An interesting post in Google’s own inside-adsense post. They explain about accidental clicks, and say what is accepted and forbidden when placing your AdSense ads in your site.
I’m happy to announce our latest release - AdSenseLog 4.5.4
It’s just a small update. We have added the ability to get EPC/CTR/eCPM statistics in the summary view, e-mails and SMS messages. Other than that there are some minor bug fixes.
More information, and the download can be found here.
Google has a new referral product to offer - Google Apps.
Unfortunately, it is not available to non-US publishers (or at least, not available to me as an Israeli). It’s quite annoying, being regarded as 2nd-rate by Google and most other internet companies. I wonder what is the motivation - I’m sure a big chuck of the AdSense revenue is made by non-US publishers.
Google Pack is still not available here, either. I guess we’ll have to wait some more time…
Google just announced that they will allow AdWords publisher to offer product referal ads (And not just Google’s referral of AdSense/AdWords/Picasa/FireFox/Pack). Basically it means that Google are trying out CPA (Cost-Per-Action) ads. It’s still in beta, but you can apply here. It will be interesting to see how this fares against normal PPC ads.
Most publishers report that referral ads were not so good, but this might be a different thing altogether.
UPDATE - it seems like the beta is open only for US publishers, and you’ll only get paid if the customer is from the US himself. I guess there goes our application for the beta. These US-Only decisions are very strange, and seem to go against the real way the internet works. Google are not alone in this, many companies seem to be focusing on the US market only. The Yahoo publisher program (their AdSense ‘clone’) is only open for US publishers also.
Now it’s official - you may use AdSense for content in your Hebrew sites. Great news for israeli web site owners, although many of them already used AdSense even without formal permission…
According to this post, Google made a major policy change -
I spoke with Brian Axe, senior product manager on the Google AdSense Team on the issue. “As you and others have noticed, the AdSense Terms and Conditions haven’t been updated since 2005, and we’re working on an update to the Terms to bring everything into line. Traditionally, we don’t update the Terms as frequently, since all publishers must re-agree to the Terms whenever they change.”
“When it comes to enforcing policies on third-party contextual ads, we’ll be following the updated program policies instead of the T&Cs on this point. That is to say, publishers may now display other contextual ads on the same site or page as Google ads as long as they don’t have the same look and feel as our ads,” Brian Axe tells Jennifer Slegg of JenSense.
I would wait for the official change, but it seems like great news.
In a recent blog post, Google has made it clear that you can endorse referral products (these products include AdSense, AdWord, FireFox, and more). It means that I can write that I think FireFox is a great browser, and then put a referral button for Firefox.
That’s very interesting, and I think it might help publishers succeed with Referrals - obviously this will result in higher CTRs, and hopefully higher conversions for Google as well.
I decided to upgrade the graphic design of the “smaller” sites in the Metalgrass network. It’s pretty simple work, and I decided it was a good time to try to find a freelance graphic designer through the web.
I chose eLance as the freelance search platform. I have heard good things about them. I posted my project requirements, and started to get bids. Interestingly almost all of the the companies come from India. I guess it makes sense - they can offer much lower prices than companies in the US (or Israel for that matter). Kinda sad how this world works. We (my wife and I) have been to India on a 2-month trip in 2005, and indeed it’s a different world. I hope the internet will help some individuals there - for example by offering freelance work at high prices compared to their local market. AdSense is also a tool that can bridge across nations - you earn the same from your web site if you target a worldwide audience - and it doesn’t matter if you write it in New York or New Delhi.
I’ll give more updates when I have chosen the company.
Well, not yet, but according to a hebrew press release, a leading Israeli site (Tapuz) will implement a beta AdSense for Content, in his hebrew pages.
This is great news for Israeli web publishers!
AdSenseLog 4.5.0 was released today. The major new feature in 4.5.0 is the helper module. The helper includes two features - messages and markers.
The messages view can tell you what’s going on in your account - which channels are performing okay, which are earning below their average, etc. The marker tool allows you to set markers in specific dates (for example when you made a change in ad position or color) and then view the changes that happened around that time.
The helper module (Both messages and markers) can be configured, so that you’ll only see the information you want.
In addition to the helper module, version 4.5.0 includes several small features and bug fixes (best-channel total row, last-500-days pre-defined date option, printing of reports, check for updates, and more).
We have also upped the limit of the free version to 100$. That means that if you earn less than 100$ monthly, AdSenseLog is free!
The new version is a free upgrade to all the users who registered in the past year. Upgrading for other users is just 20$.
In addition, we have opened new private AdSense forums. It’s private because only registered AdSenseLog users may enter the discussion. We hope that these will provide a sort of ‘professional’ club of AdSense publishers.