Google AdSense Archives

I have been seeing reports of Google banning and disabling AdSense accounts due to using a Firefox plugin named Tamper Data. Tamper Data allows people to view and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers and post parameters, which can be helpful, but also used for evil.

The emails being sent to these publishers read:

During a recent review of your account, our specialists found that tamper data was used to modify the country listed in your account. Changing your address in this manner is a violation of our policy guidelines.

What appears is happening is that publishers are signing up using Tamper Data to fake their location. You can read why and how this is done at this blog and this one.

In summary, certain countries are not allowed to sign up for AdSense so people fake where they are from. I am not sure why people would use this technique when they are in an approved location, unless I am missing something?

You can read the dozens of threads about this at Google AdSense Help or a thread at WebmasterWorld.

A couple of week ago, we reported about Google's new AdSense interface and posted on screen shot, provided by Google. I just gained access to the new interface myself and I took many screen shots. Before I provide the screen shots, I wanted to share with you both the URL they gave me to access the beta interface.

The link at the top right is in red and says "Try new AdSense." When you click it, it takes you to https://www.google.com/adsense/enablebeta and then redirects me to https://www.google.com/adsense/v3/app. I believe you need to be added to the beta to gain access, but those are the URLs.

Here are screen shots, with sensitive info blocked out:

Forum discussion continued at Google AdSense Help, DigitalPoint Forums, and WebmasterWorld.

There are reports at both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld that Google AdSense is testing a new ad format. The new ad format has "featured ads" within the ad units, with little yellow stars next to them.

I was to hunted down an ad myself to confirm it is real. I spotted the ad on ukcarinsurances.blogspot.com, here is a screen capture:

The ad, as you can see, has a yellow star next to it and if you mouse over the star, it using a title attribute that reads "Featured Ad."

I was only able to replicate this once...

There has been no word from Google on this yet, I will do my best to get an official statement shortly.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google sent me a statement confirming this test. They said:

We are currently running a limited test in which a small number of users are seeing ads that are marked based on signals related to quality and relevance. This experiment is part of our ongoing efforts to help users find what they're looking for, and we're closely monitoring feedback.

There is currently no AdSense publisher that would say they like the AdSense management console. Yes, Google knows that and they have finally announced a limited beta for the new AdSense console interface. And let me tell you, it looks incredibly sweet - compared to what we have now.

Here is a picture:

As I reported at Search Engine Land, here are the new features:

• More detailed performance reports
• Enables you to view daily stats in graphical formats
• Additional metrics such as the amount you've earned from various ad, targeting and bid types
• More options to manage the ads that appear on your site
• cleaner interface that makes it easier to find and review them within the Ad Review Center
• A streamlined AdSense interface to simplify common tasks, such as making a change to several ad units simultaneously
• Added more relevant help on every page, a message inbox for tips from our team, and alerts with important account related notices

When will you and I get it? Well, hopefully most of us will have this beta interface within three weeks. The others? Well, there is no eta.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help, DigitalPoint Forums, and WebmasterWorld.

Back in April, Google began allowing AdSense category filtering of up to five categories. Now, Google announced you can filter up to 8 categories, that is three more categories.

I personally do not see the 3 additional categories to block, I can only block up to five right now. But Google did say, "you should notice this change within the next few weeks."

Google does explain how to find this category filter:

To get started with category filtering, sign in to AdSense and visit the Ad Review Center, located under the AdSense Setup tab. You can choose from the listed categories, which include religion, politics, and dating, and your selections will be applied to ads in English no matter how they're targeted.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I cannot tell you how many sites I find on the web with Google AdSense ads where it is almost impossible to detect the difference between the site's navigation and the ads. They are so blended together that often the AdSense link units look exactly like the navigation links on the site.

Why is this done? Well, to increase a site's click through rate and earnings on those ads - to make the company more money with Google. Of course, this is rarely ever helpful to an end user.

Now, people are complaining they are receiving letters from Google about rejections of their sites due to "difficult site navigation." In my terms, that likely means tricky or deceptive navigation, like in the cases I mentioned above.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around this rejection. Blending ads into your site is a good tip, but taking it too far - just seems bad for your users.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last week, we reported that AdSense publishers are blocking the certified ad network partners and vendors for showing up on their ads because they think it is resulting in a lower earnings mark for them. I currently have a poll on that post, asking AdSense publishers if they are noticing a lower CTR and earnings from the 3rd party certified ad network. If you haven't, please take a few seconds to take the poll.

That post came from a WebmasterWorld thread, which now has Google AdSenseAdvisor coming in warning that publishers should not block this 3rd party network. Why? Simply because it has barely been rolled out yet. AdSenseAdvisor said:

Guys, this is not a good idea. I can't share the exact numbers, but I would be shocked if a single one of you were seeing any impressions whatsoever from Google certified ad networks yet. We're rolling this out slowly. Very slowly.

I know it's tempting to start fiddling with things when you see any variations in your earnings, but I'm telling you it's not a good idea to start opting out of things that are barely launched, especially given the potential for real upside in the longer term.

Wow, some really strong words from AdSenseAdvisor, something I would take note of, if you have or are considering blocking the certified 3rd party ad network.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has several publishers complaining that ever since Google went live with the certified 3rd party ad networks to expand the inventory, publisher's earnings and clicks have dropped drastically.

Of course, most people who voice their opinions are likely to complain, which is why I want to run an anonymous poll. Have you noticed your October earnings drop from previous months. Do note, this new network came in about mid-September, so keep that in mind when reviewing your earnings and taking the poll.

Some publishers have already blocked the certified 3rd party ad networks from showing on their sites - will you?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, I, along with hundreds (if not thousands) of others received an email that appeared to be from Google. The email's subject line read "Google Adsense Account Disabled" and the email's from to looked to be from Google Adsense . It was actually caught by my spam filter and as I dug into the source code of the email, I noticed it was a scam. Beware, this is a recent phishing scam.

Here is how the email looked in my mail client:

There were a few glaring issues with this email:

(1) The source showed a few things, but here is one item that jumps out at me:

Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning adsense-adclicks-noreply@google.com does not designate 64.26.60.146 as permitted sender) client-ip=64.26.60.146;

(2) The email had an attached HTML file, when you open the source of that file (which I don't recommend most people do), it has a redirect to a non Google domain (phishing site):

(3) I checked if my ads were displaying and if I had any message in my AdSense console and I did not.

So I trashed the email and went on. Then I noticed other people receiving this phishing email, which is why I am writing about it.

Do not fall for the scam!

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld.

A Google AdSense Help has confirmed reports from Google AdSense representatives that there was a minor bug on some web sites that did not allow the AdSense ads to be shown.

This publisher has a web site about music. But some of the music, he classifies as "hardcore" music. It is believed that Google felt the site was about hardcore pornography and thus automatically prevented the ads from displaying on his web site.

About a month ago, we discussed how Google AdSense has poison words that sometime prevent ads from being displayed. This seems to have been one of those cases, although, "hardcore" can be used in multiple ways, Google, in this case, felt it was about hardcore porn.

AdSensePro William said it was a bug and they fixed it, in this case. He said:

The issue was due to a minor tech glitch which is now fixed and the ads should begin displaying shortly. Please let us know if the issue persists.

I wonder if this was more of a global change and not a site specific change.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Lawyer's Unemployment Benefits Yanked Over $1 A Day From Blog from Forbes reports that a woman who was earning $405 a week in unemployment benefits had those benefits pulled by New York State after she began earning about a $1 per day with Google AdSense on her blog.

Forbes wrote:

Does writing a blog constitute work? That appears to be the position of the New York State Department of Labor, which recently declared a laid-off attorney ineligible for unemployment benefits because she was bringing in $1.30 a day from blog ads.

The NY DOL felt that the check from Google, which is filed as a 1099, made her someone who was self-employed. So they stopped her unemployment benefits even though she earned a total of $238.75 with Google to date. The DOL will look into this specific case, but has decided to hold payments until they have a chance to do so. Meanwhile, this woman is in very bad financial shape.

WebmasterWorld moderator said:

It would make a lot more sense to simply deduct the amount from their next unemployment check.

If unemployment insurance completely penalizes people for miscellaneous small earnings, instead of making common-sense adjustments, that would create a strong disincentive for benefit recipients to do anything productive.

When did Government make any sense?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Those of you who missed the first round of the AdSense Webinars are now in luck. Google recently posted the new AdSense Webinar Schedule and AdSensePro Ashley told us about it at the Google AdSense Help.

Here is the new schedule and you can sign up over here.

• AdSense Optimisation - Everything you need to know on October 14th, 5pm GMT or December 2nd, 5pm GMT.
• Teaching our teachers: AdSense on your Education site on October 22nd, 5.00pm GMT
• AdSense for Search: Improve the user experience and generate revenue on October 28th, 5pm GMT or December 9th, 5pm GMT
• Using Analytics to optimise your AdSense performance on November 4th, 5.00pm GMT or December 16th, 5.00pm GMT
• Why AdSense is right for Retail on November 11th, 5pm GMT
• Maximise your AdSense revenue on your Home and Garden site on November 18th, 5.00pm GMT
• Improving AdSense performance using Google Ad Manager on November 24th, 2pm GMT
• Optimising AdSense on your Business and Finance site on November 25th, 5.00pm GMT

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Yesterday, we reported of wide spread Google AdSense login issues. It seems like after receiving more information from Google on the matter, it might be two separate issues.

One is a standard login issue for some accounts and the other is an issue with accounts that need to be migrated off their original email accounts.

The second issue is known as a "migration loop" issue and there is a Google AdSense Help thread specifically about that, where an AdSense representative shares how to fix the issue for now:

We're aware of an issue where many AdSense publishers are stuck in a Google Account migration loop when signing into AdSense. We've thoroughly researched the issue and wanted to share the details with you so that you can take the appropriate steps.

Publishers experiencing this particular issue (getting stuck in an Google Account migration loop) are those whose original AdSense email address *and* password match their existing Google Account email address and password. In other words, if you signed up for AdSense before we asked everyone to update to Google Accounts, and then you later created a Google Account with the *same* email address and password (and haven't changed the password since), then unfortunately you're encountering a bug in our Google Accounts migration code.

Fortunately, there's an immediate solution to this issue. If you're stuck in this Google Account migration loop, simply visit https://www.google.com/accounts, sign in, and then change your Google Account password to something different than what you're currently using. In addition to being a good password management practice, you'll eliminate the migration loop with this change.

We apologize for this issue and are actively working to put in a more permanent solution. Thanks for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

There are many threads on the topic, and here are some of them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and a few at Google AdSense Help.

There are many, many Google AdSense publishers who are complaining about not being able to login to the AdSense console. There are threads at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld with many folks complaining.

The issue first started yesterday at about 5pm (EST). Shortly after, people began noticing that if you login at https://www.google.com/adsense/login3 it does allow you in. The default login area seems to not work for many. I personally tried it and it works.

You should also try to delete the cookies related to the AdSense login area. If that doesn't work, try logging into https://www.google.com/adsense/login3.

Google has not confirmed this issue, nor have they replied to questions and concerns about it.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld .

Earlier this month, we reported that AdSense was testing new arrow formats in their ad units. I personally didn't see it, but it seemed like others were seeing various tests.

Google has finally confirmed the tests in a blog post that says we should notice new types of arrows that are more visible. The blog post said:

We've been testing slight updates to the look of these arrows, and our experiments have shown improvements in the user experience. As a result, we'll soon be making a few minor aesthetic changes, including darkening the arrows to make them more visible and orienting all arrows to point left and right. In addition, to help users understand what the arrows do, hovering over the arrows will soon show the labels 'previous ads' and 'next ads'. You'll see these changes appear in CPC ad units in all languages gradually over the next few days.

I now see the difference on my personal blog.

Old Arrows from June 2008:

New Arrows:

Small but noticeable difference.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

On Thursday we reported that some AdSense publishers were having issues logging in. We thought it had to do with publishers who had a manual review on their account, but we were not a 100% sure of that.

Jennifer from the Google AdSense team posted a thread in Google AdSense Help confirming the issue and saying they have put this issue on the known issues page:

Publishers unable to log in

Details: We've received reports that some publishers are having difficulty accessing their AdSense accounts, and are seeing that the login page reloads even after having cleared the cache and enabled cookies. Our engineers have been notified and are investigating this issue to resolve it as soon as possible. We'll keep you updated with any details as we receive them, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

The thing is, this is still an issue for many publishers even about four days later. There is currently no estimated time for when the fix will be in place.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Big ad news today from Google, they have officially made a big push into display ads through DoubleClick ad network they acquired a two years or so. The DoubleClick ad network will be directly integrated into AdWords. This expands the content network, which means AdSense publishers should see more ads, hopefully higher paying ads.

I am about to get on a plane, so let me give you all the relevant links that I can find. We have the main Google Blog discussing the integration and the AdWords blog talking about how this impacts search advertisers and finally the AdSense blog discussing how to get these ads in your mix. Greg Sterling covers more of the business angle at Search Engine Land and plus we have tons more commentary at Techmeme.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is an interesting Google AdSense Help thread on the topic of specific words that seem to cause Google to show PSA (public service ads) that do not earn the publisher money.

One example I can show you is a blog post on my personal blog named Went To The Pizza Store Naked.... The word "naked" trigged AdSense to show a PSA in the ad slot, because it is against AdSense's TOS to show ads for adult content. If you read the blog post, you can clearly see that no one was naked but the toy troll.

Here is a picture of the PSA near the content:

The ad in the top right position is a PSA.

The AdSense publisher said her site, which is about politics, uses words like this all the time. She calls them poison words, because they kill her potential to make money with Google. She also said that the following words are considered "poison," death, prison, drugs, gun, funeral, shot, killed, war, terrorist, and jail. I have tested some of these on my personal blog and not all meet those requirements.

What I find even more interesting is a point Gracey made in that thread. Gracey said that there is a double standard here. When you conduct a search for naked in Google, ads do show up, but at the same time - content with the word naked in it, prevents ads from showing up. Publishers want to know why is there one set of rules for AdWords and another for AdSense?

Here is a picture of ads that show for the keyword [naked] in Google:

The original thread creator summed up her frustration, saying:

Rather than pretending this doesnt exist, how about helping those of us who are not running porn sites or gambling dens or are crackers, hackers and hate sites... But we who are just writing about history and the news of the day. Help us overcome what Google, in good faith, is doing trying to deal with the bad boys. We are not bad boys!

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

There are many threads, plus one really long one at Google AdSense Help forums with publishers complaining they cannot login to the AdSense portal. I tried it myself and I have no problem, but it seems like the typical person complaining are those new to AdSense.

Most seem to be related to Google taking down the account for a manual "review." The issue is, Google said that the review would only take about a week. Many of these users say it has been over three weeks with the same issue and no word from Google on the status of that review.

It does seem like some mass review is going on. I have seen tons of complaints in the forums about publishers being terminated from the program and tons of threads like this that they cannot login to their accounts.

Some say that upon manual review, they can no longer login due to some cycle issue. One explained the process as, "login screen --> enter details --> click login --> back to login screen." That seems cookie related to me and likely can be fixed by deleting the Google cookie causing the issue.

Overall, there does seem to be a major review cycle going on right now.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Google AdSense first began experimenting with arrows to scroll the ads displayed back in December 2007. It became a confirmed feature in April 2008. Now, people are noticing that the colors of the arrows are being changed.

A WebmasterWorld thread had one publisher notice that "every now and then they'll be highlighted, in my case to match my title color." Others have confirmed seeing this.

I personally could not replicate this on any of my sites, nor have I noticed this on other sites with AdSense.

But if this is indeed a test, it would not surprise me. Most people are missing those ad arrows and maybe Google wants a better way of highlighting them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Google AdSense blog announced they have made two changes to the Competitive Ad Filter tool. Here they are:

Faster filtering
In the past, the Competitive Ad Filter sometimes took up to several hours to block URLs you'd entered. Knowing you've wanted a faster filtering system, we're excited to let you know that URLs added to your Competitive Ad Filter are now usually blocked within 30 minutes. We hope that this will help you quickly make changes to maintain a positive user experience on your sites.

Increased filter list size
At the same time, a growing number of you have let us know that you're running out of space in your Competitive Ad Filter. Now, you can add up to 500 sites to your filter list, more than double the previous limit. As you add new sites, please continue to keep the possible revenue impact of filtering in mind. You might also find it helpful to review our tips for using your Competitive Ad Filter.

Overall, AdSense publishers are happy with these additions. A small change, a small improvement, but very welcomed.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

A week ago, Google had a bug with the AdSense contextual targeting engine which generated PSAs for all ads for a five minute period. PSAs, again, are public service ads that are shown when no ad match is found - so Google shows a free ad for a non-profit organization.

This time, the issue seemed to be at least four hours, but maybe longer. First reports came in sometime last night, probably late last night. The earliest time stamped complaint I saw about this was at DigitalPoint Forums at 12:20 this morning. Things began targeting properly again at about 4:30 this morning.

Google has yet to confirm the issue but clearly there was some wide spread issue with this contextual targeting.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help Forums.

Update: Google posted a blog post with the confirmation of the issue, they said:

An ad serving issue yesterday, August 31st, from 4:30pm PDT to September 1st, 2am PDT caused less relevant ads or public service announcements (PSAs) to appear on some publisher pages. This was mostly limited to regions of Asia. Our engineers have now resolved the issue, and ad targeting has returned to normal. We apologize for the inconvenience, and are working to make sure that this doesn't happen again.

Yesterday, for about five minutes during the day, any site that had AdSense ads on them, showed what is known as Public Service Announcements (PSAs). PSAs are ads that are free and don't earn money, and are shown when Google cannot find a contextually relevant ad.

AdSenseAdvisor confirmed the issue in a WebmasterWorld thread, saying:

We experienced a very brief (under 5 minutes) issue that caused Public Service Announcements (PSAs) to appear on publisher pages for a few minutes this afternoon. Our engineers diagnosed and resolved the issue immediately, and your ads should now be back to normal. Thanks for reporting this, and we appreciate your patience.

This also seemed to impact publishers who use Google Ad Manager to serve up their ads (which is what we use on this site). Steve from the Google Ad Manager team said in a Google Ad Manager Help thread, "We experienced a brief issue that caused PSAs to appear on publisher pages for a few minutes this afternoon. Our engineers quickly diagnosed and resolved the issue, and your ads should now be back to normal. Thanks for reporting this, and we appreciate your patience."

This is not the first time PSAs invaded the bottom-line for publishers. We reported a similar issue back in 2004 and also earlier this year, in January.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google Ad Manager Help.

The Google AdSense blog announced that publishers in the Google AdSense network now have the option to allow "Google certified" third-party ad networks to compete for the ad space on your web site.

In short, this should help publishers earn more money, due to adding more competition into the network. But you have to opt into this and allow image ads. You might not be able to add this today, since it is "slowly roll this out over the next several months."

Here is a picture on where you will be able to activate third part ad networks in the AdSense console.

The overall impression from publishers is positive and they are eager to give this new feature and program a try.

For more details on how this works, see the AdSense Help Center.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

A month old bug with Google AdSense where you couldn't change channel names in the AdSense console has finally been fixed. Google has yet to confirm it has been fixed, but publishers are reporting in the Google AdSense Help thread that the bug is now fixed.

After about 90 comments and four weeks, the bug with updating the channel names seems to be resolved. First reports of it being fixed came in at 4:40am this morning.

So if you are a publisher dying to change the name of some of your channels, you can now do it at google.com/adsense/channels.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

A short WebmasterWorld thread has a post from a member that I know, knows his stuff. In short, Google's display ads, the images ads you see typically through the AdSense product on content sites, have a much higher mouse over rate, when compared to the click through rate (CTR).

This advertiser said:

But I've noticed something interesting. The Mouseover Rate is 10X or even 20X my CTR. So, folks are mousing over my ads like crazy, but of course getting no action.

The advertiser wants clickable mouseover actions to help increase the click through rate. I doubt that will happen, but it is interesting to know that people are hovering their mouse over the ads and not often clicking.

Of course this is just one case.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A bug that has been an issue for over two weeks now, is still an issue. The bug, first reported at Google AdSense Help forums explains that when some publishers try to change an existing channel, it simply does not work. The bug has been confirmed to be an issue in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The bug was first reported on July 26th and acknowledged by AdSensePro Jennifer two days later, where Jennifer said:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I'll take a look.

But since then, even after fifty-plus posts/complaints later, no one has fixed the issue or given an update on the status of the fix for the issue.

I am not sure how critical modifying channel names are for publishers, I assume not that critical, but there are quiet a few complaints on this issue and it does warrant a response.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Update: A month after the issue first began bothering publishers, it seems it has been fixed on August 25th.

There is a WebmasterWorld thread asking why do some Google AdSense ads have a link near them that read "Hide These Ads." When you click on the link, the ads disappear and then a link changes to "Show Ads."

I took me a bit of time to track down sites that do this, but it wasn't that hard. A couple searches and I found many sites that do this. One example is wikihow.com, which has many AdSense ads on the site and they all show the link. Here is a screen shot of one of the ad units with that link:

When you click on the hide ads link, it then changes to this:

I am fairly confident that this is not a native Google AdSense feature, but rather something coded in by the site owners. Is it against Google's terms of service - I don't know. If it is, I don't think it should be. It is a nice feature that the site owners are offering to their readers, to hide the ads.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Publishers who are in the Google Affiliate Network must link their accounts to Google accounts by September 21st, in order to get paid for July 2009 earnings without any delay. An email was sent out to these publishers yesterday, warning of the new requirement.

A copy of the email read:

Google Affiliate Network publisher payments will soon be made through Google AdSense accounts. AdSense will offer you a wider range of payment options, improved ways to manage payment information, and consolidated payments from Google (if you're working with other Google products).

You must link to an approved AdSense account in order to receive payments for earnings. Starting on August 13, 2009, if you're the primary user of your publisher account, you'll see an account notification asking you to create a Google AdSense account or link to an existing Google AdSense account. (If you aren't the primary user, you won't see the account notification.)

You must link your accounts before midnight (Eastern Standard Time) on September 21st, 2009 to receive payments through Google AdSense for July and August 2009 earnings (depending on relevant advertiser payment terms). Please create or link an AdSense account as soon as possible to avoid delays in your Google Affiliate Network payments.

Earnings prior to July 2009 will be made through the existing Google Affiliate Network payment system.

Detailed instructions will be sent to you via email on August 13, 2009 to assist in the account linking and creation process.

Sincerely,

Google Affiliate Network Publisher Support Team

Not all publishers are eager to link their accounts to a Google Account, but the bottom line is, they have no choice. Google has been doing this with all their acquired properties, so it is the next one to bite the dust.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

In late April, Google launched AdSense category filtering for some limited publishers. In short, it let publishers block ads by ad category, i.e. block all ringtone ads. Google has announced that they have expanded the beta and added some features.

The beta is now available in "English-speaking countries including, but not limited to, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S." I personally see it myself.

In addition, Google added ad impression data to the impact report. Plus Google is using more accurate percentages by using the past 30 days of data (not past three days). Plus Google has enabled a way to see category descriptions by clicking on the link that reads "show category details."

Here is a screen shot of my report:

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld.

Many Google AdSense publishers are reporting they are receiving, not one, but two checks from Google this month. The only issue is, the checks are duplicates, exact copies of each other. So technically, you can only deposit one of those checks.

We have threads reporting the issue at WebmasterWorld and several at Google AdSense Help forums.

We have heard of Google sending the wrong check to publishers or not sending payment at all. But I have never seen such a wide spread issue of getting a duplicate checks in the mail from Google.

If you do get a duplicate check, I would not try to deposit both. It is a bit illegal to deposit the same check twice. Yes, I know, you got two checks, but they are virtually copies of each other, so technically, you would be depositing the same check twice.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

We have been reporting about the Google AdSense scam, that rides on the Google name and takes people money, with virtually no return, for a long time now. We first mentioned the Google Money System or Google Kit back in March, and then we blasted Google for allowing AdWords advertisers to advertise for such scams the month after. Finally, Google did something about it by banning these advertisers and then writing about the scam publicly, so people are more aware.

It now seems like these scam artists are taking their business and marketing offline by making cold calls to random businesses. An AdSense publisher posted a thread at Google AdSense Help telling a story that his parents received a phone call from someone claiming to work at Google. The person tried to convince his parents to sign up to Google AdSense. The story is not incredibly clear, since it comes third hand, but it would not surprise me if these scams are making their way to phone scams.

The one thing I should add is that Google has been pushing the AdSense marketing budget a bit. They recently started doing AdSense radio ads to try to help educate people about the product and drive more publishers to use it. So there is a possibility that Google set up a sales team to encourage publishers to use AdSense, via cold calling. But it seems not too likely, in my opinion.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

There seems to be a bug in the Google AdSense console that is preventing Google publishers from submitting tax information to Google. There are several reports in the Google AdSense Help forums with complaints about this issue.

The issue is, when one clicks on the "Submit your tax information now" button, nothing happens.

This was first reported on Wednesday and Google confirmed the issue saying:

Thanks for bringing this to our notice. I've consulted our specialists on this issue. I'll follow up once they respond.

It is still an issue this morning.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Every now and then we reach out to our Google AdSense publisher readership and poll them on how their earnings are doing month to month. Recently, I have been hearing buzz around the community that earnings are down, so I decided to run an anonymous poll asking if that was true.

56% of the responses said their earnings were down, while only 25% said their earnings were up and 20% said earnings were about the same. Here are the results:

Question: July 2009 AdSense Earnings: Up Or Down?

:: Way Down said 36 respondents or 35%
:: Down said 21 respondents or 21%
:: No Real Change said 20 respondents or 20%
:: Up said 18 respondents or 18%
:: Way Up said 7 respondents or 7%

I hope you are on the up side of this poll.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Did you know that you don't need to set up an ad serving system, such as Google Ad Manager to rotate between various AdSense color palettes? I'll be honest and admit, I did not know about this feature until I saw a WebmasterWorld thread where AdSenseAdvisor explained it could be done.

How do you do it? Go to Google AdSense, go through the set up of an ad unit and when you pick the color palette, you simple select the "use multiple palettes." Then you can pick up to four palettes for Google to rotate between. Not sure how I missed this feature, but here is a more visual walk through.

(1) Select "Use multiple palettes" from the drop down:

(2) Select the multiple (up to four) palette colors by pressing control or command and clicking on them:

(3) Google will then dynamically show those selections on the left side of that selection box:

Here are those ads in action:

For instructions on this from Google, read the Google help section.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I recently signed up to enable YouTube revenue sharing on my search videos. It was part so that I can try to get my YouTube videos into Google News (still working on that).

One thing I noticed was that while my AdSense reports update daily, my YouTube data in the AdSense reporting tool shows "no data available." I then spotted a thread about this "issue" today at Google AdSense Help. I dug around and noticed that this is by design.

YouTube earnings are documented to be 30 days back dated. So the YouTube earnings will first show 30 days after the previous month, for that previous month and then it would be paid out 30 days after that, if you have $100 of earnings or more. Google said, "AdSense for Content Host revenue is paid 30 days after the month's end. "YouTube" includes revenue from ads placed next to your videos. YouTube revenue is paid 60 days after the month's end."

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

There are dozens of threads at the Google AdSense Help forum and a thread at WebmasterWorld with complaints from publishers that their July 2009 earnings are way down, relative to past months.

There are of course a few publishers who are noting that their earnings are actually up. But like most threads, people only come to complain and those that complain, are those that have seen their earnings drop.

So I ask you, the publisher, are your earnings up or down in July 2009? Please take our anonymous poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Google scams have been an issue since early this year. They got a lot worse last month and finally Google began banning advertisers who are promoting these Google scams.

Google has taken this to the next level by blogging about it on the official Google Blog. Google outed the scam finally and clearly, by saying:

We're seeing disturbing cases in which websites, emails and advertisements claim that you can make large amounts of money from home with very little effort using Google products and services. They're designed to look like they were written by a regular person, just like you, who stumbled across an amazing opportunity to make their monetary dreams come true. What they don't tell you clearly is that Google is not affiliated with these sites and that they may add extra charges to your credit card or misuse your personal information.

So don't fall for it, too many people have already and I hope you don't. Google offered ways to detect these scams as well as ways to report them, here is how to report them:

• If you've been ripped off, or suspect others are, report the site and file a complaint with the appropriate agency.

• If you come across many sites with duplicate content or common templates intended to direct users to the same product or scheme, please let us know with a spam report.

• If you've been contacted to place suspicious links on your site for money, let us know with the paid link report form. If you have your own website or are in charge of advertising on a site, think carefully before accepting ads or entering into affiliate programs that will lead your users to schemes like those mentioned above.

• If your site's forums or comment sections have been spammed with fake offers of fabulous financial gain, you may need to take steps to fight comment spam. Spammers will take advantage of any user-generated content sections of your site, and will even generate thousands of fake user profiles to try to slip under the radar.

• If you receive suspicious messages that claim to be from Google, these may be phishing attempts. Please report them to phishing@google.com.

Forum discussion continued at Google AdWords Help.

There seems to be a persistent bug with the site authentication tool in the Google AdSense publisher controls.

Some publishers are complaining about errors being returned when trying to use the feature. There is a Google AdSense Help thread that says the issue has been happening for about a week now. Google said it was fixed, but some publishers are still complaining about it not working. One posted the error:

Error

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it

Yesterday, AdSensePro Jennifer, an official Google representative, said, "Should be fixed now. Let me know if it's still not working." But a few publishers came in afterwards to inform her that it is not working.

This site authentication feature launched in July 2007, but has been seen since June and early May of 2007.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

There are some countries that simply do not like Google or they simply don't get along with Google. If you are in one of those countries and you try to access Google AdSense or possibly other properties, you may see a message from the provider.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a copy of that message. Here it is:

Unable to access AdSense homepage

A connection has been established between your current IP address and a country sanctioned by the U.S. government (for more information, see http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/ ).

We're unable to grant you access to the AdSense homepage at this time.

I personally never saw such a message, so when I saw a thread about it, I found it interesting.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

We have covered time and time again about Google having issues paying publishers in this country or that country. This time, Australians are suffering from now being paid on time.

There are at least two threads with reports of the delayed or no payments from Google this month. The threads include a Google AdSense Help and a WebmasterWorld threads.

A Google representative posted in both forums, at WebmasterWorld he/she said:

Your unpaid USD earnings from May will be issued to you at the end of June, provided you have exceeded the threshold amount. Any monthly earnings accrued during June will be finalised in your local currency and posted to your payment history page in the first week of July as per usual.

For those of you who are eligible to migrate to local currency reports but haven't yet, please note that this won't affect the timing of your payments. If you migrate your account today, your June earnings will be converted to your local currency between July 12th and 15th, and if you've exceeded the payment threshold, you'll be issued a payment for those earnings at the end of July.

In the Google AdSense Help thread:

There seems to be an error in processing your payment. If your payment isn't issued in a week, you should see it credited to your account and included in the next payment that you receive. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Some publishers are really suffering from this, because AdSense is their sole income. One said:

I'm in a huge financial crisis because of this. Adsense is my main source of income and Google hasn't sent checks to South Africa for the 2nd month in a row. They told me that last month's check will be issued with this month's check but again no payment has been issued yesterday.

Hope this is worked out soon!

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld.

About two weeks ago, we asked AdSense publishers what do you want to be called. Well, after almost 150 responses, I figured I share the results with you.

:: Web Marketer said 30 respondents or 21%
:: Web Publisher said 28 respondents or 20%
:: Webmaster said 27 respondents or 19%
:: Self-Employed said 24 respondents or 17%
:: Web Developer said 14 respondents or 10%
:: Web Editor said 6 respondents or 4%
:: Retired said 4 respondents or 3%
:: Other answer... said 10 respondents or 7%

Other answers include:

• Broke
• Additional source of income earner :)
• Disintermediator
• undefined
• Money Maker
• Entrepreneur
• SEO
• Spammer

What we learn from this is that AdSense publishers don't have a true title, they are simply AdSense publishers.

I am surprised no one said, "Google money maker," or something like that.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Since early February, Firefox users may have tripped on a Google AdSense security error. The error reads:

Security Error: Content at http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/ may not load data from example.com

It happens on some configurations of Firefox, where the security prompt seems to be warning you that content from a third party is loading on this web page.

There are threads as far back as February with this issue, specifically from Google AdSense Help. A newer thread at WebmasterWorld has more discussion around the security error.

I honestly don't think this is a Google specific issue. It seems to be a setting that warns surfers of third party content showing up on a web page.

HowToGeek.com has an article that describes how you can "fix" this security prompt from showing. But in the AdSense case, it might not work.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld .

We have been seeing Google test AdSense in iPhone apps for a few months now, but not it is official. Google announced the beta for AdSense for Mobile Apps. That means that some app developers can add Google AdSense ads to their iPhone or Android applications. To apply as a developer, go here - personally, I want in!

Here are sample ads taken from Shazam on my iPhone:

Google Ad in AdSense:

Bing Ad in AdSense:

AdMob hasn't worked out great for me, but I honestly should give it another try. But I am excited to give Google AdSense for Apps a try.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

The other week, Google released a new feature to allow AdSense publisher to control the font size of the text within their ads. This comes a few months after Google gave publishers control over the font type/style of their ads.

With all this control, I was wondering if it is actually helping you make more money with AdSense or not. Please take our anonymous poll and have your publisher friends take it as well.

We will post the poll here in a couple weeks.

Some are convinced it is helping with earnings and some are not too convinced.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Recently, there was a swarm of threads of complaints in that various AdSense forums about how it appears the Google AdSense earnings reports are not adding up correctly. I'll isolate two Google AdSense Help Threads that have discussion about this.

The issue is really not a calculation error but rather that you are looking at the wrong date ranges.

Alan7769 explained in the thread that the problem is, "since last payment reporting is going back exactly 30 days from the current day, instead of back to the first of the month after your last payment was done." Alan recommends you use the "advanced reports and put in the actual dates from and to for your report, at least until adsense fixes the problem with the since last payment reporting."

There is a terrible amount of confusion now about this so hopefully Google will make things a bit clearly on those default reports.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help Threads.

Update: Google has posted a statement:

If you've seen a sudden drop in reported earnings, please note that it likely isn't due to a decrease in earnings but more because of a change in the date range.

You can confirm this by going to the reports section of your account and selecting the correct date range and running a report. For instance, if you were paid on May 26, then the Overview page will show earnings from May 26 to today's date, when you select 'Since last payment' from the drop-down.

However, when you run a report in the 'Advanced Reports' section and select May 1 to today's date, you will find the actual unpaid earnings for this period.

I've consulted our specialists and will follow up once they revert.

In the meantime, please refer any affected publishers to this thread.

Still, not all publishers are convinced or happy.

Back in February, Google gave us font type selections for our AdSense ads. Now Google announced the ability to control the size of those fonts.

Here is a screen shot of the three sizes you can pick:

Google has been testing both larger fonts sizes and smaller ones here and there, so this was expected, and it is now here.

To learn more about this, see the AdSense blog post and chat about it at WebmasterWorld.

One important note that AdSenseAdvisor said in the thread:

I also wanted to give you a heads up that soon we'll be setting the default font size a little bit bigger based on your feedback that sometimes the text ads on your page are hard to read. I'll keep you posted.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that in some cases the Google AdSense ads will not render when using Google Translate or viewing the page on Google Cache. We reported about the Google Cache issue about a year ago, and back then I believe it was temporary.

The issue is that in some cases, people use Google Translate to view web pages and if Google doesn't show the ads, these publishers (as well as Google) is missing out. The same with the Google Cache. Some sites are hit up worse than others and it isn't impacting all ads.

WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster thinks it might be a simple issue of miscommunication:

It's been noted that the teams developing these tools don't always communicate with other parts of Google. This may be an instance of that.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Google AdSense blog announced they have expanded the local currencies in the reports to nine more countries. The countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland, and the UK.

Here is what Google said, and read it carefully before you make any changes:

If you're located in one of these countries, you can now update your account to display earnings in your local currency. After you've updated your account, any earnings generated from advertisers paying in currencies other than your local currency will be converted daily. If you receive payments in your local currency, this means that there also won't be any additional conversions at the end of the month. However, you can still choose to receive payments in U.S. Dollars or change your payment method at any time.

Before enabling local currency reports in your account, we recommend downloading and saving copies of your past reports in U.S. Dollars for your records. You can then update your account by signing in to AdSense and clicking the link in the green prompt on your Reports Overview page. You'll be asked to review and agree to a new set of Terms and Conditions. Unfortunately, we're not able to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for publishers -- if you have questions or need legal advice on interpreting the new Terms, please don't hesitate to contact your attorney.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread is asking AdSense publisher what they call themselves. They said, often when they met people or speak to people, they are not sure what to say when people ask them what they do. Are they are publisher? Maybe a webmaster? How about an online marketer?

I am sure on many levels, AdSense publishers are all of the above. So I decided to create a poll to allow you publisher to answer anonymously what you would call yourself. Feel free to pick more than one choice or add "other."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google AdSense Help thread reports that one publisher not only received his check in the mail this month, but also received the check for another publisher in the same envelope.

The publisher said in the thread:

My payment cheque arrived with someone else's cheque too. I don't in the least mind posting it on, but I feel I ought to let Google and the cheque's owner know what's happening. Who do I email?

Google emailed this publisher directly, to not drive more attention to the issue in a public setting.

I assume the automated check machine and mailer accidently had some paper glitch and one check got stuck to another and both were placed in the same envelope. This is the first time I heard of such an issue with Google AdSense before.

It is funny in that Michael Arrington received a $1.3 million check by accident the other day.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Google's AdSenseAdvisor posted a thread at WebmasterWorld notifying AdSense publishers that there will be a reporting delay and we should not panic.

Normally, when the reports lag, you see hundreds of posts in the various forums with publishers panicking. It is no surprise some people worry, because some people are fully dependent on the income they make from Google through AdSense.

AdSenseAdvisor said yesterday at about 2pm (EST):

Just writing to confirm that you may be seeing a temporary delay in the reporting of clicks that started this morning (June 9). We're still recording clicks and your stats will catch up. Ad targeting and ad serving are not affected. While this is well within the "no need to panic" window of reporting time, I wanted to give you a heads up in case you see impressions registering normally but a lower-than-usual number of clicks showing up in your reports.

I'm sorry if this has caused you any stress.

Hopefully the reports are now up to speed.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In early March we reported that if you take Google to small claims court, you might win. It talked about the story where a small AdSense publisher sued Google in small claims court for terminating his account and not paying him. The publisher won in small claims court, but on May 22nd, Google took the publisher back to court, to appeal the decision and Google won.

Google showed how the publisher violated the terms of service and thus had the right to be terminated. Specifically, the publisher asked his viewers to click on the Google ads, which is not in accordance with Google's TOS. The court reversed the decision and the publisher went home empty handed.

I posted screen captures of the violation and the court PDF at Search Engine Land.

Lesson learned: Do not sue Google when you are clearly wrong, it makes all publishers look bad.

Forum discussion at Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: You can read the publisher's side of the story, which has a lot more detail, over here.

Google has been holding these webinars to help AdSense publishers pick up new tricks and tips. The latest webinar is on the topic of Channels/Advanced Reporting. That topic includes:

• Learn how to set up channel tracking in your AdSense account
• Find out how you can optimize AdSense using channel data.
• Track AdSense performance for a specific ad placement
• Measure the performance of individual sites

The webinar is tomorrow, June 4, 2009 at 6:30 pm PDT. You should be able to sign up via this page, but for some reason, the signup link doesn't seem to be working for me at this moment. I posted the issue to Google, so hopefully it will work shortly.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Update: Here is a link you can use to register.

I am a huge fan of Google Ad Manager, the hosted ad serving solution from Google. The only issue is that those who heavily use AdSense run into issues when they wanted to test out using Ad Manager with AdSense. What is the issue?

Google does not communicate clearly that after an AdSense channel has been imported to Ad Manager to become a placement, this change is permanent, and you will no longer be able to use that channel in your AdSense account.

There have been complaints about this in the Google Ad Manager Help forum since earlier this year.

Steve, from the Google Ad Manager team, explained that this is the case due to technical reasons. He said there is an alternative:

However, you can now begin using this new placement in Ad Manager for any of your directly sold ad campaigns as well as AdSense ads. When a channel is imported into Ad manager, any placement targeted campaigns to that channel will also be imported.

The main issue is still an issue. Why is there no warning of this before allowing AdSense publishers to make the transition to Google Ad Manager? Many AdSense publishers do not need the features of Ad Manager, and they learn this quick. But once they switch, those channels are locked forever and they can't go back.

Forum discussion at Google Ad Manager Help.

This story was pre-written and scheduled to go live on May 29th.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around what it will take for Google AdSense to "remain great." Clearly, you must first agree that AdSense is "great," and if you do, then we need to agree on what must be done for it to remain that way.

Some of the suggestions in the thread include:

• Accept only sites with 5,000 daily visitors or more
• Go back to the basics
• Drop smart pricing
• Relax the AdSense algorithm
• Penalize sites that copy content
• Less AdSense Spammers
• More & better advertisers

There are other suggestions in the thread, plus not everyone agrees with all of these suggestions.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This story was pre-written and scheduled to go live on May 29th.

Google AdSense has an ad unit named "link units." The link unit ads look like links and if you click on them, they take you a landing page of Google ads. In the past, those ads were only text ads. Now, Google is showing image ads on the bottom of the page.

Here is a screen capture:

Google explained more about how and when they are triggered:

These image ads are contextually targeted, based on the link unit topic users clicked to reach the ads. If no image ads are available for the given topic, we'll only show the original text ads -- in other words, we won't show a PSA or insert a blank space in place of the image ad in this case. Advertisers can bid on these image ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, so you'll generate earnings for valid clicks and impressions. You can review the performance of image ads on your link unit pages by generating a link unit report on your Advanced Reports page.

Here is a sample of a real link unit Google ad:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has many experienced publishers talking about a tip they never talked about before. The tip is about how slowing down your server, actually increases your AdSense CTR and leads to higher earnings.

WebmasterWorld moderator, incrediBILL, said that by accident he noticed that when his server is slow and bogged down by traffic, his AdSense CTR climbs. As soon as he posted it, Moderator martinibuster and Senior Member, youfoundjake both said he let the secret out.

They both confirmed that slowing down your server will make people impatient and encourage people to click on the ads, assuming they load faster then the rest of the page.

One member points out that "smart pricing" is linked directly to how fast your pages load. So in the long run, it might hurt your earnings. But I guess if you make it slow enough to not be considered slow by Google's standard but yet slow enough to make people want to click on ads, you win?

In the past, we heard reports that speeding up your server increases AdSense earnings by as much as 25%.

Who knows? Do you think faster or slower servers have an impact on earnings? Take our quick poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has been holding webinars for both new and expert AdSense publishers. The next webinar is tomorrow, Thursday, at 6.30 pm PDT. It is on the topic of getting paid.

The topic is named "Understanding the payment cycle" and is described as:

De-mystifying the AdSense payments system. Learn about the various payment options and understand the payment cycle.

One of the most discussed topics in the various AdSense forums are about payments, so a webinar devoted to payment topics, makes a lot of sense.

Keep in mind, Google caps the attendance to 500 people. So go register for the event now and don't forget to be there.

AdSense experts will be on hand to answer questions submitted from the audience.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

A WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help thread reports seeing more of empty or test AdSense ads. We have seen them back in March 2007 but they have disappeared until now.

Here is a screen capture of one ad that reads "text goes here" in the ad and the URL reads yoururlgoeshere.com.

Google replied to the threads confirming this is a Google bug with Linux operating systems. Google said:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. This issue is isolated to Linux users, and our engineers are looking into it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

The first AdSense Orientation Webinar took place on April 18th. It was an overview of AdSense for new publishers. Google is hosting a second orientation webinar tomorrow, Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:30pm (PST).

AdSensePro Obair said in a Google AdSense Help thread that this webinar will differ from the first in that Google would like to "spend more time chatting with you and answering your questions about this presentation."

You can view a recording of the first webinar below via YouTube:

You can register here for the new orientation webinar.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

There have been recent rumors that Google has been terminating publishers for not updating their privacy policies. The week prior to that post, we polled our audience, asking if they have updated their privacy policies to comply with Google's guidelines.

The majority of those who answered the poll said, they did not update their privacy policies.

Here is the break down of results for the question, "Have You Updated Your Privacy Policy for Google?":
:: No said 55 respondents or 63%
:: Yes said 32 respondents or 36%
:: Other said 1 respondents or 1%

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Google AdSense Help thread has several publishers ranting about the lack of contextual relevance that the Google AdSense flash based ads have towards their content. They say that the image ads and text ads are more contextually relevant, and thus they want to be able to block out the flash ads from displaying on their site, all together.

Currently, the only way to block flash or animated ads is to block all image ads. Blocking image ads is not something all publishers want to do. Some want static image ads and at the same time, they don't want flash or animated ads.

The poll below asks if you think Google show allow for blocking of static ads versus animated or flash ads.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

When Google Ad Planner launched I was really in shock and awe. Google has added a new feature to Google Ad Planner named the Google Ad Planner Publisher Center. It basically gives publishers a way to add more details about their site, so that advertisers can find their sites and better judge the traffic and demographics data of your web site.

To gain access to this, you need to be a publisher and you need to verify your site with Google Ad Planner. There are two ways to verify your site, the details on that is over here, but since I am already verified under Google Webmaster Tools, I can easily add them to Google Ad Planner.

When I logged in, I had no sites in my profile, but since I had sites verified with Google Webmaster Tools, I was able to add them easily to the publisher center:

I clicked on "select sites to include" and was presented with a list of sites I can include:

Then I am presented with an overview and a way to "edit" the information about these sites:

I clicked on edit on one of the sites and the screen looks like this:

Here is also a screen capture of the categories I can add my site to:

For more information about this Google Ad Planner Publisher Center, see the Inside AdSense Blog.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google is hosting a series of free Webinars for new AdSense publishers. The orientation webinar seemed to go well, so why not join the next webinar?

The next webinar is on May 7, 2009 at 6.30pm (PST). It is on the topic of implementation and optimization:

Learn how to work with your ads and experiment with different formats, colors, etc. to maximize your performance.

Google can support up to 500 publishers on the webinar, so make sure to sign up quickly if you want to join. You can sign up over here for the second webinar.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

A WebmasterWorld thread started by moderator martinibuster has been getting a lot of attention over the weekend. MartiniBuster asks other members to come up with theories on why it appears AdSense earnings are lower these days then a year prior.

MartiniBuster's own theory is pretty interesting. In short, he says that there are less AdWords coupons floating around these days, so less people are experimenting with the content network. Let me quote MartiniBuster:

As I recall, there were thousands of dollars worth of AdWords coupons flooding Internet conferences. Those AdSensers who have not attended conferences several years ago won't know what I'm talking about so before you comment on this theory, hear me out.

Every conference I went to there were thousands of dollars worth of coupons available from denominations of $250 on down (as I recall). I think there may have been $500 coupons available, too. There were so many coupons floating around that some people were selling them, exchanging them between themselves, and opening multiple AdWords accounts to take advantage of them.

Could part of the higher payouts have to do with there being less publishers in the system? Is it possible that another contributing factor in those early days of higher ECPM was the flood of AdWords coupons?

Now, there are many other theories for the lower earnings, outside of the world being in a recession. They include:

• Google needs to take a bigger piece of the AdSense pie
• Slow down in new fresh to the net ad clicking users.
• Ad blindness for veteran net surfers.
• Less MFA has to affect a segment of publishers.
• Landing page rules turning off some advertisers.
• AdWords complexity
• Google dropping the ball on code quality due to lack of competition for too many years leading to data loss that is later artificially unfairly balanced out.
• More advertiser control positively affecting few and devastating the rest.
• Google silently taking a bigger portion of publisher's earnings to meet the market expectations.
• Smarter advertisers
• Over saturation of content

There are many more ideas and theories being debated in the thread.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google AdSense Help thread has many reports from Google AdSense publishers based in Israel, that Google has not paid them yet. There was an issue last week with publishers getting paid late, but most of those issues are resolved by now. The issue seems to be a problem for Israeli Google AdSense publishers, even today.

Google AdSense representative, Obair, confirmed the issue:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We've noticed this issue with a few accounts in Israel. Rest assured, we've notified our payments specialists have been notified. Thanks for your patience. Please also direct any other publishers with this issue to this thread. Thanks!

Hopefully this issue will be resolved shortly.

Also over the weekend, a WebmasterWorld thread reported that the ad statistics were "frozen." Meaning, the reports in the AdSense console seemed to not be updating. That issue seemed to resolve itself over time.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld.

Profiting off of medical concerns, such as with the recent Swine Flu outbreak, is something most people don't think about. But in a WebmasterWorld thread, some people are suggesting that if people are afraid to go out, they might spend more time on their computers.

Clearly, more people sitting front of a computer, surfing the web, can lead to higher AdSense earnings. So technically, publishers and Google may profit off of this concern. At least, indirectly.

The thread said:

I believe if this flu does take hold, then it could be good for adsense members, due to the amount of people staying away from shops etc. More online shopping, more clicks :)

Sad, but possibly true.

In any event, Chris Sherman posted Tracking the Swine Flu Epidemic at Search Engine Land the other day.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The first week of March, Google gave publishers the ability to view their reports in Euros and get paid in either dollars or Euros. Since then, I have noticed many threads from confused publishers asking why are their reports now in Euros. Like it happened by itself.

AdSense Pro Jen chimed in on one of those thread at Google AdSense Help explaining what is going on. She said:

I've been in contact with the Dublin office on this concern and have the following clarification for publishers seeing this announcement:

Before you opt into this feature:
- AdSense Reports will be shown in USD
- You can choose to get paid in USD or Euro

After you opt into this feature:
- AdSense Reports will be shown in Euro
- You can still choose to get paid in USD or Euro. Your payment currency is entirely up to you, and does not change after the T&C's are accepted to have Euro as the reporting currency. In other words, whatever payment method and payment currency you had before you accept the new T&C's will remain unchanged after you accept the T&C's.We apologize for any confusion that the announcement is causing and for any offense that may have been taken by the wording.

So it seems like currently, you cannot go back to viewing reports in USD once you opt in to seeing them in Euros.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Yesterday, the Google AdSense blog announced a several updates to the AdSense program policies agreement. The main thing is that to comply with the AdSense terms, you need to comply with the terms of service on any of the other Google products and services.

Google summed up the changes as follows:

• Google brand violations: This policy has always existed in our Terms and Conditions, but we've now brought it directly to the 'Ad Placement' section of the program policies page so that it's easier to find. According to this policy, we don't allow ads or search boxes to be placed on pages which misuse Google logos, trademarks, or other brand features in the page content or URL, and which could mislead users into thinking the page is associated with Google.
• Deceptive implementations: We've clarified this policy a bit in the 'Encouraging Clicks' section of the program policies - ads may not be formatted in a way that makes them indistinguishable from other content on the page where they appear.
• Ad placement in emails and email programs: This updated policy clarifies that Google ads , search boxes, and search results may not be placed in emails, as well as alongside emails.
• Other Google products' policies: With this new policy, publishers aren't permitted to place ads, search boxes, or search results on, within, or alongside other Google products in a way that violates the policies of that other product or service. For instance, this would include placing ads on sites which allow users to download YouTube videos, which isn't permitted by the YouTube Terms of Service.

If you look at the program policies, it says you must comply with the webmaster quality guidelines, as well as all the other Google guidelines for the other services. So that doesn't just mean they are targeting link sellers, MFAs and blended ads as JenSense says, but anyone who doesn't adhere to any of their policies.

Will Google enforce them all? I highly doubt it. But time will tell.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Typically, Google issues payments by the 25th of the month for the previous month and the money is then available on the 26th (if sent electronically). But many Google AdSense publishers are complaining in threads at both Google AdSense Help and DigitalPoint Forums that they have no word from Google on if the payment has been issued.

Here are some of the scared publisher's posts:

I used to get the "payment in progress" message within 24-24 of the month. And pick my payments on 26-26 of the month. Today is 27, and even no "payment in progrees" statement has appeared.

I am scheduled to receive payment through Westren union quick cash. Normaly payment is issued on 25th and can be picked on 26th. my march earning was more then $100 but i cant see any payment issued link.

Personally, I see that my payment was issued on April 24th and I should see it on the 28th. But many publishers are concerned the Google is holding payments from them for no reason.

An other, but older Google AdSense Help thread has confirmation from a Googler that Google is indeed delayed on paying some publishers.

AdSensePro Obair from Google said:

If you're scheduled to receive a payment this month, you should see the following message on the payment history page of your account:

"You are scheduled to be sent a payment by the 30th of this month. If you're receiving a standard delivery check, please allow up to 4 weeks for delivery, depending on your location. If you're using EFT or secured express delivery, your payment should arrive by the 5th of next month. Learn more..."

So don't panic, your money will come, the question is when. Some publishers depend on this check and to have it delayed, can be serious for some. Hat tip to Morgan Chemij for encouraging me to write about this.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and DigitalPoint Forums.

The other day we reported on the new beta project at AdSense that let's you filter ads out by category. Back then, it was rumored that Google allowed the advertiser to specify the category of their ads. That was wrong.

AdSenseAdvisor has come into the WebmasterWorld thread to clarify, saying Google controls those categories. AdSenseAdvisor said:

Google’s adserving technology determines the category to which an ad belongs.

This makes more sense and helps avoid the issue of advertisers maliciously miscategorizing ads.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ever since May 2008, when Google began supporting third-party cookies as part of the DoubleClick acquisition, Google has been asking AdSense publishers to update their privacy policies to include language that third-party cookies are in fact utilized. Then, more recently, Google started behavioral targeting ads and asked publishers again to update their privacy policies.

A new wave of AdSense publisher account bans has been spotted in the discussion forums and some believe this is due to some publishers not updating their privacy policies. A Google AdSense Help thread has discussion around this theory. One "Top Contributor" said:

The privacy policy is a huge deal because it's about doing ethical business. Google is, and partners with, some of the largest companies in the world through the AdSense/Words programs, and if parties on either side of the fence (SANE parties I mean, not these doofi who for some reason think that Google is trying to remain one of the world's largest and most successful companies by ripping them off for a hundred bucks) lost faith in the Google brand - which is largely built on their ethics - then the whole thing falls apart. The advertisers must have a degree of confidence that Google both maintains and enforces standards among their AdSense publishers...so if Richard Branson happens to stop by LowGenius.Com and see that I don't have a privacy policy, and there's an ad for Virgin Airways at the top of my page, he's going to throw a fit and pull his ads...the whole network loses.

But do you think Google is really banning accounts over not having the proper privacy policy?

We recently polled our audience to see how many have updated their privacy policy for AdSense and currently, most have said they have not. If you have not taken the poll yet, please do and I will publish the results later this week.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

The Google AdSense Blog announced they are beta testing a new feature for publishers that allow them to filter ads based on category. So if publishers don't want ads that are about dating, religion or "get rich quick" type of ads, they can block those ads from showing on their site by blocking the whole category.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? In fact, They shared a screen shot that details the various categories. In addition, it even shows you how much money you are making from each category. This way, you don't block your most profitable category.

Here is a screen shot:

So what is the issue? A WebmasterWorld thread asks a very important question. Who is classifying the ads into categories? Is it Google or the advertiser? One member said that when someone asked a Google rep about this at the ADSPACE conference (where this was announced), Google said the advertiser is categorizing their ads.

Here is the post from the thread on that:

Someone asked this question at the google panel at adspace today, and the way i heard the answer is that the _advertiser_ sets the category.

Both the questioner and the answerer were not too clear, but this is what i gathered from the exchange.

The concern is that advertisers will make sure not to categorize their ads in certain categories that might be perceived as negative towards publishers. Now, I am not 100% sure if advertisers to categories their own ads, we will have to wait and see how this all works.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google has notified us that the advertiser does not categorize the ad, instead, Google does this automatically. More details in Google Determines Category For Contextual Ad Category Filter.

Google released a whitepaper titled "CPA Performance Trends on the Google Content Network." The whitepaper has the following findings, all very positive about how Google AdSense performs:

1. Ads on the Google Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective - or even more cost-effective - than ads on the search network.
   • The median advertiser has a content CPA that's about 2% lower than their search CPA.
2. The Content Network drives a significant share of total conversions.
   • The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.
3. Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.

Thing is, no one believes the report. A WebmasterWorld thread has real advertisers saying they don't see this in their daily use of Google's content network and this seems to be a Google backed study that would bias the results.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ever since Google AdSense began supporting third-party ad serving technology, via DoubleClick technology, Google has required publishers to update their privacy policies to specify so.

Then more recently with the implementation of the behavioral targeted Google ads, Google said the privacy policies need to be updated. They even posted a help document specifying those details.

Many publishers have already updated their privacy policy, because I think the deadline to do so, may have past. But I am confident many publishers didn't do anything or make any change to their privacy policies. In fact, I am not even sure if I have a privacy policy on this site. :)

Did you update your privacy policy based on Google's request? Take our poll:

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

This coming April 18th, at 11am PST, Google will be hosting a free AdSense Webinar on the topic of "Orientation" for the first 500 people who sign up. To sign up, go to this URL and click on the "Sign Up" link in the middle of the page.

The first Webinar is to give you the "understanding of the basics of your AdSense account. Learn more about the program and get familiar with your account."

AdSensePro Obair said in a Google AdSense Help thread, you can expect to learn the following from this Webinar:

• Learn how to make the most of your AdSense account
• Get an opportunity to chat with some AdSense Specialists
• Get detailed insight in to different account features

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 15th.

Late last week, Google AdSense had an issue where publishers were unable to login to the site and manage their ads. The reports began coming in on April 10th and some earlier reports came in on the night of the 9th.

We have threads at Google AdSense Help, Google AdWords Help and two at WebmasterWorld and dozens at DigitalPoint Forums.

Both AdSensePro Jennifer and AdWordsPro replied to the issue on the 10th. AdSensePro Jennifer chimed in when it was fixed, saying "OK, things should be back to normal. You should be able to log into your accounts." AdWordsPro gave dialog during the downtime, saying:

Word has is that technical issues are now resolved, and that stats will catch up in the near future. I was told perhaps 4 or 6 hours, but am going to be on the safer side and tell you 6 to 8 hours.

I believe the issue was resolved some time Friday morning.

Now people are complaining about poor Easter day earnings.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help, Google AdWords Help, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Some webmasters on WebmasterWorld are keeping an optimistic view on Adsense despite disappointment in their earning this year. The issues with Adsense lately are no secret, ranking from reporting issues to a Google glitch holding Adsense checks for some publishers. Let conspiracy theories on why abound, but that's not going to halt some from keeping a positive look on what an earnings drop in Adsense can actually spur you to do.

For some when issues arise with Adsense and they fear their income being threatened they kick into high gear to explore areas to diversify their revenue streams into others areas that will hold up when Adsense clearly isn't. As ember a member on WebmasterWorld states when his Adsense earnings drop it "forces him to contact advertisers directly and establish relationships with them. It let's me sleep at night knowing that if I lose my AdSense account, it is not the end of the world".

He goes on to say:

I think this could a blessing in disguise. I was getting lazy, anyway. Time to talk to advertisers.

He makes a great point. Stop being lazy. The WMW thread includes many many success stories on people contacting advertisers directly being able to raise their income well over what Adsense is returning for them. One member complains about the complexity of Adsense turning away people and opting instead for direct relationships that are easier to maintain and consistent.

Great thread with lots of discussion, check it out at WebmasterWorld

AdSenseAdvisor notified publishers via a WebmasterWorld thread that the competitive ad filter now supports up to 500 possible filters. I believe this limit is up from 200 filtered URLs from 2006.

Some publishers were able to block more than 200. In fact, I was able to block up to 500 since February 2009. However, now all publishers should be able to block up to 500.

AdSenseAdvisor said:

Check your account. We have more than doubled your number of filters (to 500).

Please don't go crazy with this. The reason we're not announcing it on the blog is that we don't want to overload our system with everyone filling their filters to capacity at once.

Huge thanks go to the awesome engineering team that implemented this for us (I'm an AdSense publisher, too, after all).

Please feel free to leave love letters to our engineers below.

Most publishers are really happy about this increase.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

It feels like almost every other day where I see threads on the issue of Google not reporting AdSense clicks properly.

A new thread at WebmasterWorld has dozens of publishers complaining that their reports seem to have stalled or are seriously lagged. There are also a few threads at DigitalPoint Forums and Google AdSense Help.

My first thoughts are to just stop checking hourly and check back tomorrow. But for someone who earns 75% of their income with AdSense, I can understand why the concern.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

On Friday, I reported on an AdAge article that showed Google was testing incorporating Twitter streams in AdSense units. The first test, which was confirmed by Google as a limited beta, would show TurboTax's Twitter stream in AdSense units, likely on pages about taxes.

If you scan the recent @turbotax communication via Twitter, you can see why I am nervous about this implementation. If it was purely marketing speak, showing promotions or helpful tax tips, then I would understand it. But as you can see from the stream, TurboTax is having disconnected conversations with other Twitter users. If you see the latest five Tweets from TurboTax in an AdSense unit on a page on taxes, you would have no clue what the ad meant - in this case.

I have asked Google to provide a sample of what this ad unit looks like, but they did not comply. They did give me this statement:

To provide more marketing opportunities for our advertisers to reach users in moments that are relevant and useful to them, we are currently testing different ways that allow advertisers to better update their ads in real time. We are currently in a limited test with a small number of advertisers and publishers.

I understand that Intuit wants to grow a following for @TurboTax on Twitter, but is this the best way to do it? A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around this news. Many are skeptical, but skeptical for the wrong reasons. I am fairly confident I understand Twitter well, I have been on it very early, before most people and I am fairly active on it, under @rustybrick, but using it in this manner, at least the way I understand how it is being used, seems off.

Problems with showing your last five or so Tweets in an AdSense unit?

1. The Tweets may not be relevant to the content of the page
2. You may display disconnected conversations that the public won't be able to understand
3. Many people still are clueless as to what Twitter is
4. Followers are great, but will it lead to sales (many cases, yes, it will)

In this case, I am very skeptical that this type of ad unit will work for Google and advertisers. I am sure publishers won't like to see someone else's Twitter stream on their pages.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

It has been about five to six months now of us reporting that Google has a bug that holds payments to some publishers. In fact, many publishers have been waiting months to be paid and some seem to still be waiting.

A Google AdSense Help thread has confirmation from Googler, Obair, who is still manually removing the hold status on publisher accounts.

It is sad to see that publishers are still experiencing major slow downs in being paid. In fact, if they don't reach out to Google via the help section, they may never get paid. The issue goes back months and months, but was initially confirmed in January 2009.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

A DigitalPoint Forum thread has a collection of "weird" or "funny" ads people spotted through Google AdSense or AdWords. I thought I share them in text format, but feel free to see the thread to see screen captures.

• AdSense shows ads on a skydiver accident for American Airline with the slogan, "we know why you fly."
• AdWords shows ads for Big Daddy and Big Juicy Butts
• AdWords ads for used toilet paper
• Hillary Clinton Naked ads?
• Amazon selling "human remains."
• A search for world of warcraft showing an ad for virgin males (I guess that makes sense)
• You can visit hell on ebay
• Or sell your kids on ebay

Feel free to add more to the forum.

Forum discussion and pictures at DigitalPoint Forum.

The Google AdSense blog announced that they will be adding additional email preferences to the account page. Here is a picture of the new preferences page:

I personally do not see these new preferences under the contact preferences page, but I guess it will show up for me shortly.

In a WebmasterWorld thread, AdsenseAdvisor said:

These new email notification preferences were created in response to feedback from you guys that we haven't been giving you enough opportunities to hear from us. Until now, you've all been limited in the kinds and formats of information you could sign up to receive by email, so we wanted to give you more options and better control over the email offers you get from us.

If you sign up for all the new categories, you'll be eligible for all kinds of great stuff that I probably shouldn't give too many details on yet.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is a very long thread at Google AdSense Help discussions where publishers are accusing Google of taking a larger piece of the ad revenue share. Typically, when someone clicks on an AdSense ad, Google takes some of that revenue, while giving the remainder of the revenue to the publisher.

Some are suggesting that since a couple days ago, Google began taking as much as 90% of the revenue split. There are over 120 posts in the Google AdSense Help, with complaints.

Some suspect it might be a lingering issue from the high impression counts AdSense was reporting, but many don't think it is related.

There is no word from Google on the issue right now. We will continue to monitor things and keep you all posted.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Some very watchful DigitalPoint Forums members noticed that Google updated the Google AdSense home page. Here is the before and after.

Before there was more color in that box on the left:

Now, the box on the left is mostly blue:

Notice the difference? Yea, pretty small, but we noticed.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A week ago today, we reported how AdSense publishers were not happy with video unit payouts. In fact, they were extremely upset with how little the earnings were for displaying rich media on their sites.

Friday, Google announced that they are "sunsetting" (dropping) the video ad units. Google said:

After reviewing our AdSense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube content and ads on your pages, we've found that it hasn't had the impact we had hoped for. As a result, we've decided to retire this feature at the end of April so we can focus our resources on other opportunities to help publishers earn from their sites.

Google recommends that you begin removing the video unit boxes from your pages. Today, the video unit option is not available to new publishers.

There are three forums discussing this now, two with official Google representatives responding to questions.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Google AdSense Help.

Yesterday we reported that AdSense impressions were double reporting. Well it turned out to be more than just a reporting error. Google was double or triple serving the same ads on the same site, which is not something they should have been doing. In any event, Google has announced they fixed the issue:

If you're displaying multiple ad units on your pages, you may have noticed that your pageviews were higher than normal for part of yesterday and today. Our engineers identified a bug which prevented ad units from detecting other units on the same page. As a result, our system logged a pageview for each ad unit that was loaded on a page, instead of a pageview for each page containing ads. In some cases, this also may have caused specific ads to appear in multiple ad units on the same page.

Please be assured that ad unit impressions were still logged correctly and ads were still displayed on your pages, so you were properly credited for all earnings generated from your ads. We've resolved the issue, and although you won't see the pageview count in your reports retroactively changed, your pageview tracking is now back to normal.

But like I said, some ads were double or triple served on the same page.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

Feels like at least once a week, I write about how Google AdSense has reporting issues. Today, I spotted a WebmasterWorld thread that has dozens of AdSense publishers complaining that the reports seem off again.

Specifically, the issues are as follows:

• Impressions are twice the normal expected amount
• Click through rates are about half of the normal expected amount
• Earnings are (obviously) on target with what is expected

In summary, many publishers are noticing high numbers in impression reporting, but lower in the actual click through rate, which leads to the same earning reports as they historically see.

AdSenseAdvisor said a few hours ago:

I'm happy to look into this, but please forgive me if it takes some time (it's pretty late in California right now).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: This is now fixed but ads were double or tripled served in some cases.

We know Google is on Twitter, so is AdWords and we know at least two AdWords reps are also. Yesterday, AdSense joined Twitter @adsense. The way AdSense joined was in Google style, the first Tweet was:

Ads by 47 6F 6F 6F 6F 6F 6F 6F 67 6C 65

What does that mean? Well, if you use an Hex/ASCII converter and plug in 47:6F:6F:6F:6F:6F:6F:6F:67:6C:65 it translates it to "Gooooooogle." As you see on many Google AdSense ads, they have a line that reads "Ads by Gooooooogle."

The Inside AdSense blog officially announced the new Twitter account. So feel free to follow it on Twitter and while you are at it, follow @seroundtable and @rustybrick.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

AdSenseAdvisor said in a WebmasterWorld thread that having more ads on the page will lead to higher revenues per impression.

This may be obvious, that showing more ads, will lead in more revenues per page view, but not for all publishers. Some are of the belief that showing less ads increases the value of each click and then might lead to more revenue per impression.

It is nice to see that a Google representative has went on record as saying that this is generally the case.

I assume many of you disagree, if so, why?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread posted a screen shot of an unusual Google AdSense ad. Here is a picture of the ad:

Matt Cutts is the head of Google's web spam team. I am not sure how many sales this type of banner would lead to, since those who are looking for SEO services, may not know Matt. But it might lead to conversion for those prospects that do their homework.

In any event, this was a funny thread to spot.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Last week, I ran a poll asking if Google AdSense made up most of your income. The 129 responses are in and I wanted to share them with you. It seems like 47% of those that make money will AdSense say Google makes up more than 25% of their income. 53% said Google makes up less than 25% of their income. Here is the breakdown:

:: Less Than 25% of My Income said 58 respondents or 45%
:: Over 75% of My Income said 25 respondents or 19%
:: Not Applicable To Me said 20 respondents or 16%
:: Over 50% of My Income said 14 respondents or 11%
:: Over 25% of My Income said 12 respondents or 9%

Is it possible that 23% of publishers make 75% or more of their income with Google? The 23% is when you take out the "Not Applicable to Me" results, since they likely are not AdSense publishers.

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.

There are two different threads at WebmasterWorld that show publishers, advertisers and affiliate's concern over a new proposed tax law in California.

The law, as understood in the thread, would potentially tax any seller who using AdWords to market their product or service. Moderator, incrediBILL, explained:

The conclusion I drew after reading the law is that since AdSense directly refers customers via links, as do the AdWords ads showing in the SERPs, it's therefore theoretically possible that anyone using Google as an advertising vehicle could be subject to CA tax.

If people advertising in Google are suddenly subject to collecting and paying CA tax then people will most likely stop advertising on Google.

You can see the details about this tax proposal named AB178 and the hearing won't be until April 13, 2009.

Some are very skeptical over the bill and they are not worried too much about how it might impact them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: 5 Star Affiliate Blog has very good coverage of this concern. Well worth a read.

There are two threads at Google AdSense Help discussions with AdSense publishers who are simply not happy with the earnings they have been reported to receive from their YouTube content.

Let me quote you some upset publishers:

My revenue is down more than 50%. There were people who were expecting to earn $200 in January and instead earned $80. I was expecting $1000-$2000 and earned a little over $80.

Received my report. 1/5th of my Content Host earning. Shame.

63. Wow. Just as we're writing about it, the amount posted. And it ain't pretty. I had $67 in Content Host earnings (63,600 views/1000 clicks) and only $17 in YouTube earnings... sheesh, that sure wasn't worth the wait!

Some feel ripped off by Google while others feel that there may be a glitch in the system. But one publisher recommends "patience," explaining:

Settle down guys. The Partner program is definitely not a "get rich quick' program. Part of the low revenue is the economy and the other part might be the simple fact that an advertiser does not want to pay a lot to run ads on your videos.

I have seen my YT amount drop to 1/20th or so what I would expect but content host amount is going up and that is fine with me.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

We have a lot of Google AdSense publishers that read this site and I wanted to run a quick poll asking you guys, what percent of your income is from Google AdSense. The poll is completely anonymous and if you have a 20 seconds, please take the poll.

As you can see, I broke the figures out in a very generic fashion, to keep it simple. Please take the poll and have your publisher friends and colleagues taking the poll. I will publish the results for everyone to see.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Last night, Google began emailing AdSense publishers about their new terms of service to cover the recent behavioral targeting changes to be made to the content network. The email I have a copy of is sent to a Danish publisher and he used Google Translate to translate the text. Here is a copy:

...Following this announcement, your policy on privacy now reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information on http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557&hl=da to ensure that your site's policies for protecting personal information has been updated and make any necessary changes before 8 April 2009. Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, unfortunately we can not propose a policy to protect personal information in a certain language...

I personally did not receive this email yet, but there is a lot of discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld around this update.

Yesterday, when I covered this news, I asked if publishers will be able to control if the ads are triggered from the interest categories or not. Google answered that question now, saying yes, they can control it.

So you need to make sure that your site's privacy policy is in accordance with the terms of service to run AdSense ads. You can learn more about that at this document at Google. Google actually asked publishers in the past to make sure they had a solid privacy policy, when they began serving ads through DoubleClick.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld.

I spotted a thread at both DigitalPoint Forums and Google AdSense Help discussions that is extremely suspicious.

The user is linking to a page that has AdSense ads on them, calling this user out for violating Google's terms of service. It seems like this guy really wants the publisher to get banned. So he calls them out.

My thoughts? Well, I got a few.

(1) I think that this user may want to ban other AdSense publishers and maybe put up an AdSense ad with their publisher IDs in the ad. Then made the page overly against Google's terms of service, in an effort to ban these publishers. This happens and it sometimes works.

(2) The page which is over here is overly in your face on Google's terms of service. It doesn't just violate one issue, but virtually all of them. At some point, you can expect that this looks like a fraud and that anyone who visits the page thinks it is a fraud.

(3) These are so over the top that punishing this publisher doesn't do any good. They simply want to be punished (not that I think the pub ids in use are the ones who did it, see #1). I can't see most internet users actually taking the time to click on those ads. Heck, they probably would leave the site immediately. But what do I know.

I hate seeing this type of stuff and I rarely bring this out into a post over here. But this is just way over the top and I decided to share it.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google AdSense Help.

Google Gets Into Behavioral Targeting, Launches “Interest-Based Advertising” Beta at Search Engine Land is a must read on this story. In short, Google is testing behavioral ads on the content network, using what they call "interest based categories" and "previous interactions." The cool part is that Google allows you to specify which categories (600 of them) interest you and you can also opt out at http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/.

In any event, the Search Engine Land article is a really good article on this topic. I know I wrote most of it, but both Greg Sterling and Danny Sullivan added tremendous perspective to the article. In fact, Greg touched on a major concern AdSense publishers are discussing about this program.

The concern is that Google's contextual relevancy may dwindle down, in exchange for behavioral relevancy. Contextual relevancy is what Google takes pride in, they love to say they have ads that match the exact content of the page. If you are reading about Sony video cameras, Google will show you AdSense ads for Sony video cameras. But possibly now, if you are a sports enthusiast (Google knows this because you visit sports sites) and you are reading an article about video cameras (because you want to buy one for the next game), you may see sports ads and not video camera ads.

This is incredibly new for Google. They have been using previous queries to trigger ads in search. But right now, Google said this is not tied to search history. There have been rumors that Google said they don't plan on behavioral target a while back.

In any event, let me pull out some quotes from the threads. We have discussions at Sphinn, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Publishers who really care about the ads that are shown on their site and want them to be relevant to their site will be frustrated/angry when site users call up to complain that there are inappropriate/irrelevant ads on it. This will especially be an issue for people that share a computer (example: families).

So if you look at baseball they will show baseball ads. So they follow you around and put ads up that has your interest. So oneday later on the day you look at something else and they still are showing those dam baseball ads. Give me a break. Have I mentioned that google is not god and google and adsense sucks.

SO you come to the forum and they still show those dam baseball ads.

There is also a lot of discussion around the privacy and opt out features. The big question is, will publishers and advertisers be able to say, I don't want my ads to be targeted behaviorally?

Forum discussion at Sphinn, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

The Google AdSense blog suggested that publishers add the Google News Widget to their web site. But publishers are not understanding why they should direct people off their web sites for free.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks, what is the incentive to lure visitors off your web site and into Google News? One publisher said, "if a widget is going to take visitors away from my site, it certainly better compensate me for them!"

I spent the past fifteen minutes looking for an old feature that Google AdSense had available but discontinued years ago. It basically was a widget you can add to your site that would show news, web results and other content from Google, but it wouldn't earn you money. They discontinued it, but I cannot find my post that talks about it, at least not now.

Here is an example of this Google News Widget in action:

But some publishers say that this added content makes for a better quality site.

I actually have two sites where I plan to add it as a service to my regular members. I don't really care if they leave my site, what I care about is that they keep coming back. The more useful the site, the more likely they are to come back.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This and last week we reported issues with Google reporting up to date stats. Many publishers felt that Google had a major reporting delay and they were very concerned. Typically, it turns out to be nothing and the numbers tend to update themselves over time. But this time, it was a little different.

Google admitted to a bug in the AdSense contextual targeting system that returned irrelevant ads on publisher sites. Typically, Google AdSense ads are relevant to the content on the page, but something went wrong where Google's contextual targeting went off. On Thursday of last week at 2pm (PST) a bug for "approximately 10 hours" triggered these issues. The issue was resolved by Friday morning, according to Google.

Google admitted that non-contextually targeted ads may result in lower earnings and impact your earnings for those ten hours. Google said:

You were still credited for all valid clicks and impressions on the ads which appeared on your sites, but this bug may have impacted your overall AdSense for content revenue if you had visitors to your pages during these hours. Please note that because we're unable to determine which ads would have been viewed or clicked on by visitors to your sites in the absence of the bug, we will not be manually adjusting yesterday's earnings.

The big question was, was this a reporting glitch or were these publishers that severely impacted by the relevancy issue?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A few weeks ago, Google finally gave AdSense publishers a way to specify the font type they want to show on their web sites. AdSense publishers were really happy with the added control and Google was happy to give publishers this level of control.

So why am I seeing reports that Google is ignoring these AdSense font preferences and overriding them with something else?

A WebmasterWorld thread has several publishers complaining that Google is not using the font they picked in the AdSense ad set up.

One said, he doesn't mind, because it helps against "ad blindness." But why give the publisher the option. If I set my preferred font, then use it. If I don't set it, then feel free to experiment.

One publisher said:

just curious whether anyone else has set up their ads with a fixed font, only to see them carry on changing.

i know it's probably just google testing the fonts again, but why are they carrying on testing them when they've already given us the option to change them

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense statistics have been having issues updating since March 4th. In fact, we have seen reports prop up again and again since then. March 6th, people were complaining and people have been complaining since, including this morning.

We have two threads, one at WebmasterWorld and the other at Google AdSense Help. Each thread complains about the same thing, over the course of the weekend and today.

There are also dozens of threads at DigitalPoint Forums on the issue.

We have no official word from Google on these recent issues.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

Huffington Post has a story about a Google AdSense publisher who had his account terminated by Google for "posing a signficicant risk to advertisers." That advertiser sued Google in small claims court for $721, the amount of money he had accrued for clicks on his site. Guess what? He won! Seriously, go read the story, it reads very well.

Let me now give you the AdSense publisher reaction from DigitalPoint Forums.

Its small claims court. Google didn't even have lawyers representing them - a paralegal instead.

All you'll win is the few bucks Google owes you. Better than nothing I guess... but you cannot get your account back via small claims court.

Sounds like a rare exception, doubt others would be able to do it.

Very nice article. I'm happy for the dude. Everybody whose account got cancelled, sue Google!

You can see his original posts in the Google AdSense Help Forum.

Is this going to spark a ton of law suits for Google?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: Turns out that publisher did indeed violate Google's TOS and the court overruled the decision in appeals court.

In a day and age where 70% of Google publishers are reporting less earnings with Google, Google needs to take bold moves to get more people to see and click on their ads.

Google introduces expandable ads. The ads will be displayed on publisher sites and they can click on the ad to make them expand into a much large ad that overlays over the content of the page. The expandable ads can contain movie streams, show video game clips, or display various views of an item for sale.

Google said this won't disrupt the end user because it has to be clicked on to be expanded, will never be "double its width or height," the "user may close the expanded panel at any time," it won't change your content, and it has to comply with their terms. There is a comprehensive help section devoted to expanded ads at Google AdSense Help.

Here is a sample ad:

Publishers await to see if this helps earn them more money. Who is the real loser here? I guess the searcher or the average consumer. Outside of that, the advertiser, publisher and Google are all winners.

Also, this may lead to publishers trying new tricks to get people to click on the ad. Note, clicking on an ad to expand it does not generate cost to the advertiser, it is only the click that leads to the advertiser's landing page that has any cost.

By the way, Google is also testing more interactive ads, according to Amit Agarwal.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

If you visit the Google AdSense home page you may notice that the login page has been redesigned. Here is a picture of the new page:

The old one looked like this:

We anticipated the new home page would be coming soon this morning, when we reported about the recent login issues with AdSense. This also probably means that many (not all) AdSense counters, notifiers and trackers are having issues operating now.

Note that this is occurring while there are major stat delays with the AdSense reports.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Last night, I noticed dozens of reports that Google AdSense publishers were unable to login to their AdSense consoles. The first report came in at 1:59am (EST) from a Google AdSense Help thread.

Most of these publishers noticed a new Google AdSense login page. The page then wouldn't allow them to login. The question is, is Google testing a new login page for AdSense? I know a lot of third party AdSense tracking tools stopped working last night as well. Maybe Google tried to change things up to prevent those scraper bots from bogging down their system? I don't know.

At 5:57 this morning, a Google AdSense representative, William, confirmed the issue and said it was fixed. Some publishers may still have issues logging in, if you do, he recommends "clearing the cache and cookies or try using a different browser."

At about 2:50am, I saw first reports at a DigitalPoint Forums thread that publishers were able to login again. But there are still lingering reports of publishers not being able to login. So make sure to listen to William's suggestion above.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Since early January, AdSense publishers have been complaining that they have not received payment in multiple months. In fact, Google confirmed the issue and said they are "taking this issue seriously."

In early February, Google promised those delays will stop and these publishers would get paid at the end of the month, in February. Google said then, "to be noted the holds removed between January 15 and February 15 will be reflected in payments issued at the end of February."

At the end of February, Google seemed to be somewhat frantic in posting help threads to sort out the issues with payments. This should have been a warning sign to many of those publishers who have not seen a payment from Google in months that they may not see a check in the near future.

Yesterday, Google posted a thread at Google AdSense Help saying that many publishers were not paid at the end of February and promises, yet again, to pay publishers, but this time, it won't be until the end of March. Why the delay, yet again? Well, it seems like Google wasn't able to manually remove the "hold" flag on these accounts by the February 15th deadline. So because of that, publishers have to go without pay yet another month.

AdsensePro William said:

If you were one of the publishers who ended up with your AdSense account on hold for payments due to an AdSense bug, you were reassured that payments would be processed to be included at the end of February. Originally, the payments were to be included in the payments at the end of February. However, because Google had to remove these holds manually, it seems as though this wasn’t done until after the February 15th cut off time. So what does this mean for affected publishers? You have to wait another month to receive your payment due to Google’s bug, according to AdSensePro Jen.

Yes, so now Google’s bug means you have to wait until the end of March for those payments. Still no word on how many publishers are affected or if perhaps some of them made the February 15th cut off so they will get their payments at the end of February as the original post implied, but the new post by AdSensePro Jen seems to say that all affected publishers didn’t have their account’s fixed until after the payment cut off deadline.

All I have to say is that this looks really bad for Google. Some publishers may depend on this income to pay their rent and buy food. If you are one of these publishers, I would try to get on the phone with Google or send them an email to make sure everything is in order for the end of March payment.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

The exchange rate and how it plays in the Google AdSense space for non-USA based publishers is a big deal, especially these days. We cover it often enough, including times where Google outright made huge mistakes and when the rates seemed unfair at times.

The latest thread on the topic comes from WebmasterWorld where a European publisher said he just received payment, but that payment seemed way off. He said Google gave him an exchange rate of €0.774/1$ (~1.30), when the current EURUSD is 1.266. Heck, even Google search shows that exchange rate:

European publishers are not happy because the 1.30 rate has not been seen since February 9th.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There were reports this morning at about 1am (EST), that the Google AdSense console was down. A DigitalPoint Forums thread has several publishers upset with the downtime, but soon later it came back up.

The Wall Street Journal blog has confirmation from Google about this downtime. I am a bit shocked they bothered to cover AdSense console downtime, but as they said:

AdSense is the online-ad server of choice for thousands of Web sites, and while it’s not unheard of for it to experience down time, it comes in a week that’s already seen the catchphrase “Gfail” bandied about.

Google told the Wall Street Journal that the downtime was for about 90 minutes and did not impact all publishers.

This news comes days after Gmail went offline for a couple hours.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

One of the official representatives in the Google AdSense Help Forums, AdSensePro Jen, has posted three threads in an effort to help publishers who are having payment issues. Those threads are named:

• I have no visible holds on my account, and have not been paid
• I have requested a check reissue but not received a confirmation
• My check/payment was returned or expired and I'm unable to remove a hold on my account

The first thread is the only thread that has any current complaints in it, but the threads are less than 12 hours old anyway.

Let me break out the payment issues with each thread:

(1) I have no visible holds on my account, and have not been paid:

Please reply to this thread if you meet the following criteria:

- you have no visible holds on your account
- you have over $100 in earnings
- you have not yet been paid

However, please keep in mind that the payment hold issue that was occurring earlier was fixed after the 2/15 Feb payment cycle deadline. As a result, if you believe you were under this issue, you should be paid in the next cycle at the end of March.

(2) I have requested a check reissue but not received a confirmation:

If you have once submitted a check reissue request and never received a response, please reply to this thread.

Keep in mind that if you requested a reissue and received a reply about your earnings being credited back in 15 days, the request was processed and there is nothing more you need to do.

Moreover, if you are using EFT, you cannot request a reissue, you must check with your bank as to why the earnings were not received.

(3) My check/payment was returned or expired and I'm unable to remove a hold on my account:

Please reply to this thread if you have a payment that was returned or expired and after you entered your updated address/account information, the hold still hasn't been removed from your account.

Hopefully, you don't have to reply to any of these threads.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

We are hearing reports from several publishers in the Google AdSense network that Google is testing larger font types in their ads.

We have threads at both WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums discussing both seeing this in action and the results from the larger fonts.

Some like the larger fonts because they feel it draws more attention to the ads, which leads to more clicks and more earnings. But some don't like how the large fonts stand out. They feel it distracts from the content on the site and they have no way to downsize the font.

Maybe this will lead to giving publishers control over the font size, like they recently did with AdSense Font Types just last week.

JenSense has some pictures of the larger font types being tested.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Earlier this month, we polled Google AdSense publishers, asking how their earnings from Google is working out in this recession. After receiving about a 120 responses, I thought I share the results with you.

About 70% said they are earning less these days, whereas 22% said their earnings are the same and 8% said their earnings have increased.

Here is the break down:

:: Earnings Have Dropped said 82 respondents or 68.91%
:: Earnings Remain The Same said 27 respondents or 22.69%
:: Earnings Have Increased said 10 respondents or 8.4%

Yes, this recession is likely cutting AdWords budgets, impacting both publishers and Google.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

After years and years of testing different font types and styles in Google AdSense, Google is now giving the publisher the option of defining which font they prefer on their sites. The AdSense blog finally announced this feature last night and the new fonts include Arial, Times and Verdana. Here is a screen capture:

Plus, publishers can set their default font preference over here.

Google has been testing font styles since early 2007 and then began aggressively testing fonts in May 2008, using fonts such as comic sans both then and in June and August.

Publishers are very happy about the extra control and already want more font options.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

In December, Google expanded the AdSense for Domains product to all US publishers. Today, we are hearing reports in several forums that it has now been expanded to international publishers as well.

I was very concerned to learn in December that this extremely controversial program was expanded then. But to be honest, I have not seen many complaints since the expansion. For my perspective, things did not get worse by opening up. In fact, maybe things have been getting better with Google and fighting off certain types of MFAs and arbitrageurs. Opening this program internationally does worry me, but let's see how Google handles it.

Right now, we have very little feedback on the implications of this move. The best thing is to wait and watch. Oh, trust me, as soon as I see complaints, I will bring them to you.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google has confirmed with me that Google has indeed opened up AdSense for Domains internationally.

Over two years ago, Google started testing AdSense optimization reports, also known as automated AdSense tips. They can be found when you go to your AdSense Inbox.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks, why does Google not send AdSense optimization report every month? Personally, I have not received one since December 2008 and I am happy that I have not received one. Here is a screen capture of my reports in my AdSense inbox:

I assume the tips don't show every month because (1) they are often repetitive and (2) can be dead wrong on occasion.

One WebmasterWorld member offers another possible reason, "They laid off the tip writer." Of course, he is joking.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, there were hundreds of posts and dozens of threads with complaints from both Google AdWords advertisers and Google AdSense publishers. The complaints were that the reports were not being updated. Google has confirmed the issue in Google AdWords Help discussions area saying:

• There was a stats issue in the Ads system that affected stats related to Adwords and AdSense.
• The issue started at roughly 4AM PST on Sat 2/14/09 and lasted several hours.
• The issue only affected stats and reporting. AdServing was not affected and all ads continued to run as normal.
• Account access was normal during this time.
• AdWords engineers are working to get all stats back online/up-to-date ASAP. The update process has started.
• No stats have been lost
• It is anticipated that by the end of today all basic stats at the Adgroup, Campaign, and Account level will be current.
• Advanced stats such as Product Placement Reports and Query reports for Friday, Saturday, Sunday are anticipated to be available by Tuesday 2/17/09

Like I said, there is a lot of discussion around this issue. Here are the threads:

• Alert: Account stats were delayed Saturday, February 14, 2009, Google AdWords Help
• Adsense on Valentines Day, DigitalPoint Forums
• Adwords Drop. Is anyone else seeing this?, Search Engine Watch Forums
• Are everyone's stats really lagged right now?, WebmasterWorld
• Saturday Feb 14th stats stuck, WebmasterWorld
• Stats stuck?, DigitalPoint Forums

Google has confirmed in a Google AdSense Help thread that many publishers did not received their January payments due to a bug in the system. The bug put publisher accounts on hold, which automatically held any payments being sent to these publishers. Google's AdSense Pro William confirmed the issue last night, saying:

Of late we have noticed complaints from Publishers about not receiving payments on time in spite of having no visible holds on the account. This was due to a bug which has been fixed and in the mean time we have been removing the holds manually and the publishers would be receiving the payments in the next payment cycle possible. Also, to be noted the holds removed between January 15 and February 15 will be reflected in payments issued at the end of February.

I believe this is a continuation of the story we covered a couple weeks ago named Google Confirms Not Paying Some AdSense Publishers. Let's add this to the list of recent bugs we have been noticing with Google in the past week, I think we are over 10 now.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Jennifer Slegg reported that Google AdSense has increased the number of channels for AdSense publishers by an addition 300, adding up to a total of 500 channels. Channels give publishers a way to segment their ads and track them for performance and earning objectives.

The thing is, the discussion at WebmasterWorld seems to think that this is a thing given to publishers on a publisher by publisher basis. For some reason, many are reporting only having 200 channels, while others said they had a total of 500 for a really long time now.

I checked my account and I have a total of 500, but I do not know when that was given to me:

In any event, if you only have 200 and you need more, I am sure bugging your AdSense representative might help.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google added a statement to this forum thread on February 17th saying:

We’ve been experimenting with more channels for a small set of publishers. Thanks in large part to your feedback, we’re trying to extend this test to more publishers, especially those who we know are already using channels most heavily. The reason we can’t just roll this out to everyone is that we need to make sure that our ad serving and reporting continues to run smoothly.

The Google Adsense Preview Tool has been bugging out for the past few days, only returning to normal just a day or so ago.

First reports came from Google AdSense Help forums on Thursday, February 5th. Google noticed the complaints on the 6th, and a Google representative said:

Thanks for bringing up the issue and sorry for the trouble. We've noticed the issue and are working on it. We'll inform you as soon as it is fixed. Thanks again for your understanding.

Then the following day, on the 7th, we received reports that the tool is now working again.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Many, many Google AdSense publishers are complaining about a drop in earnings from their Google AdSense initiatives. A long and detailed thread at WebmasterWorld has a lot of complaints from publishers on the topic.

There is no question that ad dollars globally have dried up. The economy is in really bad shape and consumers are not buying, so sellers are not advertising. I can tell you from personal experience, we use to turn away advertisers left and right and now it is almost impossible to get a new advertiser here. (Hint, if you want a good price on ads here, contact us.)

I hear that many Google AdWords advertisers are slashing budgets due to the drop in sales they have experienced. With a drop in advertising budgets, that means less ads to go around in the contextual space, which results in less money for Google AdSense Publishers. There are no hard facts on this drop yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more data come out on this soon.

Publishers, let us know if you have seen a drop in AdSense earnings in the past couple weeks or so. Take the poll below:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense might be testing a new ad format. We have a few reports of publishers noticing this new format from DigitalPoint Forums. Here is a look at the new format:

This seems to be a fairly interactive ad box. It might be one of those Google Gadget Ads but one publisher said he never noticed the ad type on his site.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

It is that time of the year again, tax season and Google began sending out 1099s to their publishers. But some publishers are reporting that the earnings stated on the 1099s differ from the actual earnings.

A publisher in a WebmasterWorld thread said the 1099 only showed earnings of 12% of what he actually earned with Google in 2008. While a Google AdSense Help thread has another publisher saying his 1099 shows higher earnings then what he actually earned with Google AdSense in 2008.

So what does one do?

(1) Speak to your accountant
(2) I would inform Google of the issue through the contact us form in the AdSense console.
(3) Make sure the numbers are indeed incorrect

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

An advertiser notes in a WebmasterWorld thread that Google's Learning Center module has an interesting piece of content, under the section 3D, Targeting/Keyword Targeting. It said:

Note: Partner sites don't recognize keyword matching options. Therefore, all keywords on these sites are treated as broad-matched keywords.

This means, that when AOL displays Google AdWords ads on AOL Search, they might not listen to if you want to only show an ad for blue shoes, as opposed to red shoes. As you can imagine, this really got many advertisers worried.

The original poster brought this to the attention of his Google representative, who told him, that note needs to be clarified. He basically said, match types do apply to the search network, including search partners, but does not include the content network.

So match type controls do not make a difference on the content network, but they do make a difference on the search network and search partners.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Before starting, I am finding this very hard to believe. A fairly active member at DigitalPoint Forums, posted a thread linking to his blog, where he has a screen capture of Google AdSense showing up in place of the ad spots of AOL's Instant Messenger software.

Here is his screen capture from his blog:

I was going to dismiss this post completely, but then I looked at the members history at the forum. He has over 700 posts at the forum and has been an active member since February 2007. So it seems like this member has some history.

I am still very skeptical that this image was not 'photoshoped' to look this way.

So I will leave it at being extremely skeptical if this is a true screen capture or something that was made up. I simply do not know.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

An interesting WebmasterWorld thread has several publishers claiming that they make more money with Google AdSense with their old, not updated sites, as compared to their larger, more updated and cleaner looking sites.

In the past, we did discuss how ugly sites earn more with AdSense and most agreed that this is true. But outdated, old sites are earning more than updated and fresh sites?

Here is a poll, which one makes you more money?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, many AdSense sites, were not serving up paid contextual ads. Instead, they were serving up what are called PSAs or Public Service Ads. They kind of look like this:

They do not earn publishers money.

A Google AdSense Help thread has confirmation from Google on this bug. AdSensePro Ashley said:

This issue has now been resolved. PSA ads on affected blogs should now be replaced with paying ads. Some publishers may experience a short delay before they see paying ads on their blogs.

It might have impacted just Blogger/Blogspot blogs. But it impacted many blogs for a short period of time. There were 45 responses to this small "crises." There was also discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

This was not the first time Google seemed to have an issue with serving up PSAs. We covered this issue back in 2004, twice. If you want to eliminate PSAs, you can try that also.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and DigitalPoint Forums.

In the Google earnings call, that we reported earlier, Google's Senior Vice President, Johnathan Rosenberg, said on the earnings call:

AdSense revenue was weaker, though AdSense for content was strong. When it comes to AdSense for Search, we did a lot of arbitrage cleanup in Q3 and Q4.

This quote comes from a WebmasterWorld thread, and discusses the significance of such a statement.

Made for AdSense sites (MFAs are banking on arbitrage and Google promised to shut them down in May 2007. But stronger action appeared this past May. It seems like it has impacted Google's earnings.

In Q4 2007 Google earned 1.31 billion with AdSense (and that network), but in Q4 2008 Google earned 1.29 billion. Even in the third quarter, Google earned 1.33 billion. So there did seem to be a downturn recently in that area.

Some are using this statement to reduce their estimated tax payments in 2009.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a lot of discussion from Google AdSense publishers on how poor of a day they had on Inauguration Day.

Traffic and clicks and earnings were way down for most of these publishers on the day. It seems like very few web users were out and about using these sites.

So let me poll our audience, how did you do on Inauguration Day?

I know this site's traffic was pretty even, but I think that was because we wrote a post about the day.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is an extremely large thread at Google AdSense Help group with publishers complaining that they have not received payment this month from Google.

Jennifer, a Google AdSense representative, confirmed that Google did not pay some publishers due to a bug of some sort. She said:

We've been monitoring this thread and I can confirm that we have an issue on our back end that is preventing some publishers from seeing payment holds on their accounts. We are working with the YouTube team to get this issue resolved as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we have been working to contact affected publishers individually. Thank you all for posting in the forum. The faster we can aggregate data on a possible bug, the faster we can fix it, and forum threads like this are hugely helpful in surfacing these issues.

We appreciate your patience, and I assure you that we hear you and are taking this issue seriously.

Jennifer makes it sound like this is just impacting YouTube partners, but I am not too sure about that.

Google is known to have made many mistakes paying publishers in the past.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Last week, I really gave it to Google hard with my post named Publishers Feeling Screwed By Google AdSense Competitive Ad Filter. In short, the complaints about the Google AdSense competitive ad filter not working had lingered on with no response from Google.

Google caught wind of the increased level of dissatisfaction from publishers and finally posted in the WebmasterWorld thread saying:

Sorry, guys. This one is entirely my bad. It's not that AdSense dropped the ball, it's that I dropped the ball.

We've been looking into it, but I haven't provided updates because I've been out of the country. I apologize for not giving you all a heads up.

I'm going to message a few of you privately to get more specifics if you don't mind providing them (for troubleshooting use only) so we can determine if there is an issue on our end.

One quick question for all of you: what method are you using to determine the destination URLs you're adding to your filter?

Okay, fine, so she/he is human and missed this thread. We forgive you. But what I find very interesting is the last line of the response. AdSenseAdvisor said:

What method are you using to determine the destination URLs you're adding to your filter?

To me, that implies that the issue is not necessarily with the competitive ad filter not working, but it not working as publishers think it should work. Publishers might be blocking URLs, thinking they are blocking a whole domain, when in fact, they are not. It seems to me, that this may be more of an issue of education then of bugs. Or maybe not?

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a lot of discussion around the AdSense code not complying with the W3C validation requirements. Some webmasters want their pages to be 100% validate, and adding this code may ruin that.

I am told the piece that invalidates the HTML is:

id="cse-search-box"

There is no word from a Google representative on this issue, yet. But I suspect we should hear soon about this. I mean, the thread is pretty active and it should be an easy fix for Google, I would suspect.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In late December, we reported that Google's AdSense Competitive Ad Filter stopped working for many publishers. Guess what, it is still not working for many of them and they are feeling very let down by Google. If you don't know what Google's competitive filter is, it basically gives publishers the functionality to block specific ads from appearing on their pages.

Successful AdSense publishers depend on the competitive filter to block out the MFAs and poor quality sites from displaying on their sites. But since late December, the filter stopped working for many. Here are some of the continued complaints in the WebmasterWorld thread:

I've managed to keep earnings up by constantly monitoring and blocking ads but my filter is filling up with garbage. Once it's full and my site visitors see nothing but crap ads and stop clicking, that's it, buh bye AdSense.

I'm with coach. This is pretty sad.

I let it go a few weeks to see what would happen- Sounded like ASA was all over it. I guess not. I tried blocking a few more today and they were already in the ad filter. Nothing can be done I guess.

I am surprised the ASA has become quiet over this. It is not as if he/she isn't aware of the problem.

Is it intentional? Is Google doing this to earn more money? They recently cut jobs and products, plus they have been spewing ads everywhere and anywhere. Time will tell.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

About a week ago, we ran a poll asking publishers how helpful they found the AdSense optimization reports, which they launched in April 2007.

The results are now in and we see that about 70% find them to be not helpful and likely a complete waste of their time and Google's time (which is automated).

Here is the breakdown of the 60+ votes:

:: AdSense optimization reports are not helpful said 43 respondents or 69.35%
:: AdSense optimization reports are somewhat helpful said 17 respondents or 27.42%
:: AdSense optimization reports are very helpful said 2 respondents or 3.23%

I guess you can't please them all. But while 70% say they are not helpful, only 3% find them to be very helpful. I guess we would like more votes, but I would guess most experienced publishers don't make changes based on those optimization reports.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense began testing AdSense optimization reports about two years ago. They officially released in in April 2007 and publishers were eager to get tips from Google. We then began noticing that the tips were not only repetitive and automated but also sometimes offering wrong tips all together.

So, now two years later, I ask you via a poll, are these optimization reports useful or helpful to you in any way?

Please take the poll, tell your publisher friends to take the poll and I'll publish the results within 30-days.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If you're fat and get offended easily, don't use any service that uses Google AdSense. That's what WebmasterWorld members are spotting -- ads targeting the "fat" people of America. Apparently there's a conception that the holidays may have gotten people overweight. Or perhaps this is a way to ring in your New Year's Resolutions.

But that isn't satisfying publishers who are using Google AdSense. On top of other offensive Google AdSense ads, this isn't faring well for Google.

In reality, though, not every publisher is that disappointed in these ads. Some are considering clicking on the ads because they are looking to lose weight. Others are seeing a fair share of earnings from other clicks. It's certainly not as bad as ads featuring naked people, but it's not necessarily in the best taste for everyone.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Do people really use the Internet during the holiday season? According to the activity on Twitter yesterday, perhaps they actually do. But elsewhere on the 'net, that may not necessarily be the case. Publishers report that they get the lowest earnings during the holiday time, for the most part.

Of course, like any industry, there are always anomalies. A few publishers, but hardly the majority, report that the performance has been pretty good.

I guess I'm not too surprised.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Both Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network publishers are reporting getting payment early this month. Some suspect it is due to being closed during the normal pay period, due to the holidays. Some suspect Google and Yahoo are being nice for the holiday season. Some suspect it might have to do with making sure payment goes out before the end of their fiscal years (due they even go by the calendar year?).

We have a Google AdSense related thread at WebmasterWorld where many have reported already receiving the money in their bank accounts. We also have a Yahoo Publisher Network related thread at DigitalPoint Forums.

For whatever reason the payments are going out now, many publishers are finding it to be a nice holiday gift.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

On Friday, a number of Google AdSense publishers reported that AdSense was down. The cause was unknown and Google officially never actually volunteered more information about it.

Google AdWordsAdvisor was able to provide the publishers with information -- mostly ensuring them that Google was prioritizing the issue -- but there is no further information on behalf of Google's actual AdSense team.

AdWordsAdvisor does say, though, on a completely side point, that "In the AdWords side of the world, though, the stats that advertisers see in their account are delayed by up to three hours as a matter of course, under normal circumstances." We're not entirely sure how this factors into reporting on Google AdSense's side, but this is interesting information regardless.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.