heine once said, “This is only the beginning, for where they burn books, in the end they’ll burn humans too.” What we should realize when thinking about the issue is that some of the authors of material Google now agreed to censor are kept in jail for writing it. On the other hand, speeding up access to information matters as well, and Google’s voiced position is that providing a self-censored local search engine provides a better overall search service.

Isn’t Google just following orders?
Digital censorship is more subtle than book burnings like in the past because you won’t see any single person lighting a match. The responsibility is far more diverted: from a government order passed through various instances, or a court order, to an ISP, to a search engine, to the PC or the browser itself, there is a multitude of ways the responsibility of censorship can be shared, and every party gets some right to point to someone else, arguing they have the best intents and are themselves an irresponsible part of a longer responsibility chain. This however does not free any of the various parties from the responsibility.

Valuable Adsense Tips

AdSense Tip 1: Find your keywords

Before serving ads on a web page, check its keyword density. A free and advanced tool for finding the most prominent keywords in a page can be found here: SEO Density Analyzer. Copy the most important keywords to a text file ([web page name]-adsense-keywords.txt).

AdSense Tip 2: Improve your keywords

Get keyword suggestions from Overture Search Inventory and from Google AdWords Sandbox. Get new keywords that can help you improve your ad relevance. Enter the keywords from [web page name]-adsense-keywords.txt and save the suggestions to [web page name]-adsense-suggestions.txt.

AdSense Tip 3: Keep your website focused on a theme

Use the keyword suggestions to enhance your web pages and to build theme-based content. And also try to get your keywords into the anchor text of your incoming links as much as possible. Don't forget that Google AdSense is keyword-targeted advertising: Google AdSense bases its advert topics on your websites content, this means that content-rich websites of a popular topic should attract a large amount of ads.

AdSense Tip 4: Write a new page every day

One of the best tips is to add a new page to your web site every day. The more content you have, the more visitors you will get. Put an Adsense unit on each and every content page of your site. But where? You will find more about that from the next AdSense tips.

AdSense Tip 5: Choose the right AdSense format

Wider formats are successful because the ads are compact, easy to read and are complementary to the content. The top three AdSense formats are:

1. 336x280 large rectangle
2. 300x250 medium rectangle
3. 160x600 wide skyscraper

Another successful format is the 468x15 horizontal ad links, that can be placed under your navigation bar.

AdSense tips (part 2)

In part one of the AdSense tips you found out how to improve your keywords and how to build theme-based content.

• AdSense Tip #1: Your keywords are important
• AdSense Tip #2: Improve your keywords
• AdSense Tip #3: Keep your website focused on a theme
• AdSense Tip #4: Write a new page every day
• AdSense Tip #5: Choose the right AdSense format

The next AdSense tips will show you the importance of positioning the ads and how to increase your revenue by adding multiple AdSense units.

AdSense Tip #6: Color tips

When creating your Google AdSense ads it is recommended to use the color scheme and style of your website so that the ads blend in well. Ads without background color and borders perfom better than ads within borders with background color.

Create a custom AdSense palette:

• border color = background color of your web site
• background color = background color of your web site
• link color = blue, color of your links
• url color = black, #999999
• text color = black, #333333, color of your main content

You can also rotate your color palette: select multiple color palettes that blend with your site to create variety.

AdSense Tip #7: Position tips

Visitors tend to look at the big headlines to see if your page is worth reading. If you get them interested, they will read the text and look for your navigation links.

Place the AdSense ads in a prominent place around the top/left part of your page or under your headlines, where your visitors are most likely to look at.

If you have an article page with a long body of text, the bottom of that article is a good place for AdSense ads because your visitors read the text and then they want more resources.

AdSense Tip #8: Increase the number of ads, but not too much

If you have a lot of text on a page, use multiple AdSense units. You can use up to three AdSense units on a page, two AdSense search boxes and one unit of ad links.

Link units allow the user to refine what they're interested in. So if they may not be interested in specific ads on your page, they might be interested in a particular topic, and by clicking on a link unit and a link in the link unit, they'll be able to specify that they're interested in that specific topic and get a lot more options and variety on the ads that might appear.

AdSense for Search allows visitors to search Google.com or your sites (up to 3 domains). You earn money whenever they click on the ads that come up on the search results. If you click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox in the AdSense for Search settings, you won't lose your visitors.

AdSense Tip #9: Preview Google ads

You can find out what ads will be served by Google AdSense if you install Google AdSense Preview Tool, a very simple tool available only for Internet Explorer 6.0. Click to advertiser sites without generating invalid clicks, and easily add their URLs to your URL filter list. Because AdSense uses geo-targeting, Google serves different ads for other countries. Instead of faking your IP or travelling abroad to test your ads, use this AdSense tool to see what ads see your visitors from France, Germany or other countries.

There may be no Google AdSense ads available for your webpage, so Googlw will display Public Service Ads. You can hide them using alternate colors or images. Make sure you include the image in a simple html file as a link (use target="_top"). The image size should be the same as the dimension of AdSense units. In the alternate url box, enter the absolute url of the html file.

Read more about alternate ads.

AdSense Tip #10: What not to do

· Don't click on your own ads

· Don't ask others to click on your Google ads

· Don't manually change AdSense code

· Don't place Google ads on sites that include prohibited content (e.g.: adult sites)

· Don't employ cloaking, hidden text or farm links

· Don't use AdSense ads on the same page with similar ads (e.g.: Yahoo Publisher Network)

AdSense tips (part 3)

In part one of the AdSense tips you found out how to improve your keywords and how to build theme-based content.

Then we showed you the importance of positioning the ads and how to increase your revenue by adding multiple AdSense units.

AdSense Tip #11: Show images above or next to your ads

Placing images above AdSense ads is not necessarily prohibited by program policies. However, depending on the method of implementation this could be considered encouraging users to click on ads. So you should include a border line between the ads and the images. Don't show specific products in your images, in order not to mislead the visitors. Just use generic images that will increase the visibility of your ads.

AdSense Tip #12: Use section targeting

Use section targeting to emphasize some content in your page. On your site, place this code where you want to emphasize.

Content you want to emphasize.

If you want some content to be ignored, use 

AdSense Tip #13: Alternate the colors of your ads

AdSense allows you to have up to 4 color variations for each variable for which you can specify color. You should do that if you put AdSense ads on pages that receive many impressions from the same visitors (for example forums) to reduce ad blindness. For example:

google_color_border = ["628098","628098","000000","000000"]; 

google_color_link = ["000000","BBB90C","BBB90C","628098"]; 

google_color_url = ["000000","628098","000000","000000"];

google_color_text = ["628098","628098","000000","000000"]; 

AdSense Tip #14: Your Google ads should be visible

Make sure your text ads are visible to the surfers in all screen formats. If you put the ads in a table, give sufficient breathing room, i.e. proper cell padding and cell spacing to make the ads stand out from the rest of your content.

AdSense Tip #15: Use AdSense channels

You can categorize the content of your website into channels and then track your performance. This way you can experiment with different types of ads and see which is performing the best. Instead of buying an AdSense tracker, you can enter the most important pages in your site and see how they are doing. Create up to 200 channels for AdSense.