Feeds for thought

Does your site have a feed? If not, you may be missing out on a substantial number of repeat visitors. An increasing number of users are using feed readers to keep up to date with their favorite websites. You've worked so hard to create that quality content, and feeds can help you grow your audience as well as let your current readers take your site with them wherever they go.

Google Reader and the Google Personalized Homepage are examples of feed readers that allow your users to keep track of updates to your site -- and starting today, it's now possible to track the number of users subscribed to your site via these two feed readers.

Here are just a few examples of AdSense sites which also offer feeds:

• Information resources NewsMax and Hybridcars.com publish feeds of their most recent stories.
  
• Taquitos.net, a specialty site focused on snacks, publishes feeds with the newest snack reviews.
  
• Blogs like Inside AdSense publish feeds with the latest posts.
  

There are many resources online to help you implement feeds on your site. You may wish to start with sites for Atom and RSS, the two standards compatible with most feed readers. Many popular CMS and blogging platforms like Blogger.com already have feed functionality built in, so your site may even have a feed without you knowing it.

In order to provide the best experience for your users, the Google Reader team has also put together some tips for feed publishers. This document covers feed best practices, common implementation pitfalls, and various ways to promote your feeds. Whether you're creating your feeds from scratch or have been publishing them for a long time, we encourage you to take a look at our tips to make the most of your feeds. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

For more articles about different markets please visit my articles and links directory.

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

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Enhance your site with Google search results

If you're looking for an easy way to add some interactivity to your site, we've got just the tool for you. The AJAX Search Wizards allow you to add a video, news, and local search results to your web page without writing any code. Just tell us how you want the widget to display and what searches to automatically execute, and the wizard will generate the code for you to copy and paste into your web page.

Our newest wizard generates a news bar that scrolls through recent news headlines. Here, we've customized it to show Google News search results for Google, Apple, and Microsoft:



The news bar is also available in a vertical orientation for you to use in a column or sidebar. You can easily change the look-and-feel of the our wizard-generated code just by adding some CSS or editing the JavaScript. Also, check out our video bar wizard to easily add Google videos to your site and try our map search wizard to add a searchable Google map to your site.

The AJAX Search API allows you to interact programmatically with Google search results including Google web, video, news, and blog searches. If you're a developer, take a look at the documentation to see how you can integrate dynamic Google search into your website in other creative ways.

Finally, let us know if you find these wizards useful, and we may just feature your site on our community samples page.

For more articles about different markets please visit my articles and links directory.

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

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Have a Google search question?

As active web publishers, we know you're working to build quality traffic so the world can see the great content you've created. Since many of you rely on listings in search engines for this traffic, we often receive email from publishers who have concerns about their site's listing on Google.com.

We'd like to let you know that to protect the integrity of our search results, your participation in AdSense won't affect your site's ranking or listing in the Google index. Since AdSense is separate from Google.com search results, our team is unable to provide publishers with any information about a site's Page Rank or status in the Google index.

However, if you do have questions about your site's ranking or listing on Google.com, we encourage you to visit Webmaster Central. There, you can navigate to pages with information about how Google crawls and indexes pages, how to improve a site's ranking, or why a site is no longer visible in the index. In addition, Google's webmaster tools can provide you with comprehensive information about your site, including queries for which your site appears in Google.com search results, potential indexing problems, and much more.

If you have questions or feedback about the resources on Webmaster Central, you might also find the discussions in the Google Webmaster Help Group useful, as Google employees monitor and contribute to the group.

For more articles about different markets please visit my articles and links directory.

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

AdWords and AdSense: a perfect pair

We recently caught up with Peter Clee, a publisher who has seen success with both AdSense and AdWords. Peter's main site, LondonNet.co.uk, was launched in the summer of 1996 and offers a guide to arts, entertainment, city info, and news about London. Peter also runs www.hotelgenie.com and www.myflatincannes.com. We'd like to share some of Peter's insights with you about monetising his sites with AdSense and his experience using AdWords to attract visitors.

Inside AdSense: How does AdSense impact your business?
Peter Clee: It has reinforced our view that creating good, relevant content is what we, as publishers, should be all about. AdSense is a stress-free and rapid way to support new sections and features on your site, ensuring you have a degree of monetisation before you even consider additional revenue streams. If a section works well with AdSense you quickly learn it is worth investing more time and energy into expanding its content. Additionally, with future redesigns of the site we will be thinking of how to incorporate AdSense-friendly ad positioning from the get-go.

IA: What problems have you faced in the past in monetising your site?
PC: Over the last eleven years we have had time to build up a portfolio of revenue streams across the site. I guess the important thing is not to get too disheartened when a new method flops. I’d say about one in ten of our ‘really great ideas’ actually pays off, one in five really flops, and the rest do somewhere in the middle. The key is to nurture your winners and improve your near things, while quietly disposing of the failures. Thankfully, AdSense has proved to be a winner from the moment we implemented it onto our sites.

IA: What has been your overall experience with AdWords?
PC: It’s particularly useful for supporting new, smaller sites such as www.myflatincannes.com to create a web presence and readership. With a more established site such as LondonNet.co.uk, it's great at boosting strategic parts of the site and attracting new readers to key revenue generating areas. Also, the system is easy to set up and operate. To maximise your returns you need to make regular checks to ensure your bid positions and keywords are working effectively.

IA: How exactly do you use AdWords to achieve your goals?
PC: We research a cluster of relevant keywords and test the predicted and actual bid ranges. Then we spend time to fine-tune their effectiveness, where appropriate, using the conversion measures. Like most things it takes a little time to fine tune and maximise your returns.

IA: Would you recommend AdWords to other publishers?
PC: Absolutely. It’s a major weapon in the web marketer’s arsenal.

If you'd like to learn more about advertising with Google AdWords, visit the AdWords homepage
to get started.

For more articles about different markets please visit my articles and links directory.

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

Referrals, now with Google Checkout

Today we're excited to announce that in addition to AdSense, AdWords, Firefox with Google Toolbar, and Google Pack, you can now refer your users to Google Checkout through AdSense.


Checkout gives your users a faster, safer, and more convenient way to shop online. OK, that sounds great for them, but what do you get out of it? Well, every time you refer a user to Google Checkout, you make a little money. It's a simple process that includes all of three steps:

1. You place the Checkout referral button on your site.
   
2. Someone clicks on the button, signs up as a buyer with Google Checkout using a valid U.S. credit card, and completes a purchase of at least $10 before shipping and tax through Checkout within 90 days. (The current $10 minimum purchase corresponds to our existing $10 promotion for new buyers, so this amount may change in the future.)
   
3. You earn $1.
   

It's that simple. Please note that Checkout referrals are currently only available for U.S. publishers, and Google Checkout is currently only available for buyers with a U.S. credit card. We hope to make both Checkout and Checkout Referrals available in more countries soon.

If you're not convinced, why not try it out yourself? It costs nothing to sign up (actually, you'll even get a $10 bonus) and it'll make shopping online a little easier. And remember, if you're still figuring out how to improve the performance of your referrals, take a peek at our optimization tips for referrals.

You can get started with Checkout referral ads by visiting the AdSense Setup tab in your account. We think your users will thank you for showing them Google Checkout, and your wallet will like having some extra money for you to spend at all of those great Google Checkout stores.

For more articles about different markets please visit my articles and links directory.

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

Introducing Google Apps referrals

Following our recent series of referrals announcements, we're happy to announce that you can now earn $5 per referral for Google Apps.

With Google Apps, we've taken Google's most powerful communication and collaboration tools, and packaged them together so businesses, schools and other organizations can work more effectively while spending less time and money on IT systems. Google Apps provides customized email addresses (powered by Gmail), Google Calendar, Google Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets and Page Creator, all for free. Best of all, everything is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software to download, install or maintain.

So how do these referrals work? Just visit the AdSense Setup tab in your AdSense account and click the link for Referrals. Select the Google Apps option and then choose how you want the referral ad to look on your site. (The Google Apps referral ads are available in English right now, but we'll be adding more languages soon.) Copy the code provided into the design of your web pages, and voila!

You will be credited $5 when someone clicks the referral ad from your site and signs up for Google Apps with a domain that has not already been signed up for the service. That person's domain must then have one or more Google Apps email accounts in use for four consecutive weeks. It's that simple.

If you're new to AdSense referrals, you might want to check out our referrals optimization tips.

For more articles about different markets please visit my articles and links directory.

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)