A/B experiments for ad unit settings - the easy way

If you’re a regular blog reader, you know that we regularly emphasize the importance of testing changes to your ads to ensure they’re performing as well as they could be. The most effective way to do so is by running an A/B experiment to compare how one setting performs against a slight variation of that setting. To make it even easier for you to run A/B experiments, today we’re releasing a new AdSense experiments feature for your ad unit settings.

This new feature is available directly from your AdSense account and lets you quickly create, run and analyze A/B experiments for specific ad units -- all without needing to make any changes to your ad or page code. It works by comparing your original ad unit settings to a variation you choose, and ultimately tells you which one performs better. Here are just a few examples of the types of tests you can run:

• Compare the performance of text-only ads to ads that have both text and display enabled
• Determine how ads with a visible border perform compared to those that are ‘borderless’ (where the color of the border matches the background of the page)
• Analyze the effect of changing the color of ad text on ad performance 

Approximately 24 hours after you set up an experiment in your account, you’ll see a confidence score for the two ad units settings. This score indicates how likely the original or the variation is to be the better performing setting in the long term. Confidence scores may change as the experiment progresses, and we recommend waiting until one of the scores reaches at least 95% before choosing that setting as the winner. Once you chose the winning setting, the experiment ends and the setting is automatically applied to the specific ad unit. Please note that while an experiment is running, our system will automatically optimize the traffic split between the two ad unit settings. The better one setting performs, the more traffic it will receive, helping you maximize your revenue potential even during the experiment.

Give A/B experiments a try using this new feature to ensure you’re getting the most out of your ad units. To learn more about AdSense experiments, visit our Help Center. We look forward to hearing what you think - feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager

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What’s the best mobile solution for you?

Last week we looked at how to analyze your traffic to get an understanding of which platforms your audience is using to reach you. By comparing the content that your users are accessing via desktop, mobile, and tablet, you'll gain insights into which implementation will best suit your business. In today’s post, we’ll look at the three most common ways of doing this. We’ll explore building a responsively designed site, dynamic serving solutions, and lastly, a separate mobile site.

Responsive Web Design (RWD):

A responsively built site automatically rearranges and resizes content to fit the screen of any device used to access the site. This allows you to optimize the user experience across different devices - without needing to create redirects or make unique pages that cater to each platform. For the user, this means a smooth user journey, and for a content manager, it means content only needs to be updated once. From a developer viewpoint, RWD may require rebuilding your site framework with flexible templates, grids, style sheets and JavaScript but with very rewarding results. Take a look at this case study to see how TowerGate Insurance adapted RWD to increase mobile and tablet users by over 200%.

Dynamic Serving of Content:

Another solution is to dynamically serve content. Similar to RWD, with this approach the web server detects the type of device the visitor is using and presents a custom page on the same URL. This allows for a fully customised device experience, but also means that your content will need to be maintained separately for each platform. To ensure your users have a smooth navigational experience, prioritize building dynamic content for the most popular pages that users are accessing through mobile, and similarly apply the same for tablet.

Separate Mobile Site:

The final implementation you might want to consider is creating a separate mobile site, where smartphone users will be directed to a mobile-optimized version of your site. This implementation allows you fully customise your content for a mobile audience, since it’s often an independently hosted solution. Similar to creating dynamic serving content, this means you need to make separate updates for content or styling pieces to ensure a smooth user experience. Take a look at how Adidas reached a winning formula with their dedicated mobile solution.

To read more about what we’ve discussed today or to find a list of recommended vendors that can help you to develop your mobile solution, check out this article by the Google Think Insights team. Also, join us next week when we’re going to take a look at how you can best use AdSense to monetize your mobile sites.

Posted by Federico Gomez Kodela - Mobile Specialist
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Introducing the Google AdSense Certified Partner Program

Since 2003, AdSense has helped publishers from around the world earn from their content and grow their businesses. Over time, we’ve also seen growth in the number of consultants and service providers who have built their own businesses around helping publishers succeed with AdSense. With this in mind, we’ve created the Google AdSense Certified Partner Program to work more closely with these service providers and recognize the expertise they’ve developed.

If you use AdWords or Analytics, you may be familiar with the similar Certified Partner programs we offer for those products -- qualified companies can become certified to help you manage your account, should you require additional support for your business. Just like in these other programs, AdSense Certified Partners are carefully vetted by Google, and meet rigorous qualification standards. AdSense Certified Partners can assist with dedicated services ranging from setting up AdSense ad code on your pages to running ongoing optimization tests for you.

For service providers interested in this new program, we’ve put together comprehensive training and testing resources that cover all aspects of AdSense. Once a company has passed our qualification exam and met additional criteria to become a Certified Partner, they’ll be added to our official program website and receive a program logo for their own site. Certified Partners will also have access to marketing resources and tools to help them manage client accounts, and will join a group of accredited companies. We currently have 13 active Certified Partners, and will be adding more to the list throughout the year.

If you’re a prospective Certified Partner or a publisher interested in the services offered by these Certified Partners, you can visit our program website or Help Center for more information. We look forward to working with this group of partners and continuing to expand the range of options available to publishers in the AdSense program.

Posted by Catherine Downes - AdSense Certified Partner Team

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Get your multi device strategy off the ground

As tech-savvy consumers, we’ve all contributed to the growth in online traffic coming from mobile and tablet platforms, and as publishers you've likely heard the importance of adapting a multi-device approach to cater for this growing trend. But exactly how important is it? How do you develop a multi-device strategy? And how does all of this equate to increased revenues for you? 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll run a series of posts that aim to answer exactly that. We’ll explore building mobile solution options to suit you, and also explain how you can use AdSense to monetize your mobile sites or AdMob.

Where are your users coming from?
We're living in a multi-screen world where users expect to have access to information, people, and computing power from any screen. Here are just a few findings from a recent survey*:

• 81% of consumers use their smartphones while also watching TV
• 66% use their smartphone at the same time as their laptop
• 83% of mobile users said that they wouldn’t leave home without their smartphone
• 63% of users said that while they may not make their final purchase through a mobile, they would definitely use their phone to gather info and help them with their purchasing decision. 

To see how these shifts in consumer behavior are relevant to your site, check the Platforms report in your AdSense account. It’s a good idea to pull a comparison report and track the growth in your percentage of mobile and tablet users over the past quarter or year. Chances are, you’re going to see a shift away from desktop with more of your online content being reached via tablet and mobile. If your site isn’t designed to cater for this growing market then now is the time to start building your multi-device strategy. And we’re here to make you aware of some of the options open to you! Join us next week when we’ll be covering a range of mobile solutions to help you discover the right one for your business.

If you’d like to learn more about what we’ve discussed today, you can also check out a recording of our recent Hangout, “Mobile - The Time is Now”.

*Study completed by Google in collaboration with Sterling Brands and Ipsos, on a sample of 1,600 users, (2012).

Posted by Federico Gomez Kodela - Mobile Specialist
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Learn how to evaluate the user experience on your site

With only a few seconds to capture a user’s attention, we all know it’s important to have a great user experience on your site. One of our goals is to help you create a user experience that will keep users coming back to your site.

In the past, we shared our guiding principles for user experience and asked some of our most successful publishers to share their thoughts. However, many of you told us you’d like to see more examples of how to actually apply the principles to your site. We’ve heard your feedback and, on November 1st, we’ll show you how in a Learn with Google Hangout on Air that takes you behind the scenes of a user experience consultation.

During the Hangout on Air, we’ll evaluate a pre-selected AdSense publisher’s website and teach you how to take a step back, apply a critical eye, and evaluate whether or not the user experience on your own site complements your site goals. We’ll identify specific changes the publisher can make to improve the user experience, walk through our recommendations, and answer a few of your user experience questions, which you can submit when you RSVP to watch the live stream.

RSVP to let us know if you’ll be watching the Hangout on Air and we’ll see you on November 1st!

Click here to RSVP

Posted by Laurie Shiau - Inside AdSense Team 
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Share your feedback on AdSense and other Google publisher solutions

As the publisher landscape evolves, we’re constantly looking at how we can develop our products and solutions to help you grow your online business. Your feedback plays a key role in shaping our publisher offerings, and so we hope to hear from you in our upcoming semi-annual publisher survey.

Launching the week of October 15th, the goal of our survey is to collect as much of your feedback as possible. It covers a range of topics across all of our publisher products, ranging from new feature requests to help resources and much more. Since our last survey, we’ve addressed your feedback with new features like in-account policy notifications, responsive ad units, a mobile app for AdSense, and new functionality in the Publisher Toolbar.

We’ll be sending the survey out by email shortly to a sample of publishers. If you’d like to participate, there’s a couple of steps you should take as soon as possible:

• Ensure your contact information is up to date.
• Ensure your email preferences are updated so that you’re opted in to receiving ‘occasional survey’ messages.

Whether you’ve filled out every previous survey or you’re providing your feedback for the first time, we’re really grateful for you taking the time to tell us how we’re doing and look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas!

Posted by Sahar Golestani, on behalf of the AdSense Publisher Happiness Team
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Redesigned Text Ads on the Google Display Network

Web design is evolving at a rapid pace. With that in mind, today we’re beginning to give our text ads a modern look designed to enhance their performance and the overall user experience.

Our new design puts a strong emphasis on readability. We've introduced larger and clearer titles, more generous white space, and a flat circular button design, which complements the colors of other elements in the ad.

We’ve also updated how we show multiple ads within a single ad unit. Our design, illustrated below, only expands a full view of other ads when a user interacts with an ad unit either by a mouse hover or touch.

Keep an eye out for the redesign and don’t forget to try our recently launched new fonts. Let us know what you think of this new look over on our AdSense + page.

Posted by Adnan Virk - Ad Formats Designer
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Use AdSense on your HTTPS sites

Today, we're happy to announce that AdSense publishers can begin monetizing their HTTPS pages. Many websites, like e-commerce sites and social networking sites, use the HTTPS protocol to protect their users' sensitive data. If you have a HTTPS website you’ll be pleased with how easy it is to monetize using AdSense.

To use AdSense on your HTTPS-enabled sites, simply create an ad unit in AdSense and then paste the ad code into the HTML source code of your page where you'd like the ad to appear. The old version of the AdSense ad code will not work with your HTTPS-enabled sites but you can get and copy the ad code for an existing ad unit.

HTTPS-enabled sites require that all content on the page, including the ads, be SSL-compliant. As a result,  our systems will remove all non-SSL compliant ads from competing in the auction on these pages. This means that if you convert your HTTP site to HTTPS, ads on your HTTPS pages might earn less than those on your HTTP pages.

Please visit our Help Center for more details on this feature. If you have a HTTPS-enabled website we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Posted by Sandor Sas - AdSense Software Engineer
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Policy Refresher: content and copyright

For the next segment of our policy refresher series, we’re talking about a topic content creators really care about -- content and copyright.

A major benefit of the Internet is that it puts incredible information and entertainment at our fingertips. It’s important to remember, however, that if somebody else created it, you need their permission to show Google ads next to it. We’ve created a video to explore examples of content and copyright:

Still have questions? Submit your questions in this post via Google Moderator (please note: for privacy reasons, we won’t be able to respond to account-specific questions). We’ll be holding a Google Hangout on Air series covering this topic in more detail - check out the full schedule and don’t forget to register.

Posted by Pamela Malone - AdSense Policy Team
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Choose AdSense: Make Money from Your Content

Not using AdSense yet?

In the last ten years, AdSense has helped over 2 million partners grow their businesses. Be sure to tune in on Wednesday September 11, at 11:00AM, when we’ll be hosting a special 10th Anniversary Hangout on Air for prospective publishers. If you haven’t yet signed up for Google AdSense or would like to learn more, you should join us. We’ll demonstrate how AdSense helps you earn money from your website, allowing you focus on creating great content. Learn how AdSense:

• Earns you extra revenue 
• Shows your users relevant and useful ads
• Lets you control which ads show up on your site
• Helps you understand what’s working and what’s not with robust reporting tools

Several publishers will also be joining us to share their AdSense experiences. Hear why they chose AdSense and how it’s helped them grow.

Join this event page to live stream the Hangout on Air on September 11 from 11:00am - 12:00pm PDT.

Posted by Bola Akinsanya - AdSense Strategic Partnerships Team
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Join our policy refreshers

To help you better understand our program policies, we’re holding a number of policy refreshers online over the coming weeks. In these sessions, we’ll take a closer look at some of the policies we’re asked most about and share some tips on how to stay compliant.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll review how you can keep your content compliant with an emphasis on:

• User generated content
• Copyrighted content 

Check out our full listing of recently recorded sessions as well as the schedule for upcoming sessions - and don’t forget to register.

Posted by Pamela Malone - AdSense Policy Specialist
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Exciting new fonts in AdSense

An important element of a user’s experience on your site is how they rate its overall appearance. You’ve been asking for more customization options in our ad units so that they complement the design of your site. Today, we’re pleased to let you know that we’ve added five new font options for you to choose from when customizing your ad units.

We looked at a combination of your requests for specific fonts together with popularity and recent adoption levels on the web when deciding on which new fonts to add. Here’s the full list:

• Open Sans

• Open Sans Light

• Roboto Light

• Ubuntu Light

• Lora

You can customize your fonts directly in your account in a few quick steps. We hope you enjoy experimenting with them and would love to hear your feedback on which fonts work best on your site.

Posted by Alan Oursland - AdSense Software Engineer
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More control over advanced ad format features

We’re always looking for innovative ways to improve our ad formats, to help you earn more revenue from your content. We’ve been steadily rolling out new features to maximize the performance of your ad units, including a clickable arrow icon on our text ads, serving similar-sized display ads and most recently, the introduction of favicons to our text ads.

These enhancements are designed to improve the performance of your ads, but we know that sometimes you may prefer not to include them. Based on your requests for more control over the ways ads are served on your site, we’re happy to let you know that you can opt out of the following advanced ad format features:

• Similar-sized display ads: Showing smaller but higher performing display ads in larger ad units.
• Enhanced text ads: Displaying text ads with performance-enhancing features such as product images, favicons, or clickable arrow icons, etc. 
• Expandable ads: Displaying rich media ads that can expand beyond the original size of the ad unit, following a user-initiated action. 
• Enhanced display ads: Showing display ads with performance-enhancing features such as mouseover highlights, etc.
• Animated display ads: Showing non-static display (e.g., image) ads, such as ad creatives created using Adobe Flash or animated GIF formats.

Before opting out of any of these enhancements, remember that they have been created to improve the performance of your ad units and disabling them may have a negative impact on your revenue. It’s also important to note that all opt outs apply on an account level and not just on individual ad units.

You can opt out of any of these features in a few short steps. We hope that having more control over these features will be helpful when deciding on the look of your ads. Tell us what you think on our Google+ page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager

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Achievement Unlocked: monetizing online games with TrueView and AdSense

With every new plot planted and zombie zapped to bits, the online games industry is changing the way we interact with entertainment. Online games publishers work with us to grow their gaming empires across all screens, from distribution and downloads through to in-game advertising. We’ve also recognized a growing advertiser demand to reach highly engaged games audiences. So we were especially excited to announce at Europe’s Game Developer Conference: we’re launching the TrueView video ad format across our games monetization platforms.

TrueView creates a better ad experience for gamers, and higher monetization for publishers

We all know how important it is to create a gamer-friendly ad experience, which is why we’re bringing one of our most successful ad formats to games: the skippable video ad. TrueView Instream skippable video ads drive a lot of advertiser demand on YouTube, the Ad Exchange, and AdSense for video. Following on Susan Wojcicki’s beta announcement earlier this year, we’re now making TrueView video ads available to all games publishers on AdX, AdSense for games, and select mobile publishers on AdMob. During the beta, we found that in general TrueView video ads contributed to lower abandonment rates and greater monetization compared to normal instream video ads.

The rise of gamer-friendly ad formats like TrueView can drive even better monetization for games - which is great news for game publishers, but perhaps not for the zombies.

Posted by Rebecca Illowsky and Allen Huang - Product Managers, Games Monetization
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Watch the final two weeks of the AdSense 10 Challenge live

Back in June, we kicked off the AdSense 10 Challenge as a way to help publishers like you become AdSense experts and meet members of the AdSense community online.

Over the last eight weeks, we’ve covered topics ranging from optimization opportunities and Google Analytics to user experience and A/B testing. We’ve also discussed strategies and best practices with product managers, optimization specialists, and some of our most successful publishers each week.

As we wrap up the final two weeks of the Challenge, we’ll talk about mobile strategy and how to use Google+ to grow your site and engage your users. Be sure to tune in by watching the final two weeks of the AdSense 10 Challenge live from the Google+ event pages listed below:

Week	Event
Week 9 - Mobile: The Time Is Now	Topic of the Week presentation Join this page at 11:00am PDT on August 20th to live stream the broadcast Meet the AdSense Community Join this page at 11:00am PDT on August 21st to live stream the broadcast
Week 10 - Grow and Engage with Google+	Topic of the Week presentation Join this page at 11:00am PDT on August 27th to live stream the broadcast Meet the AdSense Community Join this page at 11:00am PDT on August 28th to live stream the broadcast

If you can’t watch the broadcasts live, not to worry. Recordings of each broadcast will be available in our Help Center shortly after each live event.

See you at the end of the Challenge!

Posted by Laurie Shiau - Inside AdSense team
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Stay on top of AdSense program policies with new notifications in your account

Our AdSense program policies are defined to ensure we all preserve a healthy ecosystem for users, advertisers and other publishers, and compliance with these policies is an absolute must for every publisher. We’ve heard your requests for more accessible information on policy issues and we’re happy to tell you that we are launching an additional policy notifications feature directly in your AdSense account. This will help you to quickly understand and address any potential policy issues.

Going forward, if our system detects a policy violation, you’ll receive both an email and an account notification with a link to view more details. Under the Policy violations section on the home tab, you can quickly access important information including details on each violation, the issue ID and an example of the violation on your site. The page will also include details on the action you need to take to resolve the violation.

We’ll be gradually rolling out this new feature over the coming weeks to all publisher accounts.  We hope that it helps you quickly identify and resolve any potential issues so you can focus on growing your business with AdSense. Please remember that as before, you'll need to ensure all of your sites comply with our policies. In addition to checking your account for any notifications, be sure to regularly review your sites for compliance with our policies.

Thanks for your continued feedback and suggestions on how we can continue improving AdSense for you. Please continue to share them on our AdSense +page and if you’d like more details on this new feature, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager
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The Mobile Buyer and Seller Relationship

The mobile advertising industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace - as new technologies have created new ways for publishers to grow and engage with their audience, new ways for advertisers to reach their customers have also emerged. With new opportunities aplenty for both buyers and sellers, how have they engaged with each other to shape the mobile ads ecosystem?

Based on aggregate data from across our network, we took a look at the economics behind the mobile ads ecosystem in a study: The Mobile Buyer & Seller Relationship. The study looks at mobile advertising from both a buyer and seller perspective, focusing on the types of content that are driving the most mobile web and app traffic, where advertisers are focusing their budgets, and the intersection of the two.

Here are a few highlights from the research:

• Mobile application inventory is highly concentrated: On mobile applications, ad impressions and spend are highly concentrated around games, which account for 46% of total ad spend.
• Advertisers are embracing mobile applications: We're seeing all types of advertisers embrace advertising on mobile applications, with Media & Entertainment and Technology advertisers leading the way. These types of advertisers account for nearly half of all impressions and spend on mobile applications.
• Advertiser spending on mobile web is closely tied to relevant content: Unlike mobile applications, on mobile web, advertisers are predominantly focusing their spend on ad inventory that closely relates to their products or services.
• Spending on mobile web is evenly distributed amongst advertisers: The top five spending advertiser categories on mobile web accounted for 12-16% of total web impressions each.

Check out all of the findings by downloading the full report here.

Posted by Stephen Kliff - Product Marketing Manager
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The responsive web + AdSense

We know one of the biggest challenges publishers currently face is designing websites that adapt to different screen sizes, resolutions and user experiences. You’ve been asking for responsive ad units to help you deliver the best possible user experience on your pages, and we’ve listened to your feedback. Today, we’re happy to share that responsive ad units are now available as a beta feature alongside our recently released asynchronous tag.

The new responsive ad units allow you to support a wide range of devices by working with your responsive design web pages.  You can now dynamically specify the size of the ad that will be served, adapting it to fit the way your site renders a page on a particular device.

As this is still a beta feature, here are a few pointers to keep in mind:

• Be sure to specify fixed pixel values when setting the width and height of the ad to be served.
• Make sure that the specified width and height match one of our supported ad sizes. Please note that link unit sizes aren’t supported at the moment.
• The new ad code is responsive on initial page load only. Subsequent changes to the ad size, such as a screen orientation change, will not cause a new ad to be displayed. We know that this is an important feature for many of you and we’re currently working to address this. 
• Always set a default ad size in case some media queries aren’t supported.

Step 1 - create a responsive ad unit

Step 2 - modify the sample CSS media queries in the new ad code

More detailed examples and steps to get started can be found in our Help Center. If you’d like to know more about responsive design, have a look at our Google Developers resource.

Thanks for all of your feedback on responsive web design to date. Please do continue to share your suggestions so we can keep improving AdSense for you. Watch this space for more news and updates in the near future!

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager
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Get the most up-to-date data on your account with local time zone reporting

We know that access to the most up-to-date data on your account is important in understanding how it’s performing on a daily basis. Up to now, we’ve reported your daily earnings based on Pacific Standard Time (PST). Over the next couple of weeks however, you’ll be able to view your daily earnings based on your local time zone, giving you the latest information.

You can set up your time zone reporting preferences from your account in a few quick steps. From the Account information section on your Account settings page, a field now exists for time zone information where you can select your preferred local time setting. When you update your time zone preferences, you can expect to see some anomalies in your local earnings data for that day. Depending on your local time zone, you’ll either see a reduction or a spike based on whether the change means you are gaining or losing hours - keep an eye out for a notification in your account on this. It’s important to note that this does not affect your payments data which will always remain in PST.

When you update your time zone preferences, your existing saved and scheduled reports will be migrated to your preferred time zone automatically while future reports will also be based on your indicated preference. Updating your time zone preference will only affect your earnings data going forward and does not apply retrospectively.

Learn more about time zone reporting in our Help Center and make sure you’re getting the most up-to-date earnings data on your account.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager
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Boost your website performance using tips from our experts

Google Analytics can be an incredibly valuable source of information for AdSense publishers,  and today we’re announcing a new way for you to use those insights to improve your site’s performance. Google Analytics has created a data sharing setting to give you the option to let our optimization specialists proactively analyze your Analytics account data to find new ways for you to grow your business online. We’ll help you understand how people find your site, how they navigate through it, and how they become loyal users - and we’ll help you take advantage of Analytics features like Content Experiments to help you determine the most optimal layout for your site.

If you’ve linked your AdSense account with Analytics, opt in to the Account specialists data sharing setting under the Account Settings tab. Then we’ll be able to build targeted recommendations to help you improve the user experience on your site and monetize with AdSense more effectively.

Additionally, if you want to help make our other products work better for content publishers like yourself, you can opt in to the existing With other Google products setting under the same Account Settings tab. Sharing your Analytics data with other Google products can help us create new publisher solutions to achieve your website goals. For example, AdWords could recommend more effective keywords based on an understanding of how users behave on your site or AdSense could suggest more effective ad placements.

You can find full instructions for updating your Analytics settings in the Analytics Help Center.

Update your Analytics settings

Your website data will not be used for any purposes other than those that you specify in your settings, which you may change at any time. If you haven’t linked your AdSense account with Analytics, you can learn more about using Analytics with AdSense in our Help Center.

Finally, to receive more targeted optimization tips, make sure you’re opted into Performance Suggestions in your AdSense email preferences. We look forward to helping you grow your site!

Posted by Anitra Appa - AdSense Optimization Specialist
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Introducing favicons to our text ads

We’re constantly thinking about how we can make our ad formats better for you, your users and the advertisers appearing on your pages. Today we’re happy to share the introduction of favicons to our text ads. A favicon is a small graphic that an advertiser can use to brand their website, such as their company logo.

We regularly experiment with small changes to the look of our text ads, measuring the potential impact on user experience and publisher earnings. Our experiments show that adding these favicons to the ads makes advertisers more recognizable to your users, which benefits both you and the advertisers whose ads appear on your sites.

We’d love to hear your thoughts -- feel free to share your feedback about this new look for text ads on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Mohamad Ayyash - AdSense Software Engineer
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Google+ helps over 1.6 million Guardian followers read (and share and debate and post) all about it

While the Guardian started back in 1821 as a black-and-white-and-read-all-about-it newspaper, today it’s evolved into a global entity that’s pioneering a multi-platform, digital-first approach. In this context, the Guardian champions a unique, open model of journalism, built upon the notion that the open exchange of information, ideas and opinion can bring about change.

Given this philosophy, it comes as no surprise that social media plays a central and growing role in the brand’s work. Google+ offered the opportunity for the Guardian to reach and connect with both users of Guardian.co.uk and new potential readers. Now with over 1.6 million followers, the Guardian’s Google+ page is aimed at creating a conversation around the Guardian’s content, reaching new audiences, and finding out more about readers and their interests.

The team posts different types of content (video, photos, text, front pages) and items from different sections as a way of seeing what their Google+ audience responds to. Science and technology stories are particularly popular among their readers, as well as world news topics and hot political stories. According to the Guardian, the Google+ feature Ripples has proved extremely useful in tracking the life cycle of posts and helping to identify key influencers.

In addition, the Hangouts functionality in Google+ has emerged as a key benefit. In making use of this high quality multi-user video chat feature, the digital engagement team has run several Hangouts on a mixture of topics, from fracking to the future of the open internet. “For us one of the most interesting aspects of Hangouts is the ability to connect people from across the world in a live chat,” says the Guardian’s Laura Oliver. “We're also exploring them as a way to allow our readers to pose questions and get even closer to the subjects of a story or discussion.”

As for the future, Laura is exploring how to use Hangouts in the most inclusive way possible so that debates can encompass questions from all across its audience.  To learn more about the Guardian’s success with Google+, read the full case study.

For more publisher success stories and tips on making the most of Google+ pages for your business, check out our Social Fridays blog series.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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Faster, more robust web with AdSense

In a perfect world, putting ads on a web page wouldn’t slow that page down at all.  We’re striving to get to that point, constantly looking at ways to improve the latency of web pages containing ads, and today we’re happy to share a new beta version of our ad code. This new code (known as an asynchronous tag) enhances user experience on your sites by ensuring site content loads for your users, even if they’re having trouble loading the ad. This is particularly good news for mobile users.

Our new asynchronous ad code is still a beta feature, and so changing over to the new version is optional. In your account, you’ll notice that you’re now able to choose between the new and current versions of the code. To try the new ad code, follow the steps to create an ad unit, then, in the Ad code box, select 'Asynchronous (BETA)' from the Code type drop-down menu. As before, copy and paste the ad code into the HTML source code of your pages.

If you choose to switch to the new code, we recommend switching all of the ad units on your pages in order to give users the best experience. If you’d like to read more on the technical aspects of this tag, take a look at our post on the Google Developers Blog. Let us know if you’re planning to try it out and share your feedback on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Johan Land - AdSense Product Manager
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Changes in rankings of smartphone results

As the number of smartphone users continues to surge globally, many of you are responding quickly with mobile-friendly sites. Regardless of the device a user views your site on, their experience should be rich and consistent. With this in mind, the Google Webmaster Team is making some changes to the way they rank search results on smartphones. In particular, these changes will address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users. Read the original post and learn more about common configuration mistakes as well as recommendations from the Webmaster Team on building your mobile-optimized website.

Posted by Suzanne Headon - Inside AdSense team
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Make faster and better decisions with new Ad Review Center features

We know that having fast access to the right information is important for decision-making. In particular, having quick visibility over similar ads and a broader range of insights is important when deciding whether to allow or block ads on your site. As we continue to celebrate 10 years of AdSense, we’re excited to announce some new changes in the Ad Review Center this week.

Find and take action on related ads

Our new ‘Related Ads’ feature in the Ad Review Center gives you a quicker and more efficient means of identifying similar ads that you would like to allow or block. Related ads are those that have a similar destination page, and you can directly view, allow, or block these ads in the Ad Review Center.

Derive new insights with additional metrics

To help you make informed decisions around whether to allow or block particular ads, we’re giving you better insights with the following new signals:

• Impression score indicates whether an ad has a high, medium or low number of impressions per day compared to the other ads on your site. As always, we recommend that you consider the potential impact on your revenue before choosing to block ads with high or medium impression scores.
• Serving status identifies whether an ad is active or not. An active ad is defined as one that has recently received impressions. If an ad is active, it’s more likely to still appear in the next few days. If an ad is inactive, it could still show again, but the longer it remains inactive, the less likely this will occur.
• Historical trend shows whether the number of impressions per day for an ad has recently increased, decreased or remained stable, according to our historic data. This trend is not a projection of any future performance of an ad, but provides you with additional context while reviewing ads.

Finally, to improve your experience in the Ad Review Center, we’ve made some enhancements to the interface. We’ve now redesigned the Ad Review Center tiles to make the controls more clear and intuitive. In addition, we’ve incorporated new widget styles and an improved layout. Learn more about the Ad Review Center in our Help Center and share your feedback on these new features on our AdSense+ page.

Posted by Fiona Herring - AdSense Product Manager
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