[Inside AdSense] Year in review: 2008

As 2008 winds down, we'd like to follow tradition and close out the year with a look back at a few of the biggest happenings in AdSense.

In 2008, we introduced new features like AdSense for feeds and an improved version of AdSense for search to help you generate additional forms of revenue. We brought Google Ad Manager out of beta to help publishers with smaller direct sales teams more efficiently sell, schedule, and deliver their ad inventory. At the same time, we worked towards providing more information within AdSense accounts. In April, we enabled the Ad Review Center in all accounts to help you review ads placement-targeted to your sites. And in response to requests for more insight into your reports, we launched link unit reporting and began inviting publishers to link their AdSense accounts with Analytics.

Internationally, we launched AdSense for content in Thai and also expanded Western Union payments to a number of new countries such as Egypt, Taiwan, and Panama. To help more publishers find answers to their questions, we launched AdSense Help Forums in Hebrew, Czech, and Slovak.

On the English Help Forum, we celebrated our 50,000th member and then unveiled a new platform with additional capabilities. Now, forum participants can vote on the best answer to their questions, subscribe to individual discussions, and receive replies to their threads via email.

In news closest to home here on the blog, the Inside AdSense family continued to grow with the launch of blogs in Russian and Traditional Chinese. With your support, our 13 global AdSense blogs received 3.8 million pageviews from 2.4 million visits this year. Through our blogs, we brought you a Newbie Fridays series, 'Optimisation Essentials' videos from our Australian team, and began distributing AdSense stickers. Check out the sticker requests, postcards, and notes we received in the photo on the right :)

Last but not least, the 2008 Reader's Choice Award for this year's most visited post goes to our April Fool's joke, 'Introducing AdSense for conversations'. Co-author Julie Beckmann had this to say: "A lot of hard work went into omega testing the product for this post. While I found the hat fit snugly, I was disappointed to learn the effect my Orange County upbringing had on my chats -- 17 'like's' sprinkled into a two-minute conversation? My chats aren't fit to be placement-targeted."

Thanks for helping to contribute to an eventful 2008 -- we're looking forward to an even more exciting 2009. Happy New Year!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/31/2008 03:36:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Light up your site

We all know how it feels to find the perfect gift. After scouring stores far and wide, suddenly your hunt is over: the stars have aligned to bring you just what you're looking for -- and not a moment too soon. It's a bit the same way when a search brings you to just the right site. But what if your site's just the right site, and users can't find it?

We're happy to let you know that you don't need divine forces to play a role in the findability of your site. Nope -- you can help make sure that your site turns up just when it should by taking advantage of these tips from our Search Quality Team.

1. Not sure if all your pages are being seen by Google? Search for your site's address after the command "site", like [site:example.com]. When you see your pages in the results, check your snippet content and page titles. Include information that matches the topic of a particular page. If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis tool in Webmaster Tools.
   
   
2. If you upload new pages or topics faster than Google crawls your site, make sure to submit a Google Sitemap and include a refresh rate.
   
   
3. Label your images appropriately. Users searching in Google Image Search will more easily find the image on your site. Don't miss out on potential traffic because of [001.jpg] instead of [NintendoWii.jpg]. Image Search is one of the largest search properties out there, so you should take advantage of it.
   
   
4. Manage your SiteLinks. Your most valuable links may not be the ones that Google chooses as SiteLinks, so remember you can remove any that you don't think users will find useful.
   
   
5. Check for errors and keyword traffic in Webmaster Tools. See our diagnostics checklist.
   
   
6. Serve accurate HTTP status codes. If you've retired a page permanently, serve a 404. If you've simply relocated it, serve a 301. The more we know about your old pages, the faster we will find the next best page on your site for a given query.
   
   
7. Users and search engines like organic content. Make some of your own!
   
   
8. Read our recently released SEO Starter Guide.
   
   
9. Watch our Tutorials for Webmasters.
   
   
10. Find out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.
    
    
11. Get the latest updates from the Webmaster Central Blog.
    
    
12. Find answers to your questions in our Webmaster Help Center, or ask your questions in the Webmaster Help Group.
    

Whether it be the perfect gift, the perfect site, or the perfect cup of cocoa on a cold winter's night, we hope all your searches are fruitful this holiday season.

Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/22/2008 11:15:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Western Union payment updates

Do you use Western Union as your payment method? If so, we've just made a couple minor updates that we'd like to let you know about.

Expiration date extended

We've now extended the deadline to pick up your Western Union payments from 35 days to 60 days. If you haven't picked up your payment within 60 days of issuance, the payment will be credited back to your account and a payment hold will be placed on your account. You'll then see a notice in your account with more details on how to proceed.

Split payments

As you may know, Western Union has specific payout limits depending on location. In the past, if your payment amount exceeded the Western Union payout limit in your country, we'd send your payment by secured express delivery check instead. Unfortunately, this would also incur a delivery fee, so we're happy to let you know that this is now no longer the case.

Now, if your payment exceeds the maximum payment amount, we'll divide up the amounts but still send them via Western Union. For instance, if the payout limit in your country is $3,000 USD and your payment for the month is $5,000 USD, we'll send you two payments: one for the limit of $3,000 USD and another for the remainder of $2,000 USD. If you're sent multiple Western Union payments, you'll see multiple 'Payment issued' lines on your Payment history page, each with the corresponding MTCN associated with it. Depending on your local Western Union agent, you may need to pick up multiple payments on subsequent days. We recommend consulting your local Western Union agent for further details.

Payment by Western Union is currently available in a limited number of countries, but we're working on expanding the countries we support, and we'll keep you posted with any updates.

Posted by Deborah Chang - AdSense Payments Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/18/2008 01:30:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Extending AdSense for domains to all publishers

Many publishers have approached us looking for a way to monetize their domains, and today, we're excited to announce the expansion of AdSense for domains. This product allows publishers to earn revenue through ads placed on undeveloped domains.

With AdSense for domains, users can find relevant information rather than see empty pages or "page not found" errors. Today we present ads, links, and search results on the pages, and may add other useful information in the future. To ensure positive user experience and the quality of our network, these sites are monitored for policy compliance and prohibited from using text and images designed to confuse users.

Advertisers also have additional opportunities to find their customers, and ads on these pages convert well. In addition, we regularly receive requests from advertisers who have found domains to be an effective way to reach their users.

The product will be initially rolled out in phases to English-language AdSense publishers located in North America, and we'll expand to additional regions and languages in the future. To check whether AdSense for domains has been enabled for your account, log in and visit your AdSense Setup tab. For more information, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Loren Donelson - Product Manager, AdSense for Domains

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/11/2008 09:08:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Make your ad cents (and dollars) count

Back in May, we had tremendous interest from readers who asked if they could donate their earnings to help victims in China and Myanmar (Burma). We heard you loud and clear, and so we're happy to announce that during the next week, you can donate a portion or all of your entire unpaid balance as of November 30, 2008 to reconstruction efforts in these regions. The earth may no longer be quaking and the waters may now be calm, but help is still needed in these areas. Whether you have a balance of $0.10 or $100 in your account, we invite you to participate within the next week. Just think if everyone donated a dollar, what a difference that would make.

As you may expect, there are certain restrictions to donating, and all our normal policies still apply -- so please don't ask others to click on your ads in order to increase your earnings. For more information on how to participate, visit our donation form.

Finally, we know that you may be interested in donating your earnings to additional charities and causes. Please stay tuned to our blog for future opportunities to donate in other ways.

Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/04/2008 11:16:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Turkeys, thanks, and taxes

This Thanksgiving weekend, we'd like to take a moment to ask our U.S.-based publishers to spend a little post-turkey time (when you're not watching football or taking advantage of those Black Friday bargains) to review your AdSense tax information.

Tax season is just around the corner and we want to make sure that we give the IRS the most accurate information. So please pay a quick visit to your AdSense account, and double-check your payee name -- that's the name that we send payments to --and the tax information you've provided, especially your Social Security or Employer Identification Number.

Does the info in your account correspond exactly to the info in your tax documents? If not, you may want to consider updating your payee name so that everything matches up.

You can resubmit your tax information by logging in and following the steps in our Help Center. Keep in mind that we'll be sending out tax forms to publishers who qualify during the month of January.

Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/28/2008 10:45:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] The forecast is clear in Google Ad Manager

If you're a publisher who sells advertising space directly to advertisers, you might have experienced times when you've been unsure about how much inventory is available for you to sell. Google Ad Manager can help you learn what you have available to sell by forecasting your future inventory and subtracting off what you've already sold.

A Helpful Analogy

To put this into context, pretend for a minute that instead of a website, you run a popular destination hotel. Instead of selling space to advertisers, your job is to book hotel stays for guests. You receive all kinds of requests to book hotel rooms: two rooms for a one-week family vacation, 100 rooms for a three-day conference, a suite for a weekend getaway. In order to book these reservations, you have to know both how many rooms your hotel has and how many rooms are already booked. For a hotel, this is fairly straightforward. You know exactly how many total rooms the hotel has, and you can subtract how many rooms are booked for each night.

For a publisher, it's not as straightforward. Since the amount of inventory you have to sell is directly tied to your site's traffic, it can vary day by day. It's also complicated because there's flexibility in how you meet your obligations. If an advertiser has booked advertising space on your Finance and Entertainment sections, for example, you can serve more ads on the Finance page and fewer on the Entertainment page. To compare to a hotel, it's like you have the flexibility to substitute two single rooms for one double room. Because of the variability of traffic and the flexibility in how you can satisfy your reservations, it's hard to know exactly how much space you have left to sell for any day or any specific area of your website.

A Common Problem - and Solution

Even though it's more complicated for websites than for hotels, the customers' (or advertisers') needs are the same: They want a reservation, and you have to be able to guarantee that there will be availability when they show up. A hotel can't operate effectively without this type of capability, and neither can these web publishers.

Google Ad Manager, our hosted ad serving and management solution for publishers with smaller direct sales teams, addresses this publisher problem. It allows you to predict future availability and be confident that when you sell an ad, you'll be able to deliver it. In Ad Manager, forecasting works by using your historical data to estimate how many impressions you have left to sell. Ad Manager's inventory forecasting system allows you to find availability broken down by different areas of your website, by cities or states, and even by custom criteria that you define, like the user's age. Even better, when the inventory you request is unavailable, Ad Manager will give you suggestions for freeing-up the requested inventory, so that you can still make the sale.

New Improvements

In the last few weeks, we've rolled out major improvements to our forecasting system. It's now up to ten times faster, and it uses much more historical data, so you get more accurate estimates of future availability. The new system allows us to quickly add new features in the future. We've already launched one of these improvements: Forecasts now take account of frequency caps, meaning that the availability estimates are modified to account for the fact that you might only want to show an ad once to each user. And more new features are coming soon!

Forecasting also continues to be a major development focus of our DART for Publishers (DFP) ad serving platform for publishers with larger direct sales teams, part of the DoubleClick Revenue Center suite of publisher solutions. Google Ad Manager serves as an effective complement to DFP and the DoubleClick Revenue Center to provide solutions for publishers of all sizes.

To learn more about forecasting in Ad Manager, visit the Ad Manager Help Center.

Posted by Narayana Tummala - Tech Lead, Google Ad Manager

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/20/2008 09:49:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Optimisation Essentials (Part III)

Position for performance - be noticed

This is the final video installment in our three-part series on
Optimisation Essentials for AdSense for content. We've covered the
best-performing ad unit sizes and taken a look at how to design your
ad units for good-looking ads. However, even if you have large, well-
designed ad units, they won't perform for you unless your users can
see them!

So what can you do to ensure your ad units get noticed? Place your ads
where users are likely to look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3SGp7-hQo4

We've also made a heatmap at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17954
to show you where the best placements are on a typical page. Great
positions include:

* Above the fold of a page (the section of the page a user can see
without scrolling)
* At the end of an article
* Aligned with content

But don't just take our word for it - every website is different. Make
sure you use your judgment of how visitors interact with your pages to
determine good ad placements. Position your ads so that they're
visible, but be careful of intruding on the experience of your site's
visitors. Most of all, think like a user and you'll be able to balance
your website's content with a successful ad strategy.

Posted by Mel Ann Chan - AdSense Australia Optimisation Team
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 10:35:00 AM

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[Inside AdSense] Now serving overlay ads in embedded YouTube partner videos

Today, to help its video content partners earn more money, YouTube will begin running overlay ads in YouTube partner videos embedded on other websites. To date, YouTube has only run ads against partner videos on YouTube itself, and with people viewing millions of embedded YouTube videos every day, this meant that partners were not generating revenue from their views outside YouTube.com. But now, YouTube partners will be able to capitalize on their popularity across the internet and generate revenue from their content no matter where their video lives.

Although this may sound similar to AdSense video units, this YouTube change is separate from AdSense, and we'd like to discuss the differences between the two offerings.

Let's start with a refresher on AdSense video units, which are available within AdSense accounts in specific languages and regions. Video units help you enrich your website with fresh, dynamic content from our YouTube partners. Each video unit is accompanied by a banner ad and a overlay ad targeted towards the video and the site's content, and is customizable so you can choose categories of video to target to your site. The ad revenue is divided between the AdSense publisher, YouTube, and the YouTube partner providing the video content.

But AdSense video units aren't the only way our YouTube partners can distribute their content -- just as with other YouTube videos, it's possible for anyone with a website to embed partner videos on their sites. Now, following today's announcement, thousands of videos produced by YouTube partners will begin displaying overlay ads when embedded on other websites. (YouTube will gradually roll out these ads to additional YouTube partner videos in the coming weeks.) This feature is external to AdSense, and so no configuration within an AdSense account is needed. Revenue from these ads will be divided between YouTube and the YouTube partner providing the video content.

By helping YouTube partners generate additional revenue no matter where their videos are played, we hope to encourage further content creation among our most popular and prolific video creators. If you create your own video content and are interested in becoming a YouTube partner, submit an application today.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/13/2008 10:00:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Optimisation Essentials (Part II)

Dress for success - impressing your audience

The video below is the second in our "Optimisation Essentials" series,
demonstrating our top three tips for maximising your AdSense for
Content performance. Last week, we reinforced the importance of bigger
ad units. This week, we're showcasing how a better ad unit design can
result in improved AdSense performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SPctunvWhU

(Please note that no leopards were harmed in the making of this
video!)

Over the years, we've seen some colourful ad unit designs. Some
publishers design ad units that contrast with their site so that they
stand out. Although this can work in some cases, we've found that ad
units that match your site's design tend to perform better in terms of
revenue and click-through-rate. Users are more likely to read ads when
they're well integrated into your site.

When you design your AdSense ads, keep these tips in mind:

* Use colours that either blend with or complement your site's
colours. Make the ads a part of your site.
* Use lighter colours for borders, or no border at all.
* Try rotating colours or occasionally switching the location of
your ads on the page.
* Save sets of frequently-used colours as a palette.

So give your ad design and colours some thought, and you'll notice the
difference!

Posted by Mel Ann Chan - AdSense Australia Optimisation Team
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 9:48:00 AM

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[Inside AdSense] Political ads on AdSense sites

During the recent U.S. election period, our team heard your concerns and feedback regarding political ads appearing on publisher sites. As a Product Manager who helps build the AdSense product, I'd like to take a moment to explain our ad targeting technology and policies, and what we're working on to offer you even more controls.

Ad Targeting

I wanted to help clarify first how advertisers are able to target your sites. As you know, ads that appear on AdSense sites are provided by advertisers participating in the AdWords program. To help publishers earn revenue, advertisers are able to target ads not only based on the content of a site, but also based on the audience of the site. When we first started AdSense in 2003, we only offered contextually-targeted ads; advertisers bid on keywords, and our system matched those keywords to the content of publishers' pages. As we developed the product, we expanded these targeting capabilities. For instance, placement targeting allows advertisers to select specific topics, sites, and pages on which they want their ads to run. In the U.S., our placement targeting tool also allows advertisers to find sites serving a specific audience, such as "Males ages 18-24."

To help new and existing publishers better understand our targeting options, our support teams will be reviewing and expanding the material available on our Help Center and homepage to make sure it better communicates our offerings. In addition, we'll be exploring different methods of explaining this information, such as through webinars and videos, and demonstrating how publishers can optimize their sites to take advantage of these targeting options.

Advertising Policies

We also received questions about why political ads are able to run on Google and AdSense sites. The Google advertising program is managed by a set of editorial policies that we have developed based on various factors, including user and customer experience. While Google or its executives and employees may express opinions about specific political issues and candidates, Google's advertising system does not favor one political position over another. Our network provides advertisers with a way to reach their audience, whether they are companies selling products or political campaigns promoting candidates or issues. Just as Google's advertising system does not favor one car manufacturer's ads over a competitor's in our auction, we also allow ads regardless of the particular political position they represent.

Publisher Ad Control

As we've expanded to new forms of advertiser targeting, we've also added controls for the ads that can appear on your sites. Our automated targeting technology will never understand your users as well as you, so it's important that you have the ability to control their ad experience. For example, we mentioned earlier this week that tools such as the Competitive Ad Filter and Ad Review Center are designed for you to prevent specific ads from appearing on your pages.

We've heard your feedback about how quickly filters take effect and the ability to block specific categories of ads, and we're working hard to improve our current controls and provide more powerful ones in the near future. Over the next couple weeks, we plan to improve the speed of your filters, and we're working towards filters in the future that will take effect in less than an hour. We'll also continue improving the Ad Review Center, giving you ways to block entire categories of ads in addition to individual ads. We are also working on ways for you to establish guidelines for the type of ads that will be acceptable to your users, so you can "set it and forget it," while feeling comfortable that users will have a good ad experience.

One of our goals with AdSense is to help you easily generate revenue for your site without much work, so that you have more time to focus on developing great content. Many of our best ideas, like the Ad Review Center, are inspired by your feedback and suggestions. Please keep letting us know how we can make AdSense a better product.

Posted by Jason Miller - Group Product Manager, AdSense

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/07/2008 04:24:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Site maintenance on Saturday, November 8

Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance tomorrow, November 8th at 10 am PST. Although you won't be able to log in to your account for approximately 4 hours, your ad targeting and serving won't be affected, and you'll continue to be credited for valid clicks and impressions.

Here's the start time in a few international cities:

London - 6pm Saturday
Johannesburg - 8pm Saturday
Madurai - 11:30pm Saturday
Manila - 2am Sunday
Sydney - 5am Sunday

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/07/2008 03:19:00 PM
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[Inside AdSense] Block this way

When we notice a spike in readers who are interested in a specific topic, we like to address it as soon as we can. There's been some interest in filtering ads from publisher pages, so here's a quick refresher on the filtering tools we offer:

Competitive Ad Filter

You can restrict contextually-targeted and placement-targeted ads from appearing on your pages by adding the URL of each ad to your Competitive Ad Filter. After logging in to your account, click the AdSense Setup tab and visit the 'Competitive Ad Filter' page. You can also find full instructions and tips for entering in specific URLs in our Help Center. To determine the URL of an ad, try the AdSense Preview Tool or follow these steps. Please keep in mind that it may take several hours for the filter to take effect.

Ad Review Center

The Ad Review Center gives you additional control over the placement-targeted ads that may appear on your pages. Using the Ad Review Center, you can review specific ad groups and advertisers before they appear on your pages, and also block ads by type. You'll need to opt in to the Ad Review Center at the top of your Competitive Ad Filter page, and then you can begin reviewing ads.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/03/2008 06:24:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Optimisation Essentials (Part I)

Bigger is better - for AdSense ad units

AdSense for content is the bread and butter of many of our publishers,
and we often receive requests to recommend strategies to improve
AdSense performance on publisher sites. While we refer to this as
'optimisation', we understand that this term can make the process
sound more difficult than it really is. In response, we're releasing a
three-part video series that demonstrates, in plain English, our top
tips for increasing your AdSense earnings.

This week, we're recommending you think big - big ad units, that is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrKGucKThNs

Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their
site's design, and we always point them to these three:

* 300x250 medium rectangle
* 728x90 leaderboard
* 160x600 skyscraper

These ad units have proven in the past to deliver better results for
both publishers and advertisers. Advertisers favour these formats, and
if you've receiving all ad types, you'll find that advertisers will
specifically target your sites more often. If you position your ad
units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find
an ad that they're interested in.

When you're considering how to design your site, our testing has shown
that displaying at least one of these ad formats on your page can
increase your AdSense earnings potential. So remember, sometimes
bigger is better!

Posted by Mel Ann Chan - AdSense Australia Optimisation Team
Monday, November 03, 2008 at 11:26:00 AM

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[Inside AdSense] You're invited to the new AdSense Help Forum

The AdSensePro team would like to cordially invite you to the opening of our new English AdSense Help Forum.


We hope that by now you've found the AdSense Help Forum to be the best place to ask questions and share tips with other AdSense publishers. We've been listening to your feedback about forum features you'd like to see, and we're excited to announce that we're moving the English Forum from Google Groups to a brand new platform. (For those who participate in the Forum in another language: rest assured that our engineers are working on making this new platform available in additional languages, although we don't have a set date at this time.)

As of today, we've closed up shop and moved the English Forum next door to the AdSense Help Center. We've been jealous of the Help Center for a while now. Its innovative interface, clear categories, and snazzy search powered by CSE left us feeling like the odd man out.


Now we've almost got it all. We have the look and feel of the Help Center with the same CSE to search across the Forum, the Help Center, and the blog. We have the same categories as the Help Center, so you can easily transition from one category to the another. We even have some extra things we hope you'll really like: a system of levels to reward your contributions to the Forum, and profiles where you can put a picture next to your name. You can subscribe to the Forum (or to individual discussions) by RSS feed. You can post a question and receive your answer by email. You can even vote on which response best answers the question and mark a best answer to a question you asked.


We hope you'll come take a look, and we hope you'll stay a while, sign into your Google Account, and ask and answer questions.

Posted by the AdSensePro Team - AdSense Help Forum Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/30/2008 08:26:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Make a date with data in Google Analytics

Here in AdSense, we're big on data. From spreadsheets and graphs to
weekly reports and metrics, we constantly turn to numbers when running
our business. In a similar vein, we've heard your requests for more
data to help you run your AdSense websites, which is why we're excited
to announce the integration of one of our personal favorite reporting
tools, Google Analytics, with AdSense. We're gradually rolling out
this functionality to publishers, and you'll see an invitation link at
the top of your 'Overview' and 'Advanced Reports' pages when it's been
enabled for your account.

By integrating your AdSense account with a new or existing Analytics
account, you'll have access to in-depth reports about user activity on
your site. In addition to the wealth of metrics already available in
Analytics such as unique visitors and visitor language, you'll now
have access to granular reports that break down AdSense performance
both by page and by referring site. Armed with this new data about
user behavior, you'll be able to make more informed decisions on how
to improve the user experience on your site and optimize your AdSense
units to increase your revenue potential.

We've highlighted a few ways to use the integrated metrics below, but
we encourage you to be creative! Come up with your own to discover how
useful (and fun) new data can be:

* Discover untapped markets. Use the geographies report to determine
which regions are under-represented in your site's user base. Optimize
your site's content to attract more of these under-represented users.
* Drive high-earning traffic to your site. Use the 'Referring sites'
report to determine where the users who are making you the most money
are coming from. Focus your efforts on getting traffic from these
sources.
* Delve deeper into AdSense reports. Use the visualization feature to
look at trends in your site's AdSense performance over time, or by
time of day.

Again, this feature is not yet available to all our publishers, but
please keep checking your account for an invitation. In the meantime,
you can take a look at our demo to learn more about the reports you'll
have access to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S97HYyFwfsM

Posted by Vineesha Malkani - AdSense Publisher Support
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 11:04:00 AM

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[Inside AdSense] Site maintenance rescheduled for October 18 at 10am PDT

Last week we mentioned that there would be site maintenance on Saturday, October 11th -- if you attempted to log in during the maintenance period, you may have noticed that you were able to access your account as normal. That's because the maintenance scheduled for last weekend was postponed, and it has been rescheduled for this Saturday the 18th during the same time frame (10am PDT to 2pm PDT).

We sincerely apologize for the miscommunication and for any inconvenience caused. Again, here's the start time in a few different cities:

London - 6pm Saturday
Cairo - 7pm Saturday
Kolkata - 10:30pm Saturday
Jakarta - 12am Sunday
Brisbane - 3am Sunday

Thanks for your understanding, and we hope this gives you enough time to reschedule any account activities you may have planned for this weekend.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/15/2008 04:46:00 PM
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[Inside AdSense] The case of the delayed data

Do you frequently log in to your account to check your stats? We've heard from some publishers that they check their accounts every hour, or even multiple times an hour, and we're definitely happy to see your enthusiasm for the program! (For all of our blog veterans reading this post, you might recognize these as the symptoms of G.A.S.S..)

On that note, many publishers have asked us why they don't see any changes in their stats each time they log in, or why they sometimes see a 'No data available' message in their reports. This is because your reports are generally updated every 15 to 30 minutes, but there can sometimes be a delay of up to 24 hours. In addition, it can take up to 24 hours to fully verify our internal logs and finalize your reports -- as a result, you may sometimes see changes in your earnings during the course of the day. Please also keep in mind that your reports won't show data for impressions on public service announcements (PSAs).

How often do you check your account? Let us know in our comments field below :)

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/14/2008 10:54:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Site maintenance on Saturday, October 11 at 10am PDT

Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance this Saturday, October 11th from 10am to 2pm PDT. Although you won't be able to access your account during this time, you'll still be credited for all valid clicks and impressions. In addition, your ad delivery and targeting won't be affected by this maintenance period.

Here's the start time of the maintenance in a few cities, for our international readers:

London - 6pm Saturday
Cairo - 7pm Saturday
Kolkata - 10:30pm Saturday
Jakarta - 12am Sunday
Brisbane - 3am Sunday

Thanks for your patience!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/09/2008 11:00:00 AM
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[Inside AdSense] Get in the game with AdSense for Games

Do you develop or publish web-based games? If so, you're contributing to a growing trend - according to comScore, over 25% of Internet users play online games every week, which is over 200 million users worldwide. As a beta user of AdSense for Games, you can display video ads, image ads, or text ads within your online games to earn revenue. You'll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over. Members of our AdWords team will sell your in-game ad placements directly to top brand advertisers, and you'll also see contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information. In addition, you'll be able to control the ads you see on your pages using our filtering options.

Here's a quick video to give you a better idea of what games are part of our network and how advertisers can use this medium to reach their target audience:



And here's another, less flashy video, to show actual game play and how an ad could appear within the game:



We've built ad technology for games played within a user's browser, and now we're looking to expand our publisher network. At this time, eligible publishers must have a minimum of 500,000 game plays and have 80% of their traffic from the U.S. or the U.K. If you're interested in becoming a AdSense for games beta publisher, feel free to review our complete list of requirements and submit an application. You can also find more information on our games site.

Posted by Ryan Hayward - Ads Product Marketing

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/07/2008 09:01:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Maximizing revenue by exposing your channels to the right ad...

As you may know, you can set up your custom channels so that they're targetable by advertisers - these targetable custom channels are known as ad placements. By selecting the 'Allow advertisers to target this channel' checkbox on the channel creation page, you can enable brand advertisers to target their content to your audience directly on a CPM or CPC basis.

Creating ad placements allows them to show up in AdWords, so that advertisers who create placement-targeted campaigns can include your content directly. What many publishers don't know is that this also makes your content available to Google's internal sales teams, who work closely with many advertisers looking to target a certain audience or type of content. With this in mind, we thought it would be important to mention a few best practices which will help advertisers and our internal sales teams target your content to help you maximize revenue:

First, take time to make sure your channel names and descriptions accurately describe your content and audience. By including descriptions that closely reflect your content, you'll also attract advertisers from those areas. Naming and descriptions are important.


On that note, our second tip: be very careful about changing the name of an ad placement. If an advertiser has already targeted one of your specific channels, the channel will become unavailable to the advertiser once you change its name. If you wish to rename a channel, we recommend creating a second channel with the new name, and then attaching both channels to your ad unit. Remember, you can attach up to five custom channels to an ad unit.

Third, use the 300x250 medium rectangle, opted in to both text and image ads. This is one type of targetable ad unit that's in high demand by Google's CPM advertisers. We recommend placing these units in line with your content, and describing them as they relate to the content. This combination of format and placement enables advertisers to use image, text, or rich media (including gadget ads) effectively. In feeds, we recommend opting in to both image and text in all ad units, as many of these advertisers only target with image ads into feeds.

Finally, as always, the most important tip for maximizing revenue from your ad placements is to create quality content that is visually appealing and attracts a quality audience. Many brand advertisers look at all placements before placing an advertising order to make sure the destination sites are in line with their brand and attract the type of audience they wish to target for a particular campaign.

Posted by Steve Olechowski - AdSense Product Manager

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/02/2008 01:47:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] AdSense for content, now in Thai

Late last year we welcomed Thai to our AdSense for search family, and we're now excited to let you know about the launch of AdSense for content in Thai. If you're a publisher with a Thai website, you'll now be able to earn money for valid clicks and impressions for Google ads on your site. Get started by logging in to your account and visiting the AdSense Setup tab to generate ad code. Or, if you don't have an AdSense account yet, review our program policies and then feel free to submit an application.

To celebrate this launch, why not look up a few Thai recipes and prepare traditional dishes like Som Tum, a spicy green papaya salad, or Tom Yam, a hot and sour soup? We hope they'll leave you content and ready to create new content of your own.

ยินดีต้อนรับสู่โปรแกรมของเราค่ะ

Posted by Nopparat Yokubon - AdSense Thai Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/30/2008 02:26:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Lucy's final tips for Friday newbies

As the summer draws to a close, it is with a heavy heart that I bring you our last Newbie Friday post. I hope you've enjoyed our words of wisdom over the past few months and have found the information useful. Our team will continue to update this blog with the most up-to-date AdSense news and information, so please don't let this be goodbye. If you missed part of the series or want to re-read specific posts, just visit our Newbie label at any time and look for our summer-themed logo. So, from one oldie to many newbies, I'll close out this season with a few final tips for our new publishers.

Go wide and get rich (media)
If you've just recently started with AdSense, there are two format-related tips I would instantly recommend. The first is to enable both text and image ads, which will increase competition among ads to appear in your ad units and may result in higher CPMs. Second, use some of our wider units, such as the 160x600 wide skyscraper, the 300x250 medium rectangle, or the 728x90 leaderboard. There are more rich media (image, flash, video and gadget) ads available in wider ad formats, and wider ad units are the preferred formats for advertisers looking to target your site. Again, increased competition or your ad space will help you maximise your earnings potential.

Use channels
Channels are powerful reporting tools, sometimes overlooked by new publishers. They allow you to view the AdSense performance of a site, a specific page, or even a specific ad unit, which can help you see where your ads are performing best. You can name these channels, give them descriptions, and then define them as ad placements so that they are visible to AdWords advertisers.

The secret
As top AdSense earners will tell you, when it comes to earning with AdSense, the most important thing is a policy-compliant site with good-quality, original content. Such sites attract users, relevant ads and, ultimately, revenue.

Finally, we constantly maintain online resources like our AdSense Help Forum, Newbie Central, and our Known Issues page to share useful information with you. We hope you'll use them to make the most of AdSense.

Posted by Lucy McKenna - AdSense UK Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/26/2008 11:12:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Is it right to search on your own site?

If you've added an AdSense for search box to your page, you're probably aware of the relevant search results it provides your users. That being said, a few publishers have asked us if it's a violation of our program policies to perform searches in their own AdSense for search boxes. The short answer is no, this activity is not explicitly prohibited by our program policies.

However, we strongly advise against using your own AdSense for search box for a couple of reasons. First, it can increase the chance of accidental or invalid clicks on the ads that appear on the search results pages. Second, this will inflate the number of queries in your reports, giving you an inaccurate picture of the activity on your site.

If you'd like to use Google search, we recommend visiting Google.com or installing the Google Toolbar. And if you're using Google Chrome, don't forget that you can type search queries directly into your address bar.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/19/2008 02:39:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Continuing to improve our ads

Readers with sharp eyes will notice that on some rare occasions, your ads may appear or act slightly differently than what you're accustomed to. Rest assured that this is normal behavior that results from our efforts to improve the experience for all members of the advertising ecosystem. (You may have noticed a similar post about our search results on the official Google blog.)

One way in which we achieve this is by making continued tweaks and innovations to the user behavior and appearance of our ads. In the past, these experiments have included changes to the font styling, coloring, spacing, and other aesthetic components. More specifically, changes such as redesigned ad units and arrows to show additional ads have stemmed from these tests. The purpose of these tests is to identify changes to our product that can bring long-term benefits to our publishers, your site's visitors, and advertisers.

Before rolling out a change to our ads, we test performance for a limited number of ad impressions, which may not apply to all publishers. Although we don't notify publishers of these specific changes in order to prevent bias, we closely monitor the performance of these tests. We also welcome feedback from publishers, users, and advertisers, so feel free to drop us an email.

Posted by Keith Mander - AdSense Product Specialist

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/18/2008 09:19:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Quality, not quantity

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, you can use your AdSense account to display ads on any policy-compliant sites you own. This has often sparked the question among new publishers of 'How many sites do I need to earn money with AdSense?'

We'd like to stress that it's not the number of sites you have, but the quality of those sites that will help you increase your earnings with AdSense. If you're just getting started with your first website and the AdSense program, we recommend taking the time to build up your site with plenty of original, quality content -- write about topics you're passionate about, or which you have expertise in. When designing your website, keep our Webmaster Guidelines and, most importantly, your users in mind.

Then, take advantage of our Webmaster Tools to help increase your site's visibility in the Google search index, and try out the tips our Search Quality Evaluators have provided. Once you've built up organic traffic to your site, use Website Optimizer to understand how users interact with your pages and make improvements to your layout. And of course, during all of this, experiment with AdSense optimization tips to learn which colors, formats, and placements monetize best on your site.

Finally, as we blogged about during this Newbie Fridays series, your earnings potential can go up as advertisers find that you're sending high-quality leads to their sites. This won't happen overnight, but with patience and hard work you can watch your efforts convert into a high-quality site and higher AdSense earnings. And you won't even need a hundred sites to do it :)

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/12/2008 01:46:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Site maintenance on Saturday, September 13

This Saturday, September 13, our engineers will be performing site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. As is typical during these maintenance periods, you won't be able to log in during these hours, but your earnings will continue to accrue and ads continue to be displayed on your pages.

For those of you located in different time zones, we've provided the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world.

Montreal - 1pm Saturday
Milan - 7pm Saturday
Moscow - 9pm Saturday
Mumbai - 10:30pm Saturday
Manila - 1am Sunday

Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/11/2008 01:48:00 PM
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[Inside AdSense] Western Union launched in Panama

Following our announcement a few weeks ago, we're happy to announce that Western Union is now offered as a payment method for publishers located in Panama. To sign up for payments by Western Union, sign in to your account and follow these instructions. Please also keep in mind that we're only able to make Western Union payments to individual payee names, but not to businesses.

Not located in Panama? We've been reading your comments on our other recent payment-related posts, and understand that many of you are looking forward to new payment options in additional countries. Please know that we aren't able to provide details about when new options may become available, as setting them up can take time due to factors like compliance with local laws and tax regulations. However, we're working hard to find more convenient ways to send you your earnings, and we'll definitely announce any new options here. In the meantime, please feel free to keep leaving your feedback, and we appreciate your patience!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/10/2008 11:12:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Chasing the perfect layout with AdSense for search

AdSense publisher Next Small Things has long understood that search is the entry point for users to find what they're looking for on the web. In fact, the idea for CoolChaser.com, a MySpace layout creation and customization site (and Next Small Things's largest business to date), came from the observation that many web surfers were using the company's search engine to find instructions to change their MySpace backgrounds. The observation and ensuing business idea has paid off, and in just one year CoolChaser.com has gained a loyal user base: over 200,000 users are now finding or creating layouts on the site every day. "CoolChaser has become a one-stop-shop for layouts because of the ease of use and the choice and ability for users to express what they feel at the time," says founder Chao Lam.

With over 20 million user-submitted layouts (and 3,000 created every hour), it was becoming increasingly difficult for users to find the layouts they were looking for. "We were getting a lot of requests from users to provide some sort of search mechanism so that they could easily find what they were looking for," developer Sachiko Kwan says. As an existing AdSense publisher, Kwan decided to try AdSense for search and was immediately impressed by the quick setup process and the accuracy of the results. With the new SiteSearch feature, Kwan was able to restrict the searches so users didn't have to leave the site to find what they were looking for. In addition, the new watermark feature allowed Kwan to add the search box without any rearrangement in the navigation bar.

Most recently, Lam and Kwan began optimizing their search for better performance and user experience. If a user wasn't creating a layout, they were looking for one. So Kwan moved the search box from the upper right corner of each page to the center of the header and also added a second search box to the bottom of every page, in case users who were done browsing needed to search again. On the search results page, she changed the ad borders to a lighter color to better blend in with the site's pages.


Within a week of making these changes, Lam and Kwan saw their daily search queries on CoolChaser increase by 40% and earnings more than double. Since implementing AdSense for search on CoolChaser, search has become the second most popular functionality behind creating layouts. Lam and Kwan continue to focus on user experience, and they are now working to refine search results using keywords and labels. "There's such an enormous variety of things people search for," Lam says. "AdSense for search is really working for us."

Have you had success with AdSense for search, or our new optimization tips? If so, we'd love to hear from you.

Posted by Sandra Tsui - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/08/2008 11:04:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Relating AdSense to AdWords

We think it's important for all publishers, both new and veteran, to understand the role they play in our ad network ecosystem. While AdSense is designed for publishers to monetize their websites with Google ads, it's also designed to extend the reach for our AdWords advertisers, providing them with ad real estate whose value is close to that on Google Search results.

If your website performs well for advertisers, there may be increased competition among them to fill your ad spaces. This means we'd have a wider variety of possible ads to display, so the ads you see on your site may be more relevant to your site content and your users' interests. This may lead to more clicks from your users, more placement-targeted campaigns geared towards your site, and increased advertiser bids. Overall, you're likely to earn more revenue with your site if advertisers are generating conversions and receiving quality leads from your site.

On the other hand, if your website performs poorly for advertisers, they may be less inclined to display on your site. This means that the ads our system displays on your site may not be as relevant to your site content and your users' interests, leading to fewer clicks and decreased advertiser bids. As a result, you're likely to earn less revenue with your site if advertisers are performing poorly.

To maximize the value for advertisers displaying on your site, we recommend focusing on developing a high-quality site with original content that's valuable to your users. For more information, please consult our program policies and Webmaster Quality Guidelines for reference.

Posted by the Google Ad Traffic Quality Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/05/2008 11:01:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Don't get held up by expired check holds

Whether it's your high school yearbook, the ticket stub from a movie you saw with your first sweetheart, or the lock of hair from your child's first trim, we all have mementos that we like to keep around. However, we hope that your AdSense check isn't one of them!

As a friendly reminder, AdSense checks expire after 6 months, so once you get your check in the mail please don't forget to deposit it.

If you're holding onto to a check and it expires, your account will be placed on hold and you'll need to re-select a form of payment to resume payments the next time you've crossed the US $100 threshold. For many of you, you may consider trying EFT, Western Union, or local currency checks if they're available in your country. If you don't yet see your preferred payment option for your country yet, please know we're working hard to add additional forms of payment in the future.

So no lolly-gagging! Once you've got your payments, it's off to the bank with you to count all your ad-dollars and ad-cents!

Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/03/2008 04:04:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Announcing Google Chrome

Today, we're happy to announce the release of the beta version of a new open-source browser: Google Chrome. We encourage you to download it and give it a try.

Google Chrome features a simple and intuitive user interface and an entirely new architecture designed for speed, security, and stability. You can find out more about other Google Chrome features here.

For publishers, you should see the ads on your pages continue to appear as normal in Google Chrome; we built Google Chrome so that most webmasters and site owners shouldn't have to make changes to their sites. If your site is compatible with Safari, it should also be compatible with Google Chrome, as they are both built using WebKit. If you have any questions regarding compatibility with your site, feel free to refer to our webmaster site.

To learn more about why we built Google Chrome, see our official Google blog.

Posted by Brian Rakowski - Google Chrome Product Manager

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/02/2008 12:44:00 P
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