Google Analytics hearts AdSense publishers

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 help you with all of this.



It's as easy to set up as AdSense. All you need to do is add a couple lines of code to each page in your site, and to gain valuable insight with graphical representations of visitor levels and detailed, easy-to-use reports that show:

• pageviews of each of individual web pages
  
• the average time spent on each page
  
• new vs. returning visitors
  
• visitors' geographical location and language
  
• their browser and platform choices
  
• click path data
  

Perhaps this gives you an idea of how Google Analytics can help you measure the success of changes to your site, and confidently make design choices. The best part? After retreating into invitation mode since it launched last November, we're happy to tell you that Analytics is now available for everyone, so you can get started analyzing your site right away.

Happy tracking!

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

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Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

Optimization Month, Week 5: Putting it all together

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 views. This is completely normal, and things will bounce back.

It’s crucial to keep these normal cyclical changes in mind when evaluating your stats. It’s also important to compare apples to apples. For instance, be sure you’re comparing days or months that received a similar number of page views. This will ensure that you are making accurate data comparisons. Using custom channels will also help you compare ad unit statistics at a very granular level to determine exactly which units are performing well, and which need to be modified or moved in order to boost CTR and eCPM.

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about innovative strategies other successful publishers have used, check out some of our case studies.

Remember that every site is unique, so it’s critically important to keep testing and experimenting to see what performs the best for your own site. Don’t be afraid to try new things! And finally, I leave you with the following words of wisdom: Duct tape is like The Force -- it has a Light side and a Dark side and it holds the universe together.

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

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

Back to school basics

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 deal of new information and breaking it down into sizeable chunks to interpret it. As we mentioned in a previous post, URL and custom channels are a great way to take a more granular look at your site and track specific implementation changes you’ve made.

It’s also necessary to create an appropriate measurement for your data. Too much is confusing, and too little is not going to give you accurate results. Normally, good measurements include 30-, 60- and 90-day increments.

Finally, you’ll need to analyze the data. A great feature we offer is the CSV link, which enables you to download your data onto your hard drive so you can rearrange it to your specific needs. I recommend using Google Spreadsheets or Excel.



Art appreciation: Displaying your data

As your art teacher used to say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Staring at raw data can be tedious and won't help you visualize trends in your AdSense stats. This is why tables and graphs are so effective. A table can make your data more comprehensive and easier to read, while a graph helps you to observe visually what's happening to your various values. If you notice that one channel is performing better than another over a set period, it may be time to implement the same changes into your other pages.

Tip: Track the various implementation changes you’ve made on a separate sheet, and note the date. You can then review those dates later and compare them with previous sets of data to discover which changes had the greatest impact on your site.

Quarterly report card

I recommend that you perform this type of analysis every 3 months to ensure that you are optimizing your site to its potential. By tracking and managing your data, you will be on your way to becoming a more savvy AdSense user. And of course, don’t forget to thank your 7th grade teacher for imparting this knowledge.

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

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

Robert's tips for the future

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 -- use Google Analytics.

Monitoring your AdSense performance need not be restricted to the features within your AdSense account. Learning about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your website will help you make informed decisions regarding ad placement and formats. As we mentioned last week, Google Analytics can help you make choices about improving your site design while incorporating the Adsense optimisation tips into your new layout. Measuring the results of such changes enables better decisions for your site's users, so why not measure your site performance with Analytics?

3. Make yourself available, your reports are now emailable.

If you're serious about measuring how your account is performing, you'll need to keep up to date with your reports. Why spend time trawling through data in your account when you can get it all sent directly to your inbox? Emailable reports are a recent addition to your AdSense account, which give you exactly the data you're interested in on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. What's more, you can send them to multiple email addresses. This way, you can keep your business partner up to date on recent successes. Emailable reports are easy to set up and even easier to access, with one click in your inbox. If you're not using this option already, I encourage you to to set up emailable reports today to monitor the effects of your changes straight away.

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

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

"Augtomize" year-round

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:

1. Nothing warms the hearts of our team more than hearing success stories from AdSense publishers. Please tell us yours!
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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 publishers.

August was Optimization Month, yes, but remember -- you can "Augtomize" any month of the year.

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

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

New and improved referrals resources

If you've been looking for ways to improve your referral earnings, we're excited to introduce you to a few new resources. First is our updated referrals optimization tips page, where you can find our top suggestions for selecting referral products and how to best promote them on your site. We've added new, detailed tips as well as example implementations to help you get the most from your referrals.

Next is our very first referrals-themed case study. Learn how Randy Brown, site owner of GrownUpGeek.com, has used referrals to double his earnings while endorsing a product that he really supports.



Do you have a referrals success story that you'd like to share? Send us a note and maybe you'll be featured soon.

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

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)

You've got mail

If you've logged in to your account today, you've probably noticed the new 'Recent messages' section in your AdSense account. We're happy to let you know that this is your personal inbox where we'll send you customized optimization tips. More specifically, our system will automatically analyze your account and ad settings. Based on these findings, you'll receive a notification each month in your AdSense account if there are changes you can make to improve your overall AdSense performance.



While we're not able to guarantee results from implementing these suggestions, we've found that these techniques have been successful for many publishers in the past which is why we've developed this feature for you. If you don't receive a notification during a specific month, don't worry. You've probably implemented all of our current suggestions and we'll be adding more tips in the future.

Happy optimizing!

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

http://googlelinksdirectory.com/

Thanks for yours time have a good day :-)