Google AdSense Archives

First, congrats on your wedding - I like to personally wish you both a long happy life together.

Now, let's get down to the money... You make a lot of money with Google AdSense. But now that you are married and you are taking on your spouse's name, you want to get the checks made out to your new last name. How do you go about changing your name on Google AdSense, so that you and your new spouse can share in the huge amounts of money you are making with Google AdSense?

That is the question asked at a Google Groups thread. AdSensePro Stephanie offers a link as aid on changing one's payee name. The process is fairly simple, you simply fill out the Change Payee Name AdSense form and wait. But here are some of the rules behind changing the payee name:

• According to our program policies, AdSense accounts cannot be transferred or sold. If this is your reason for requesting the change, we will not be able to update your payee name.
• You won't be able to change your payee name if you already have another AdSense account under that name.
• Once we've updated your information, you'll need to re-enter your tax information and form of payment.
• If you've received a payment to the old payee name that you're unable to deposit, you'll need to request a reissue after the 25th of the month following your payment.
• We start processing payments on the 16th of each month. If you're scheduled to receive a payment this month and the payee name in your account is updated after the 16th, your payment will be issued to your old name.

Again, to change your AdSense payee name to your new spouse's name, use the Google AdSense Change Payee Name Form and congrats!

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Image sourced from Steena on Flickr

Yesterday we reported about a major reporting bug that impacted both AdWords & AdSense users. Yesterday at about 9pm (EST), Google's AdSensePro Stephanie said the reports were now fixed. Yes, that is about 40 hours after received our first reports of the outage. Stephanie said:

This reporting issue has now been fixed, so you should now see all of your missing data from yesterday in your account. (We've also reflected this update on our Known Issues page at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=92365.) I'll leave this thread pinned to the top of this category for another day, to make sure more forum members see this update.

Thank you all again for your continued patience, and our team sincerely apologizes for the delay.

Even though Google said the issue is now fixed, many AdSense publishers are not convinced. All the replies to Stephanie's post claim the reporting issues were not resolved. Of the five replies, all five said the reports still seem way off.

AdSenseAdvisor posted an updated at the WebmasterWorld thread also, this reply was at 4:06 am (EST) this morning saying the issues have been resolved. But like the Google Groups thread, the publishers in that thread are all not convinced the reports are bug free.

Forum discussion at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.

A few weeks ago, I ran a poll asking Which Day Do You Make Most Your Google AdSense Income?

We now have 92 responses, over the course of the week and most people voted that Monday they earned the most revenue on average from Google AdSense. Note that this is a very small sampling. I am not surprised that Saturdays and Fridays are the smallest earning days for publishers (being a publisher myself). I am a bit surprised by the Thursday response, but again, this is a small sampling.

Here are the results:

:: Monday - 24 responses - 26%
:: Tuesday - 18 responses - 20%
:: Sunday - 14 responses - 15%
:: Wednesday - 12 responses - 13%
:: Thursday - 8 responses - 9%
:: Friday - 8 responses - 9%
:: Saturday - 8 responses - 9%

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.

Honestly, I am not sure if this is brand new, but a DigitalPoint Forums thread reports the Large Rectangle (336 x 280) unit as having four text ads within it as new.

Here is a screen capture of the ad unit:

A typical ad unit looks like what you see listed on the Google AdSense ad formats page. I.e. four lines of ads and not four boxes of ads. Here is a live ad from my AdSense account for testing purposes:

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Starting at about 5am (EST) yesterday, I have been noticing reports in the forums about Google being slow to update both the AdSense reports and the AdWords reports. The two largest threads discussing the issues can be found at WebmasterWorld and Google Groups, but there are plenty of other threads throughout the forums with complaints.

Again, first reports came in at about 5am (EST) yesterday and the issues have still not been resolved. We do have reassurance from Google in the WebmasterWorld and Google Groups threads that the issue is only reporting related and all the data is being tracked. When the reporting issues are fixed, it will show correct data.

AdSenseAdvisor posted at WebmasterWorld saying:

Thanks for your comments and your patience, and apologies for the delay. Our engineering team is working to address this issue as soon as possible. Please be assured that your account statistics have still been tracked, and we are working on displaying them in your account.

I will be sure to post with any additional updates.

AdSensePro Stephanie posted twice in the Google Groups thread (and other Google Groups threads) saying:

I've escalated your reports to our engineers, and they're currently investigating the issue. I'll be sure to update this thread as soon as I have any more info -- thanks for your patience in the meantime.

She then added a little bit later:

I've just received an update from our engineers: they're still working on resolving the issue, but they have confirmed that no statistics or data have been lost from your accounts. I'll let you know when I have more info about when you might expect to see updated stats. Again, we appreciate your patience.

The WebmasterWorld thread has over a 130 posts, and the Google Groups thread has almost a 100 posts.

In addition, you can see the brand new AdSense Known Issues page for an update that shows the issue is still not resolved, as of 7:45am (EST) today.

Forum discussion on both the AdWords and AdSense side at the following threads:

• Google Groups - AdSense
• WebmasterWorld - AdWords
• WebmasterWorld - AdSense
• Search Engine Watch Forums - AdSense
• DigitalPoint Forums - AdSense
• DigitalPoint - AdSense

The Inside AdSense blog talks about the newest feature available to Google AdSense users: AdSense for Search is now powered by custom search. This new feature gives you the following benefits: site search, improved indexing of pages, vertical search, the ability to fine tune search results and ads with keywords, selecting ad location, and more.

Check out the video for more information:

As someone who had an extremely difficult time trying to get Google Coop with AdSense installed on my site in the past, this was a breeze. Literally. I'm so glad that the Google AdSense team fixed it up. Thank you. :) (On that note, I *strongly* recommend that you set up your Google Custom Search Engine through the Google AdSense control panel, not through google.com/cse -- that's where my problems started!)

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums, Google Groups, and WebmasterWorld.

Friday we reported that Google is testing new fonts in AdSense ads. Well, I finally found a screen capture of this in action via DigitalPoint Forums.

Here is the screen capture:

Pretty funky looking, no? If anything, this is a Google test and if they launch this new font, I hope they make it an option for the publisher. Personally, I find the font a bit unprofessional for many sites. But it may work for a specific type of site.

This may show signs that Google may be enabling the ability for publishers to pick a font style for their AdSense ads. If so, that is great news.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread has speculation that Google is now seeking out AdSense arbitrageurs through AdWords accounts. The rumor is that Google is banning AdSense publishers by looking to see if their AdWords accounts are sending traffic to pages with AdSense on them.

About a year ago, we reported, Google To Shut Down AdSense Arbitrageurs. But then learned it was more focused on made-for-AdSense (MFAs) AdSense arbitrageurs. Google didn't deny that they have been going after some arbitrageurs but the topic died down a month later.

What this recent speculation is causing, is a rush for AdSense publishers to close out their AdWords accounts. They do not want their AdWords accounts to be tied to their AdSense account and possibly give Google a reason to ban them from AdSense. So many have reported that they shut down their AdWords account.

Is there sound reason for this or are publishers acting out of fear? I honestly don't know.

Hat tip to Frank for blogging this last night.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense publishers are reporting via WebmasterWorld that Google is testing new fonts for the ad titles of the Google contextual ads.

The new font styles seen include:

• Comic Sans
• Times New Roman

The folks in the forum find the Comic Sans font to be funny. FYI, I am really font blind - if that is a real eye condition. :) In any event, this is what Comic Sans looks like, via Wikipedia.

Seems somewhat curvy and cartoon-like. I personally have not yet seen this test on ads that I have been looking at. But this is not the first time we had reports on Google messing around with the title fonts. Google tested italics font titles in the AdSense ads in the past.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has the owner of a Google Maps mashup named Speed Trap get ready for being mentioned in the New York Times. The publisher said his site will be featured in the NY Times online site and in the physical paper and he wants to prep his site for the traffic.

On one hand, he is worried about the traffic raising a red flag and possibly, as he puts it, getting him "dinged" in Google. But at the same time, he would like to optimize the AdSense ads on his site to ensure he places the ads where they will get the most valid exposure and make the most money.

So the other AdSense publishers are offering him advice on ad placement, server requirements, general usability and giving him a shout of support during this exciting time for him.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on what type of advertiser would you automatically add to your AdSense competitive filter list. I.e. which type ads do you not want showing up on your site?

Here are some of the responses:

• Adult Related Sites
• Ringtone Sites
• Win Free Stuff Sites
• Irrelevant Sites
• MFAs
• Deceptive Sites
• Parked Domains
• Work From Home
• Etc.

I would create a poll here, but the answers can be so open ended. Which type of ads would you block immediately?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In the first quarter of 2008, Click Forensics announced that click fraud has decreased across Google and Yahoo to 27.8% (from 28.3% in Q4 2007).

Is that a number to be worried about? As Barry says on Search Engine Land, these numbers may not account for discounted questionable clicks. Google has said before that click fraud only accounts for 0.02% of clicks.

Meanwhile, forum members believe that the report by Click Forensics may be misleading. After all, they are a traffic quality management firm and as such "has an interest in reporting exagerrated click fraud rates," according to martinibuster. He says that if the numbers were in actuality this high, "I am certain we'd hear about it in the AdWords forum." After all, that translates to millions of dollars lost.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks other Google AdSense publishers which day of the week, do they make the most amount of money with Google. Most say, Monday and Tuesday are their highest yielding days, while some say the weekends are.

I am very curious, which days our readers do best on. Please take the poll below, you can select multiple days.

Which Day(s) Do You Make Most Your AdSense Income:

I promise to report the results of this poll very soon.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld member has been banned from Google AdSense and wants to try again after several years on hiatus. He says that the past banning was due to fraudulent clicks but does not know the origin, and he'd like to start anew from a clean slate.

Is it possible, or is the ban for life?

AdSenseAdvisor says that you are able to appeal your account termination, but if you get banned for invalid clicks, you cannot participate in the program again. Since it's been several years for the publisher, it appears that the appeals process is the only way to go. In other words, you can't reapply, but you can certainly try to talk to Google about your previous banning and see if there's any recourse.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld members are reporting that they're logging into their Google AdSense accounts due to an addiction that needs to be stopped and are finding that AdSense is reporting much lower clicks. One person in particular said that his ads are showing zero clicks but even had it clicked on by someone "overseas" to see if it was a problem on Google's end).

Everyone agrees that "something is weird" and only martinibuster suggests that you should check your server logs for an indication of what's happening with your ad clicks. Till then, though, on April 17th and on the 18th, this seemed to be a problem. (Ed note: As of this writing -- the 18th at 4PM EST -- this issue hasn't been resolved as no forum members report anything but strangeness.)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

This post was written on April 18th and was scheduled for publication for Monday, April 21st.

About 6 weeks ago, I polled our readers on which Google AdSense unit they found to be the most annoying. The results are in and the winner of the most annoying AdSense unit is the large rectangle unit.

As you can see, the Large Rectangle, by far, beat out all the other units. What does the large rectangle look like? Here is a live large rectangle:

Here are the full results from the 108 responses:

Large Rectangle (336 x 280) - 29 - 27%
Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) - 21 - 19%
Leaderboard (728 x 90) - 14 - 13%
Wide Skyscraper (160x600) - 14 - 13%
Skyscraper (120x600)v8 - 7%
Banner (468 x 60) - 7 - 6%
Square (250 x 250) - 5 - 5%
Small Square (200 x 200) - 5 - 5%
Small Rectangle (180x150) - 3 - 3%
Vertical Banner (120 x 240) - 2 - 2%

Forum discussion continued at Google Groups.

Note: This article was written the week prior and scheduled to go live on August 21st.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread kind of laughs at an ad they spotted within the Google AdSense network. An ad leading to Fragrance Net shows how sometimes advertisers can get too busy to remember to not publish an ad that is just a test.

To be fair, this doesn't have to be an ad from Fragrance Net, it can be from one of their affiliates.

In any event, the lesson is the same, be careful with your creatives before publishing. An ad like this may jump out to readers and people might click out of curiosity or just ignore that ad. The creative is one of the most important criteria in qualifying the click before they click. So instead of wasting $0.10 or $10, whatever that click might be, hopefully your ad content will qualify them beforehand.

In this case, it likely can lead to a wasted click.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Note: This post was written last week and scheduled to be published automatically on April 21st.

Whenever Google announces earnings, we have a thread at WebmasterWorld that summarizes how much share Google is taking from the earnings AdSense publishers make.

So if you click on an AdSense ad on my personal blog, how much of that cost-per-click am I get and how much is Google getting.

Based on the earnings report, Google is taking 21% and the remaining 79% is going to me. Now, I doubt this is an exact number, because this includes premium publishers, special partners and so on. So I am sure some of those partners get a higher or maybe even a lower share than the typical AdSense publisher.

But overall, Google is being fair. In fact, Google seems to been paying out publishers more then they have done historically. The thread summarizes:

The past few quarters have been between 75% and 79%.

One other member has a nice post as well:

Revenues up 41%, earnings up 31% - doesn't sound like they're ripping anyone off to me. Now if revenues were up 30% and earnings were up 40%, that would be a different story.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I am not a huge report guy on Google AdSense, but according to a WebmasterWorld thread, Google has added a new filter option on their advanced reports. You can now filter the reports by unit type.

If you want to see how much money you are making from "ad units" versus "link units," you can now easily do that via the "Choose Units" option in the Google AdSense advanced reports section. Here is a screen capture:

Honestly, I would not have known if this option is new or not myself. So I am going by the word of three different WebmasterWorld members, who are reporting it is brand new.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Confirmed, The Google Inside AdSense blog has now announced the new reports. More coverage at Techmeme.

A Google AdSense publisher at WebmasterWorld is reporting that his highest earning day had poor performance. He wonders if it has something to do with a new AdSense glitch or if this problem is just personally impacting him.

Fortunately for him, he's not alone. One member reports that the ads were not very contextually relevant. Another reports that it may not be a glitch after all but is reporting instead that his earnings dropped after Google added scrolling arrows to AdSense adds.

What recourse do you have? Martinibuster lists four things you can check in your website's log files:

1. What keywords did your visitors use to access your site? Is it different than previous days?
2. What are your most popular pages? Are those different than previous days as well? What were the earnings on those pages?
3. Are more people abandoning your pages than in previous days?
4. How deep did your visitors venture into your pages? Is this any different than how they performed previously?

Martinibuster (and other forum members) also report that he didn't have a problem with AdSense during this time. Other members believe that it may just be tax season playing into the behavior of some website visitors who cannot make a purchase until they finish paying their dues to the IRS.

I guess you never know.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

There are 10 threads at Google Groups about a bug that appears to be impacting many Google AdSense publishers. In short, when you go through the process of creating a new ad unit, you are taken backwards instead of to the ad code page.

When publishers click the "submit and get code" button, instead of being sent to the code page, where they can obtain the code for their site, they are sent back to the "manage ads" page.

Again, like I said above, there are now 10 threads that I know about at Google Groups on this topic. They are now all consolidated and references in this single Google Groups thread. In that thread, AdSensePro Stephanie said, "Thanks for compiling the threads on this issue! I'll take this back to the relevant teams to see if there are any known issues."

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

It is that time of the year again, just a few more days until Tax Day in America. That reminds me, I need to call my accountant and see the status of my returns...

In any event, this is typically when AdSense publishers try to come up with a list of what they can deduct from their AdSense earnings. Keep in mind, I am not an accountant, so any advice here must be run by someone who is a professional in this area.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a list of items you may be able to deduct. I have complied some of the items into this bulleted list below:

• Internet Connections
• Hosting Fees
• Tax preparation fees
• Bank fees
• Computer Costs
• Forum Membership Fees (i.e. WebmasterWorld)
• Conference Fees (hotel, food, travel and event - careful with this)
• Lunches & Dinners for Business
• Office Furniture & Supplies
• Ads & Site Promos
• Health Insurance
• Telephone
• Postage
• etc

You can find our coverage of this from two years ago at Tax Deductions For Google AdSense: It's Tax Season.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has been rolling out a new AdSense feature that you can likely see by going to the "Ad Setup" screen and clicking on the "Competitive Ad Filter" link. Then you should see access to the "Ad Review Center" (aka ARC).

It gives you more granular control over the ads displayed on your site. Here is a screen capture:

But it does not work exactly like the "competitive ad filter." In fact, in a WebmasterWorld thread, AdSenseAdvisor confirms that if you block an advertiser in the Ad Review Center, it will not block that advertiser from showing up in the contextually relevant area. So, it will only allow you to block ads for placement targeted ads and not contextually targeted ads. Here is more Q&A from AdSenseAdvisor:

There is no limit on how many ads/advertisers you can block in a session.

An ad group is either placement or contextually targeted. If you block a placement-targeted ad, it will not then appear on your site as a contextually-targeted ad.

If you add a site to your Competitive ad filter, ads for this site will not appear in your ARC.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last week, I reported that Google said blending AdSense ads is not allowed, well, it seems like I was somewhat wrong. At least, we all were, on some level.

AdSenseAdvisor updated us in the WebmasterWorld thread (see post number 3617913). AdSenseAdvisor said, in short, "blending is permitted." Yes, there is a "but" in that statement. AdSenseAdvisor added, "publishers should not rely on deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks," he/she continued, "where a group of links has identical colours and line spacing to that of the ad unit placed in the middle of them."

Basically, Google doesn't want you to "confuse the user into thinking ads are content," and thus tricking them into clicking on the ads, as if they were content.

So, yes, blending is allowed, but like I said initially, it is how you go about doing the blending.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Need Google AdSense help? AdSensePro has shared seventeen new groups with us. They are:

• Arabic: AdSense منتدى المساعدة الخاصة ب http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-ar?hl=ar
• Czech: Fórum pomoci AdSense http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-cz?hl=cs
• Chinese (Simplified): AdSense 支持论坛 http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-zhs
• Chinese (Traditional): AdSense 支援論壇 http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-zht
• Dutch: AdSense Help Forum http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-nl
• French: Forum d'Aide AdSense http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-fr
• German: AdSense Forum http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-de
• Hebrew: AdSense פורום העזרה של http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-iw?hl=IW
• Italian: Gruppo di assistenza di AdSense http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-it
• Japanese: AdSense ヘルプ フォーラム http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-ja
• Korean: 애드센스 도움말 포럼 http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-ko
• Polish: Forum Pomocy AdSense http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-pl
• Portuguese: Fórum do AdSense http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-pt
• Russian: Форум программы AdSense http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-ru
• Slovak: Fórum pomoci AdSense http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-cz?hl=sk
• Spanish: Foro de ayuda de AdSense http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-es
• Turkish: AdSense Yardım Forumu http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-tr

Cool stuff. If you're looking for particular AdSense help for your site's language, you can go to one of the above forums.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Over the course of a 24 hour period, there has been an increase in reports that Google AdSense has been placing the arrows on many more AdSense ads. We call them scrolling AdSense ads and we first reported Google testing them back in December of last year.

It seems like Google may have made this feature a default for all standard Google AdSense ads. Here are two examples from two of my sites, which did not have the arrows on them beforehand.

Maybe the scrolling feature worked so well that Google decided to add them to all of their ads? It would be nice, as a publisher, to be given the option to show the arrows or not.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google has just (3:30pm (EST)) confirmed that all AdSense ads now have the scrolling feature. Google said:

After months of testing, we've just updated our text ad format to include 'next' and 'previous' arrow buttons for cost-per-click (CPC) ads. When a user clicks on the 'next' button, an entirely new group of ads will appear in the ad unit, giving your users greater control over the ads they see and click.

I love finding these things out before it is officially announced.

If you are based in the UK and are awaiting your Google AdSense payment, you might have to wait a little longer. A Google Groups post from an official Google AdSense representative, Stephanie, said that due to Easter coinciding with the first payment processing day, payment will be delayed in the UK.

I've checked in with our payments specialists about your reports of not seeing any 'Payment in progress' links yet (especially for publishers located in the UK).

Because the Easter weekend coincided with the start of the March payment process, payments to the UK will be slightly delayed this payment period. If you're eligible for a payment, please be assured that it will be issued and details posted to your account by the end of the week.

Thanks for all of your reports, and we apologize for the delay.

You will receive your payments by the end of the week, and Google apologizes for the delay.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

One of the most successful Google AdSense optimization strategies was to make your Google AdSense ads look as if they are part of your site content or navigation. This strategy is commonly referred to as blending your ads into your site design.

Now, there are many grades of blending your AdSense ads. There are ways to do it where you can not tell the difference between the ad and your content and there are less extreme cases. Google AdSense posted a clarification that some of these techniques are not acceptable. Google said:

• Ads shouldn't be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.
• Ads should be easily distinguishable from surrounding content.

It is important to note that Google does not call these "suggestions," they call them "guidelines."

Google shows specific examples in their post so it is crystal clear what they mean. Personally, I never liked sites that blended those ads so deeply in. But the main goal of those sites was monetization of the AdSense ads. I wonder how this will impact publishers, advertisers and Google's net.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some feedback from members. I'll quote the passages I like:

Well, it's only the opposite of the previous guideline ;-D

See Google's AdSense Heat Map for why people might think this.

I'm thinking Google itself used to be in violation with these guidelines (sponsor results below the search box). Certainly sites like Ask and AOL seem to be in violation.

Yes, AOL and Ask are paid search partners and they blend those Google ads right into their search results. Here is a screen capture of the Google ads on Ask.com, next to an organic result. Very hard to tell which is paid and which is free:

Let's see if Google stats to truly enforce this guidelines now. It will be interesting to watch all the forum threads on this topic.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Dozens of reports from WebmasterWorld claim that Google AdSense's advanced reports are having major downtime issues. The errors people have been seeing are:

Report generation failed

There was an error in generating the report you requested. Please try again later.

First reports came in at about 8:45pm (EST) and the issues still appear to be bogging down some AdSense publishers. I tried a few reports and they worked for me, but maybe my advanced reports are not advanced enough?

Reportedly, it has been mostly down for the past 12 hours but there are times that the advanced reports work. Seems server resources related to me.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: AdSenseAdvisor early Thursday morning (March 27th) responded saying it has now been resolved:

Thanks for all of the reports. I have just heard back from our engineers, and they have now resolved the issue. Please let me know if you are still having trouble with your Advanced Reports page.

Just four months ago, Google added two new AdSense representatives to the Google Groups area to help the original AdSensePro. Since then, AdSensePro Ashley and Jordan have been hard at work helping AdSense publishers in the AdSense Help Group.

Google has decided to add an additional two representatives, AdSensePro Brian and AdSensePro Suman.

AdSensePro said in the Google Groups thread:

Brian is based out of our Dublin, Ireland office and helps support the UK English market. Suman is based out of our Hyderabad, India office and has experience working with Indian publishers.

Welcome Brian and Suman!

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A WebmasterWorld thread has isolated a tip on how to increase one's Google AdSense earnings. One tip was bold enough to say a faster server can increase your earnings as much as 25%!

Most publishers in that thread are skeptical about the 25% figure. It is obviously dependent on one's start and finish point. If my server is incredibly slow, then of course, if I speed it up, people might wait for the content to load and they might click on some ads. If they can't see the content or the ads, because the server takes to long, then you would see a 100% spike in earnings. So the numbers are all relative.

Do any of you have more solid statistics on page load time and how it comes into play with AdSense earnings? I would love to see a study done on that on more than just one site.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google recently updated their AdSense terms of service and one publisher asked AdSenseAdvisor if Google AdSense is or will be using "web beacons."

After about a week (March 18th), AdSenseAdvisor replied to a WebmasterWorld thread saying:

In the future we may begin to serve new ad tags that may use web beacons to help advertisers track their metrics.

Is this a huge deal? I am not one to talk about privacy and stuff like that (I am one of the most public people out there). But I do know that Facebook and other companies received a lot of flake over web beacons. Not sure if this would or will make much of a privacy difference in Google's case. Google already uses plenty of tracking mechanisms with Google AdSense.

But the addition of adding new ad tags via web beacons is a new implementation to AdSense that might be coming soon.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.