Tips and Tricks

Stef looked closely at the search-results page. "But it says that the search didn't match any documents," Stef asked. "Why not? Every page on his site should match that search phrase-it's a site about voice-over-IP, after all."

"That's because his site's not in Google's search index yet," I said. "We'll have to fix that, but let's leave that for our next session. Instead, I'd like to give you some tips and tricks about using AdSense on your Web pages."

Only Put Ads on Finished Pages

AdSense is notified whenever AdSense code runs on a page. If AdSense has never seen a page before, it dispatches the AdSense Web crawler to fetch and analyze the page's content. If the page is unfinished, the crawler may not accurately determine the page's topic, though it can infer things based on its analysis of other pages on the same site. Worse still, if the page is full of dummy or otherwise off-topic content, the crawler may get the topic completely wrong.

The moral of this story? Don't put ads on unfinished pages.

Rename Pages to Solve Ad Problems

What if you have a page and the ads aren't relevant because you had poor or empty content on the page when the crawler first came along? While the initial crawling occurs pretty quickly, it may be days or weeks before the AdSense crawler revisits a page and notices that the content is different. In the meantime, you're stuck with irrelevant ads.

The solution is to move the content to another Web page entirely. Make sure the new page is named properly and that its content is correct. Keep the old page around, but have it redirect browsers to the new page. A redirect tells the browser that the page has "moved" to a new Web address. Here's a very simple Web page that redirects the browser to another page:

This page has moved to newpage.html.

 

The redirection is actually done by the meta tag. The body of the HTML page is there in case the user's browser doesn't automatically follow redirects and has a direct link to the new page as well.

Redirection can also be done automatically by the Web server. Talk to your hosting service provider about how to do this.

Move Ads Above the Fold

Ads that are not shown "above the fold" (in the top part of the page) won't be seen by visitors unless and until they scroll the page. Placing a single ad unit at the bottom of the page will not generate much revenue. Unless you're using multiple ad units, keep the ads above the fold as much as possible.

Avoid Empty Ad Units

When using multiple ad units on a page, be sure to specify alternate ads or colors for the second and/or third units. The less popular topics don't always have enough ads available to fill two or three units. An empty ad unit is worse than a partially filled one, so always specify a background color or an alternate ad to display in its place. This is a good strategy with all your ad units, in fact, even if they're the only ones on the page.

Don't Use Too Many Ads

The presence of too many ads on a page detracts from the page content and may cause visitors to ignore the page entirely, especially if they're looking for objective sources of information. This is particularly a problem if the page is being forced out of its natural shape in order to display as many ads as possible.

Ad Unit Order Matters

The order in which ad units are declared in the underlying HTML determines the order that AdSense uses to fill them. The primary ad unit is the first one declared in your HTML. You want it to be located in the most effective spot on your page, because it's the one that AdSense always fills first and that you expect to always show at least one ad. If you're not careful, the primary ad unit might end up in an ineffective position on your page.

The position of a text ad depends on how much the advertiser is willing to pay when someone clicks it. The ads in the first ad unit-the topmost ads in towers and rectangles and the leftmost ads in banners-pay you more than the other ads, and those in the last ad unit (at the bottom or the extreme right) pay the least.

Use Channels to Track Performance

Channels allow you to see which pages are generating revenue and which aren't. For a small site of less than 100 pages, you can use individual channels (URL channels are simplest) to track performance at the page level. Beyond that, you'll need to group pages together for tracking, probably using custom channels. Once you know which pages are working best, try to figure out why they are and how you can extend that success to other pages.

Don't Put Ads on Private Pages

You can easily create private Web pages on your site that are accessible only by password. There's no point in putting ads on private pages, because the AdSense crawler can read only public pages that anyone can access.