Google Adsense Certificate Issue

I just downloaded the latest version of Firefox and was using it. I went to the Google Adsense website to check the stats and the first message that I got was

This shows that the certificate used is for Google.com, then I went ahead

I thing Google should sort this issue out

Google Adsense New Improved Custom Search for better earnings

Google Adsense has an option for earning from the search results other than banners and text links. I am not sure how many of us use it and what is the potential of earning from the Google Adsense search. To be frank, I was using this only on one of my blog and I did not get much revenue from this. Today I received an email from Google Adsense support team encouraging the use of the Search feature.

There are many new features that they have added and I feel that everybody should try this.

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Two Image Ads shows same ads with different sizes – Google Adsense

I have been using two ad slots with Image ads on a page with Google Adsense. I see most of the time that the ad served is for the same product. For example you have 4 placements (Maximum allowed according to the Google Adsense TOS). Two text ads and two image ads of different sizes. Mostly the two image ads displayed are of the same product. Have you ever seen this kind of problem?

Google Affiliate network to replace Google Adsense Referral program

I got an email from the Google Adsense Team saying that the Google is discontinuing the Referral program from August end. Instead we can sign up for the Google Affiliate network which is actually the Google acquired company, Doubleclick.

I am not at all worried as I do not use the referral products on any of my blog now as I tried and was not working well for me. If you are using referral code, just start removing it as it will not work after August end. If you are using in templates it should not be a problem but if you have used for individual pages, then it should be a tough time for you.

In the affiliate network you will not be paid for impressions or clicks, but only for conversions according the rates set by the advertisers. Depending upon the kind of visitors that you will be getting you will earn or there is no point wasting your space for this kind of program.

Overriding the default Adsense setting in Google Ad Manager

I got an invitation for Google Admanager few days back and was just going through the features before using it. I had tough time working on the the default Google Adsense settings. Google Admanager has a feature of showing Google Adsense ads if you have linked one for the slots which are free or even compete with the booked ads. Right now the user does not have the feature to modify the Adsense attributes like the link color or the border color as we can do for individual ads in Google Adsense control panel. But we can do it by using from Javascript provided on the help page of Google Ad Manager.

As per the information given on the help page is added the code, but was not working. You can see the code info below

According to the help page as you see above, I inserted the code as given below

  //page level
  GA_googleAdAdSensePageAttr("google_color_link", "CC0000");
  GA_googleAdAdSensePageAttr("google_ad_type", "text");
  //slot level
  GA_googleAdAdSenseSlotAttr("kishoreasokan_Homepage_336×280", "google_ad_type", "text");
  GA_googleAdAdSenseSlotAttr("Kishore_Asokan_Below_Content_336×280", "google_ad_type", "text");
  GA_googleAddAdSenseSlotAttr("KishoreAsokan_Post_page_250×250", "google_ad_type", "image");

But this was not working, and spend a lot of time and even posted a help request at Google Groups for Ad manager

Later I was going through some some other help pages for tagging, I came across this information about tagging and in that the attribute is GA_googleAddAdSenseSlotAttr instead of GA_googleAdAdSenseSlotAttr and when I corrected the code according to this it is working fine.

  //page level
  GA_googleAddAdSensePageAttr("google_color_link", "CC0000");
  GA_googleAddAdSensePageAttr("google_ad_type", "text");
  //slot level
  //GA_googleAdAdSenseSlotAttr("kishoreasokan_Homepage_336×280", "google_ad_type", "text");
  //GA_googleAdAdSenseSlotAttr("Kishore_Asokan_Below_Content_336×280", "google_ad_type", "text");
  GA_googleAddAdSenseSlotAttr("KishoreAsokan_Post_page_250×250", "google_ad_type", "image");

Now let me explain you how to  use the attributes to override the default adsense settings. When you login to the Ad Manager and go to the inventory tab, you can find the Default Adsense setting link. In this you can set your default adsense properties, but there is no option to set properties for individual solts or placements adsense properties.

But you can override the default adsense properties in the Ad Manager in two levels

1. Page Level
2. Slot Level

For setting the page level properties, you have to add the following code to change the property which will be applicable on a page level basis, all the slots will be effected

GA_googleAddAdSensePageAttr("param", "value");

 

and for Slot level modification you need to add

GA_googleAddAdSenseSlotAttr("slotname", "param", "value");

What are the properties that you can override?

• Border: param = google_color_border
• Title: param = google_color_link
• Background: param = google_color_bg
• Text: param = google_color_text
• URL: param = google_color_url
• Alternate ad URL: param = google_alternate_ad_url
• Ad unit (text, image, text/image): param = google_ad_type
• Corner style: param = google_ui_features

Now its working great. Google Help centre needs to correct the information given on their help page

Google Products

Google is the worlds most popular and most used search engine. When I started using Internet, I was using search engines like Altavista, Yahoo, excite and the search results took so much of time to load. History of Google is not something which I am going to discuss in the post, but to stress that Google is now not just a search engine but they have a wide range of products. Google was co-founded by Sergey Bin and Larry Page, who studied together at Stanford University. Google has grown very high with wide variety of products changing the online experience of Internet users. Interesting advantage of Google is that you do not need to create different accounts to use Google Products. You can use your existing account to sign-in for any Google Product. Another positive feature of Google products are most of the products are free for individuals to use, like the Gmail, which has taken over all the free email share on the world wide web. I am listing all the products here but only the products that I have used or at least spend some time trying to use it.

Google Web Search

Google web search, was the first product launched and this was what made Google. Google search engine has billions of pages indexed and stored in machines in different data centres around the world and can show results in seconds. Google has the worlds biggest network of computers which are custom made by Google. Google search engine is a combination of algorithms, software, hardware and teamwork.

Google Alert

Sign-up for Google Alert and receive emails. Suppose you want to be informed when a new page is listed for a particular keyword, you just need to create an alert for that. You have the option to receive an email everyday or whenever it happens or weekly. This is a very useful service to keeping a watch on the keywords that you are working or you have a site which tops on Google for a particular keyword. This is one the service which I use and I found it very useful.

Book Search

Google Book Search is a search engine for Books. If you want to search for a book, just go to Google Book Search

Checkout

Google Checkout is something like Paypal, you can use this shopping cart to accept payment for your website and considered to secure and spam free. I could not use this as its restricted to users in United States

Desktop

Google Desktop is a desktop application with lots of features. I had used this, but somewhat got bugged up with some features that was slowing down my computer. This is something that everybody can try, but again it depends on the person to person to use it. Lots of widgets are available like the RSS readers and many. I would advice you to download it and try. This application will index all the files locally and show up in the search results.

Google Maps

Google maps is something worth trying. Now you can find many applications, integrating this product.

Google Reader

One of my favourite. I read more than 100 blogs and news sites every day using this product. Just start using it. I have more than 200 subscriptions and I read almost every subscribed feed or at least scroll through the headlines everyday. If you have an habit of different blogs or news site, then you should use Google Reader

Image Search

If you are looking for an image for a particular keyword, just go to Google Image Search

Gmail

Gmail is something which is very popular and I do not need to talk about Gmail here. Gmail was launched only through invitation and after lots of testing, it was opened for direct sign-up. I started my Gmail during the invitation period and had to pay somebody get an invitation and it was worth. The best feature that I like about Gmail is the search feature. You can find all the latest features of Gmail here.

Google Docs

Google Docs, growing with new features everyday. You can create docs online, share it with your friends, save it for your future use. The advantage is that your document is online and you can use it anytime anywhere. One of the feature I use the most is converting my documents to PDF format, which is very easy here.

Google Groups

Something which I used long back. Its again a community building tool

Orkut

Orkut is a very popular site among youngsters. I have not used this much, but heard a lot about this

Google Talk

Goolge talk is one of the most popular IM today. This is integrated with Gmail and its very useful

Translate

Transalate any page to any language, a great feature which should be useful to everybody

Youtube

Youtube was acquired by Google in October 2006. Youtube is the most popular video sharing site, where you can upload your videos, share it and even embed a youtube video to your website, but just inserting a few lines of code.

Google Earth

Want to see the picture of the place where you stay, yes Google earth can show you that. Google earth has pictures of earth stored with them and frequently updated. Just type the address and see the 3D picture of the address or building.

Google Mobile

Most of the Google products are mobile friendly. I use Gmail, Web search, Reader which has mobile version

Picasa

Picasa is a photo editing and sharing software

Google Analytics

A tool to monitor the performance of your website. A must use tool for webmasters / bloggers. Google Analytics tracks your visitor details, web page information, statistics, traffic sources, search engine rankings, keywords, referral websites and almost everything.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is an advertising program where you can do advertising campaigns for your products. I should say that Google Adwords is dominating this service and has good results. I have been using this for the past 2 years and have done lots your mistakes in beginning and lost money. But now I know how to run a well tuned campaign to get the best out of it.

Google Adsense

Last but the best money maker of webmasters. Sign-up for a Google adsense account and show ads related to the pages where the ads are shown. This is the feature that I like the most.

Google has contributed a lot to the online world since it has showed its online presence. Google has acquired top companies like Feedburner, Doubleclick and its growing on and on.

Recently it has launched a new product by Invitation - Google Ad Manager, where you can manage your website advertisement. This is again just by invitation. I have requested for an invitation, but still no response by Google. I will come back with a post on Google Ad Manager if I get an invitation

How to get your google adsense account banned

Stupid question, but its very simple, go and click on your own ads. Yes your account will be terminated and you will lose all your earnings in a day if you are near your minimum payout. You will receive an email from adsense, asking for explanation. You can give some lame excuse or try to send your server logs, may be you will be blessed with another chance.

I have my experience of my adsense account being canceled due to click fraud, but believe me, I never clicked on my ads.

The first warning I received was regarding the domains I used for my adsense accounts. I was using on this domain, googling.in, which they objected as this domain name may mislead others that this has some relation with google. In fact we should read all the pages of google adsense terms and conditions or any program we participate. It was very clearly mentioned in the terms and condition that the domains having resemblance to google cannot participate in the adsense program. I did not read that but luckily I just received a warning. I got my account canceled when my account balance was about US$90.00, thats what really upset me.

Anyway it was not big earning, because it was about 4 months. Looking into the band-width and space its not much for me. But I see many people saying they earn more than US$ 2000 per month, thats worth. But for new websites, its very difficult to earn in 100’s and 1000’s of $$.

There are many people who succeed in fooling and get away with artificial clicks, but beware, you will be cought very soon if you continue with this. Google claims that they want to protect the interest of their advertisers and I am also one of the advertisers. Its very easy to build traffic to your sites with google adwords, and I have experienced it. You can get clicks from US$ 0.05 to your wish.

Other than text ads, you can put other image ads, or video ads. You can use the search also to earn. Anyway, be sure that you use adsense in a very careful way and never ever try to be smarter than google team. Its not because I lost my adsense account, i have read many posts done by angry google adsense account losers. Many might even have to close there websites as they totally depended on this ads.

Do you know any substitute for Google adsense?

Yes there are many, like Yahoo publishers, bidvertisers, clicksor and many, but believe me I have tried almost all except YP, it can never come near Google Adsense. I am waiting for YP to be International, as right now they are only offering it in the United States.

Recently I contacted Google Adsense to reconsider my account cancellation, but hard luck did not get an auto-response also from them.

I am not much worried and not much interested also, because even If i get my account activated, I need be always expecting an account cancellation and I am sure that will be when my balance reaches the next US$100.

Some Google Adsense Substitutes, that you can try

• Bidvertiser
• AdsFor Indians
• Yahoo Publishers
• Clickbooth
• Adbrite
• Clicksor
• Azoogle ads

If you know something interesting, please add up in the comment