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It's hard to believe the month is already over. It seems like just yesterday when Mike Gutner first announced that August was Optimization Month. Since then, members of the AdSense optimization team and Googlers representing other products have shared their findings and best practices for how to optimize your AdSense earnings. We hope you've come through the month with an arsenal of insightful tips and tricks for optimizing not only your AdSense ads, but also your site content for your specific audience. We'd like to leave you with the following: Nothing warms the hearts of our team more than hearing success stories from AdSense publishers. Please tell us yours ! The road to enlightenment begins with the Optimization Tips page. If you haven't seen it yet or it's been awhile, be sure to check it out. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime. The AdSense Help group is a great community to post optimization tips and swap best practices with other pub

If you've taken the time to make changes to your site over the past month, it's important to monitor their effects. Here are my top three tips to ensure you make the most of measuring your results and gain a deeper understanding of what's happening with AdSense on your site. 1. Get accustomed to custom channels. The single most effective way I've found for publishers to measure their results is by using custom channels . Custom channels are the ideal way to determine how a recent change in ad placement or ad format has resulted in improved performance. Many publishers fail to keep their custom channel list up to date each time they make a change -- or even worse, don't take the time to set them up at all. Not knowing if you've made the right decision for your site's visitors will make it even more difficult to take the next step, so use custom channels like a tracking device to ensure you're on the road to success. 2. Be analytical in your approach -- us

The “back to school” buzz is in the air, and just as it was key to organize your papers in middle school using your trusty Trapper Keeper, it’s important to manage your ads using your AdSense data. Doing so lets you to see the effectiveness of the different implementations you’ve tested out this month and make decisions about next steps. So let’s flash back to the good old days and apply what we learned in middle school. Vocabulary: Understanding your data Before you could use a new word from your vocabulary textbook, you needed to understand its definition. Similarly, there are several important statistical values on your Advanced Reports page for which you should know the definitions before doing any analysis. I recommend that you check out our glossary for each of the terms ( Page Impression , eCPM , Clicks ) to understand how these values are affected by the changes you make to your site. Foreign languages: Translating your data Learning a foreign language involves taking a great

So you’ve optimized your pages and implemented our best practices. Now what? It’s time to take a look at your results and decide where to go from here. To close out Optimization Month, this week we’ll share tips on how to monitor the performance of your account, how to evaluate your results -- and how to figure out what to do next. Now that you’ve implemented some of our optimization tips and best practices, hopefully your revenue is on the rise. But what if you see ups and downs in your stats? Never fear -- it’s quite common for revenue to fluctuate over time for any number of reasons, like which ads your users click on, or changes in ad inventory. Seasonality can also affect revenue. If you run a fan site for a TV show, you might see a drop in revenue after the season finale due to a reduction in advertiser inventory or a decrease in the number of site targeting campaigns. Or, if you run an education site, you may see revenue decline during the summer vacation due to decreased page v

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Optimization Month posts to bring you this update: Our engineers will be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday (8/26) from 10 am to 2 pm PDT, so you won't be able to access your account during this time frame. Please be assured that ads will continue to be served to your pages, and your account statistics and earnings will be recorded as usual. In the meantime, feel free to go back and review all the great tips our optimization specialists have posted on the blog this month. As always, we appreciate your patience! Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Optimization Team

We hope you've gained insight into the various tools and products Google has to offer for increasing the visibility of your site. As Boyar promised , we’ll close out this week's theme a little differently, by sharing with you the story of a publisher who used a number of Google products to increase his site's audience 50-fold in just two months. Ryan, webmaster for TropicalYarns.com , had been using AdSense for content and AdSense for search to monetize his pages. However, he noticed that his site’s visitors consisted mainly of existing customers. Using Analytics , he was able to better understand his new and returning visitors. After pinpointing the most popular page on his site in June, he added an email newsletter sign-up form to that page and saw the subscription list grow by 20%. In just one month, he watched new visitors grow to 75% of his audience. At the same time, Ryan used AdWords to advertise his site’s offerings. After experimenting for three weeks to optimize

As an AdSense publisher, you've probably put a lot of effort into making your website the best it can be -- optimizing your ads, building good content, and driving high quality visits. But there's one crucial step left: to see just how effective these things are. How many visitors are you getting each day? What pages are they visiting? Where do they come from, and which keywords brought them to your site -- both from pay-per-click efforts and from natural search? Many website owners push their site live, and then leave it at that, remaining in the dark about all these questions. Google Analytics can enlighten you. We think it's much more fun to have the answers to these burning questions, and that you owe it to yourself to know for sure. After all, this is the payoff for all the hard work that's gone into creating your site. When you launch or make a change to it, there's that initial excitement of wondering who's going to check it out. And Google Analytics can

You're an AdSense publisher, and you've got great content, but you want a) more people to know about it and b) your loyal readers to know when you post new content so they can visit your site easily -- maybe by the click of a button. By building up traffic, you can get more eyeballs on your content and of course your AdSense ads. This is where Google Toolbar comes in. There's more to Toolbar than just web search, pop-up blocking and auto-filling web forms. With the recent release of Google Toolbar 4, millions of Toolbar users are now adding custom buttons directly to their browsers. You can help users visit your site (and more) with just a click. By adding your website's custom button to the Google Toolbar, people can instantly: Visit your website Search your website by entering a query into the Google search box and clicking your custom button Get the latest feeds from your website by clicking the drop-down menu next to your custom button Sound daunting? It shouldn

If a tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it, does it make a sound? Even more perplexing: if you have a great, content-rich website and nobody visits it, is the content useful? Rather than debate this, I'd like to share with you five ways that Google webmaster tools can help you drive more users to your site and improve the visibility of the site content you've worked so hard to create. 1. Submit all of your pages to the Google index – for free. By using Google Sitemaps to submit your URLs , you help Google's web crawler do a more complete and efficient job of crawling your site. Sitemaps enables you to submit all of your pages to the Google index, and it's particularly useful for making sure that we know about all dynamically generated URLs or pages that are not adequately linked to on your site. But please note: submitting a Sitemap will not guarantee inclusion or influence your PageRank, and isn't a replacement for creating compelling and useful content.

If you've been following this blog for the past three weeks, you've already seen a ton of great tools to make your site as compelling as possible with AdSense...and if you haven't, what are you waiting for? Scroll down and read about all the techniques that we've touted during this Optimization Month. And now that you have all these great tools at your fingertips, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to updating your site. I'll wait until you're finished. [time passes] Congratulations! Now your site is ready for all your eager users, but wait ... wouldn't it be great if more people knew about your site and could truly enjoy the fruits of your labor? Of course it would -- that's why this week we'll focus on tips and tricks to drive quality traffic to your site. We've assembled a team of specialists across Google to enlighten you on the many Google products that can help you optimize your site traffic and content. I've no intention of

I hope this week you've discovered a new feature or learned how to improve your use in a way that will benefit your site and your earnings. Today I’m going to share my top 3 tips for getting the most out of AdSense. As a bonus, my advice will also help you climb the social ladder at your school or workplace. Prepare to grow your revenue...and your popularity. 1. Be friendly with everyone – If you want to be more popular in school, you can’t only get to know the drama students -- you have to make friends with the basketball team, the marching band, and the A/V club too. So many friends competing for your time makes it more valuable, just like more advertisers competing for your ad space makes it worth more. Without opting in to text, image , and video ads, you can't expect to get the most revenue possible for your ad space -- you need more advertisers competing in order to bid up the price of your ads. When the highest-paying advertiser wins, you do too! 2. Look your best – Y

UPDATE: Sorry, the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature is no longer available . For today’s optimization tip, I'd like to focus on a site targeting feature: Onsite Advertiser Sign-up . This enables advertisers to quickly and easily target cost-per-impression (CPM) ads specifically to your site, from your site. As a publisher, you'll be automatically opted in to Onsite Advertiser Sign-up. You can also customize the landing page advertisers will see when they click on the ‘Advertise on this site’ link within your ad units. This is your opportunity to market your site to advertisers, so don’t settle for the default description – this won’t convince advertisers why they should site target you. Write a sharp and compelling paragraph to engage advertisers and let them know what your site’s all about. You'll benefit when more advertisers sign up to advertise on your site, since more competition among ads means more money for you. Just remember - keep it advertiser-friendly! Posted

If you haven't tried our AdSense for Search feature yet, now might just be the perfect time to put it to use -- we're pleased to announce that you can now display AdSense for search results within your own site. This way, you have the freedom to offer users web search while still maintaining the look and feel of your site. For example, you can keep elements like the header, footer, and site navigation panel the same for the search results page you create. To use it, just choose the "Open results within my own site" radio button when you're generating your AdSense for search code. You'll also need to identify the page where you'd like to display your search results. We'll give you two sets of code: one for the search box, and one for search results. Place the first set on a page where you'd like the search box to appear, and the second set on the page you'd like the search results to appear. Whenever users perform searches on your AdSense for s

Back in May, we launched our new and improved referral buttons . Now these new buttons are available for additional products and languages. You can choose from several different colors and options, and the buttons are in a sleeker, web-friendly GIF format -- all the better to blend in with your site. Publishers have found that it’s most beneficial to place referrals where they're relevant. Do you run a photo blog? Try using a Picasa referral button. Looking to boost revenue for your web hosting site? Implement a Firefox referral button and watch your earnings grow. Don’t forget you can also implement referrals in a text link format. Text links easily integrate into your site and often convert better than buttons. Here are a few tips on generating more revenue with text links: You can endorse products you've enjoyed using and encourage your users to do the same. Use text links to integrate the ad more seamlessly within your site content. Try having the text links inherit the

At this point, you probably know your ads like the back of your hand. You've removed the borders, relocated them above the fold, and are awaiting results. In the meantime, you might be asking: "What else can I do to optimize?" I’m glad you asked. AdSense isn't just ads; within your account, there are a number of features that you might never have noticed. This week we'll be focusing on some of these less-visible gems that can also contribute to revenue increases. As the saying goes, don't put all your ads in one basket. ;) Diversify with some other features! Maybe your site is full of great content users will love (if only they can find what they're looking for) or maybe you're already using your own search model, but don't have a way to monetize it. In either case, AdSense for search is a great solution. If your users are always looking for new products and services to try, and you're looking always looking for a new revenue stream, give ref

(Photo: Cody Ho assuming photo responsibilities for Phoebe Ho) I can understand throwing away a penny here and there, but it would be pretty ridiculous to toss out hundreds of dollars every day. This is how I feel about optimization. There are many simple ways to increase revenue, but publishers often overlook how easy it is to make changes. Take the case of one publisher, who tried changing his 468x60 banner to a 300x250 rectangle and saw his revenue double! Afterwards, of course, he regretted not making the change earlier. My goal is to make sure you don't have the same regret when you realize you could have already made extra money -- if only you'd optimized sooner. So in order of "biggest bang for the buck," here goes: 1) Make sure your colors are appropriate for your site and ad location. It's the easiest change to make that can increase your revenue up to 4x! 2) When choosing formats , remember: "Wider is better." Though you always want to be sur

You already know that AdSense works by crawling your web pages for content, then delivering ads based on that content. This means that if your content is limited, our crawler may have difficulty identifying the information on the page. As a result, you may see ads that are not directly relevant to your page, or public service ads. Here's a fix: Ensure that your pages are full of compelling content. The more targeted, full-text information you provide to our crawler, the easier it will be for our system to determine what your pages are about, and the greater the relevance of the Google ads will be. This enhances the effectiveness of the AdSense program, resulting in a better experience for your users, not to mention for the advertisers appearing on your pages. Here’s a simple equation that spells it out: A content-rich page = Highly-targeted ads Highly-targeted ads + Interested users = Healthy clickthrough & conversion rates Healthy clickthrough & conversion rates = Success!

If you've been trying out some of our Optimization Month tips on your site and wondering whether you're on the right track, you're not alone. Based on your feedback, we're excited to let you know that we've added a new category to the AdSense Help Forum -- Optimization ! Now you can share your optimization results, ideas, and questions with other publishers in the AdSense community who are going through the same process. There's no better way to learn than from the experiences of others, so why not get started during this Optimization Month? Posted by Cathleen Jia - AdSense Publisher Support

Scene 1 : You walk into an elegant formal dining room done up in silk ivory at every turn. Guests attired in tuxedos and evening gowns mill about in the dim, romantic lighting. As you gaze around the room, your eyes are immediately drawn to a guest wearing a bright orange tuxedo and magenta top hat. Scene 2 : You stroll down the trendiest street in a cosmopolitan city, surrounded by flashy billboards and vibrant window displays. Gleaming Italian sports cars roar past you as you head to a nearby 4-star restaurant. Next to this fine dining establishment, you gawk at the small one-story cement building next to it, on top of which looms a 50-foot-tall inflated gorilla, advertising an upcoming used car sale. Tip: Don't let your ads be the orange tuxedo or the giant inflated gorilla. Their design should be determined with respect to their surroundings (your site) and their viewers -- your site's users. Blending your ads in with the color scheme of your site decreases ad blindness an

On the AdSense team we're always talking about "hot" (good) and "cold" (bad) ad placement. I love this approach and I find myself analyzing my everyday life in the same way. Just the other day, I had some friends over for dinner and placed the appetizer in a very "cold" place, in particular, a coffee table that my puppy Tori could reach. Needless to say, she wasted no time teaching me a lesson by eating the salmon in one gigantic bite. She was satisfied, and I was down about $20. The lesson for AdSense is that "cold" ad placement on your pages can cost you, so if you're looking to maximize your earnings, try to place your ads in "hot" places on your site. (This can be hard to figure out because often you're juggling your users' experience and the existing layout of your site.) The most general tip I can give is that an ad placed above the fold is "hot," and one placed below the fold is "cold." I'm

You build a site to attract visitors, but the more visitors you get, the more expensive it becomes to maintain the site. So, like many other publishers, you turn to online advertisements for revenue. But if your visitors don't find the ads useful (or worse, find them obtrusive), you could potentially end up losing both users and your revenue stream. So for this week’s post on placement optimization, we’ll focus on the behavior, and the reaction, of users. User Behavior AdSense’s content-matching technology is designed to provide useful links and resources for your site’s visitors -- but they won’t find the links useful if they can’t find them at all! Take a look at each page on your site and imagine yourself as one of your site's visitors. Would he or she rarely scroll down? If so, be sure to place an ad unit above the fold. If there is plenty of engaging content below the fold, feel free to monetize the space with more ad units. The typical newbie mistake is to place a leaderb

What if I told you that by making some simple changes to your ads, you could increase your revenue tenfold? And what if I said that by making some small adjustments to where you place the ads, to your colour schemes, and to the type of ads you use, you could even increase your revenue by a factor of 100? Before you say anything, imagine you're a website owner in the mid-1990s. You own a large web property, and you've decided to increase your revenue stream through online advertising. Advertisers pay you each time their ads show, on a per-thousand basis. You need to place the ads somewhere people will see them. Looking at your site, you think, where? How about along the top, and down the right-hand side? Yes, that's where you've seen them on other sites, so they must be the best places. Now, let's try that scenario today. You own a large web property, and you've decided to increase your revenue stream through Google AdSense. Advertisers pay you each time their ad

What better way to start Optimization Month off on the right foot than by having an in-person consultation? We'd like to remind you that the AdSense optimization team will be at SES San Jose on Tuesday, Aug. 8th and Wednesday, Aug. 9th, ready to offer you tips and suggestions on optimizing your site. Got a great success story based on how you've optimized your site? We'd love for you to share it with our video crew, who'll be on hand both days. Whether you're looking to learn more about optimization strategies or tell us your own, be sure to come by the Google booth at SES! Posted by Susan Taing - AdSense Product Marketing

As mentioned on Tuesday by Mike Gutner , we'll be finishing off this week with the top 3 tips for testing and tracking. This'll be a recurring theme for Optimization Month -- the end of each week will feature top 3 tips from the Optimization team. With that, I'm honored to be able to share 3 tips that I commonly suggest to publishers. It's always rewarding to hear reactions from publishers about how helpful these suggestions are -- it's almost as if I can see a lightbulb go on in their heads..."Ah-HA!" Over the last few months, we've doubled the number of channels and added several new reporting features. Here are my tips on how to use these channels and features to the fullest: 1. Search, don't scroll : I always encourage publishers to do a lot of testing and to use a lot of channels. At times, though, it can be tedious to scroll through a list of channels (up to 200!) to select the few you want to look at. I recommend using a standardized naming