All posts by John A.Smith

Case studies, mobile

Responsive web design gives FamousBirthdays.com a mobile advantage

Wondering which web design approach is best for mobile? Evan Britton of FamousBirthdays.com had the same question back in 2012. He looked to Google to help develop a mobile strategy for his website, deciding on responsive web design (RWD) as the best solution for his needs.

Evan chose RWD for a host of reasons, especially as it meant the site would adjust to fit various screen sizes, giving users a positive experience regardless of what device they visited from. Additionally, he liked that RWD is low maintenance once implemented, allowing him and his team to focus on growing the site.

Before implementing RWD, FamousBirthdays.com received around 100,000 mobile visits a month. After implementing a mobile-optimized site, this number grew to over 2 million. Evan believes that “the potential in the mobile space to grow ad revenue is huge”, and attributes this twenty-fold mobile growth to better user experience after implementing RWD. Today, the site employs a team of twelve to manage their fast growth. Evan claims, “without RWD, we would not have been able to grow as quickly.”


Read the full story, and hear from other publishers who have successfully adopted a multi-screen strategy, over in our Help Center.

Elise Thygesen, AdSense Multi-screen Specialist
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Referensi: Inside AdSense - Responsive web design gives FamousBirthdays.com a mobile advantage.

Other Google products

Get twice the insights with new Google Analytics integration in the Google Publisher Toolbar


If you’re seeking rich insights and key information on your site’s performance or user behavior, it’s likely you’re already using the Google Publisher Toolbar or Google Analytics. Starting today, access more insights directly from your site pages in just one click, with the integration of Google Analytics in the Google Publisher Toolbar.


In addition to giving you blocking controls and up-to-date information on how your site is performing, the Google Publisher Toolbar now offers more insights on user behavior powered by Google Analytics. Understand your users and shape your audience development strategy with more insights into user demographics and traffic sources. Also, find out which sections of your pages are most popular with your users through In-Page Analytics. As with current information from the Google Publisher Toolbar, you can access this new data directly from your pages when viewing them on Chrome.

Google Analytics is now integrated by default in the Google Publisher Toolbar. More information can be found in our Help Center.

If you’re not yet using the Google Publisher Toolbar, download it today from the Chrome Web Store. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on this new release. Tell us what you think in the comment section below this post.

Posted by: Araceli Checa, Software Engineer
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Referensi: Inside AdSense - Get twice the insights with new Google Analytics integration in the Google Publisher Toolbar.

Other, Tips

Tips to make your content more accessible to users

A combination of offering users the best experience and efficiently monetizing your content is important for the long-term success of your website. With that in mind, here’s some tips to help you to achieve both of these goals:

Content: Is your site content relevant to your users? Ask yourself if the content on your site is well-researched and well-structured. Will it capture and engage your users' attention?

Ad types: When choosing an ad type for your site, consider if it improves the user experience on your site. It's important to be mindful of designs that are prohibited by our AdSense program policies, such as pop-ups and pop-unders, floating or static ads, or any other type of ad that could make it difficult for users to access your content. Where possible, test potential designs with focus groups or an AdSense experiment.

Ad placement: Advertising on your site should provide additional value to your users. Ads should be visible without limiting your site audience's ability to interact with the rest of your content. For instance, if ads are visible above the fold on your site, make sure they're not making it difficult for users to view your content. We may be less likely to display pages with obstructive above the fold advertising in our search results.

Multi-screen: Don't forget to think about the impact of your design and ad placement on the accessibility of content across platforms. Our research indicates that users are increasingly relying on multiple digital touch-points throughout the day.

In addition to the four tips above, check out the Webmaster Quality Help Center for website quality guidelines that have been created specifically for AdSense publishers. You’ll also find insights and tools to help you understand and improve your site on the Google Webmasters website.

Posted by: 
Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality, Outreach Specialist
Alexey Petrov, AdSense Product Specialist
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Referensi: Inside AdSense - Tips to make your content more accessible to users.

Other

Introducing a new multi-screen resource in the AdSense Help Center

Did you know that sites optimized for multiple screen sizes can have an average 15% higher RPM and twice the traffic growth rate of sites that aren’t?*

If you think about how quickly you’ll leave a site where you have to pinch and zoom to find something, it’s not surprising that multi-screen optimized sites are performing better. That same behavior will most often apply to your own users too, so having a multi-screen plan is important to keeping them engaged for longer.

There’s a lot to think about when deciding on your multi-screen strategy. To help you in your decision-making, we’ve created new multi-screen guidelines. They can be found in the AdSense Help Center and cover the following topics:

Multi-Screen Starter Guide

  • Why go multi-screen?
  • Multi-screen success stories
  • What are the common approaches? 
  • How to build a multi-screen site
  • Getting technical support from a multi-screen vendor




Multi-Screen Implementation Guide

  • Monetization tips
  • Mobile user experience tips
  • Mobile search engine optimization tips





We hope you find these resources useful. Start optimizing your site today to retain and grow user loyalty. We’ll be sharing more resources and success stories in the near future - check back here soon for the latest updates from our Multi-Screen Specialist Team.

* Source:  Google internal data

Posted by Hye In Kim,  Multi-Screen Specialist
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Referensi: Inside AdSense - Introducing a new multi-screen resource in the AdSense Help Center.

Other

Find out what the world wants to know during the World Cup with Google Trends

As the World Cup launches, content consumption will increase for many websites especially those focused on news and sports. As can be seen from the statistics below, soccer fever is about to take hold:
  • The World Cup is the largest, most connected global sporting event. Worldwide, it has more interest on Google Search than the Super Bowl, the Olympics, and the Tour de France combined.*
  • In 2010, about 18% of searches for games, players and teams during the World Cup final were made on a mobile device. Compare that with 2014, when 63% of similar searches during a popular UEFA Champions League match were made on mobile. We’re likely to see this trend continue during this year’s World Cup.**
  • Looking at a 30-day period this year, more hours of soccer content have been watched on YouTube than were broadcast during the entire 2010 World Cup—over 900 times the amount.***
  • In that time, 64.7 million hours of soccer video were watched on YouTube globally.***
  • 1.6 billion views of soccer content on YouTube globally.***
Views of Sports Videos on YouTube, April 13–May 13 ***
Source: 
* - Source: Google Data, January 1, 2010–May 14, 2014, Indexed Search Query Volume, Worldwide
** -Source:  https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/2014-world-cup.html 
*** - Source: Google Data, April 13–May 13, 2014, Indexed Video Views, Worldwide
Connect with your users as they enjoy the games, and potentially drive more traffic to your site. With google.com/worldcup, tailor your site’s content with the latest insights and most popular trends as they emerge during the tournament. Here’s some examples of the types of insights you can expect from Google Trends over the coming weeks: 
  • Sentiment: Explore how an entire country is feeling, whether optimistic or anxious. Sentiment will be captured across search trends and public Google+ conversations.
  • World focus: For every match, discover which team is capturing the world's attention in Search. 
  • Top questions: Do your users want to know more about a penalty kick? They’re probably not the only ones. Check out trending questions from every competing country before and after kickoff.
  • Rising players: Find out the players to watch and how they rank in search compared with their teammates.
Check out google.com/worldcup now and make sure you’ve got the latest information when creating your content. Whether it’s insight on how a country is feeling ahead of a big match, or where fans stand on a referee’s decision. 

Tailor your content to what’s capturing your users interests right now with the latest insights from google.com/worldcup.

Viva La World Cup!

Posted by Chris Jones - Audience Development Specialist
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This blog post was adapted from content originally posted on the Inside Search blog.


Referensi: Inside AdSense - Find out what the world wants to know during the World Cup with Google Trends.

Payments

Wire transfer payments now available in more countries

We're excited to announce that wire transfer is now available as a new payment method in a number of countries. The full list of countries is available in our Help Center.  With wire transfer, your earnings are deposited directly into your bank account, offering you a fast, secure, and convenient way to receive AdSense payments. If you’re not already using our new payments system, then wire transfer will become available when your account is transitioned to the new system.

We recommend checking with your bank to learn more about receiving an international wire transfer payment. Ask them what information they need to make sure you’re set up right for wire transfer payments. You can then sign in to your AdSense account and enter the details provided by your bank. Google doesn’t charge a fee to send wire transfer payments, but you should ask your bank about any fees or commissions they may charge for wire transfers.

Payments will be made in your payment currency, which could be USD or EUR, depending on your country. If your bank account is in another currency, your payment will be converted to the currency of your bank account.

If you're ready to start receiving your AdSense payments by wire transfer, please review the details in our Help Center.

Posted by Miki Noda- AdSense Payments Specialist
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Referensi: Inside AdSense - Wire transfer payments now available in more countries.

AdSense features, AdSense Interface

Creating new ad units just got easier

Creating new ad units for your site can take time, especially when deciding on their look and style. Save time on this process with the new, simplified My ads tab in your AdSense account. From today, it’s quicker and easier to create new ad units, giving you more time to concentrate on optimizing your ad space.
In addition to simplifying the ad unit creation process, we’ve also refreshed the user interface for this page, making it more intuitive and easier to navigate. When choosing from the various options for your new ad units, we’ll help you in your final decision by highlighting the potential impact of your choices. Once you’ve decided on the best ad style, you can quickly implement this across your entire site rather than having to apply changes on an ad unit level.

Finally, to help enhance the look of ads on your site, we’ve made some changes to the default color palette for our text ads. The URL link will now display in a light gray replacing the green color previously associated with it.

It's important to note that these new features will not cause any changes to the way your existing ads appear on your site. For more information on the ad unit creation process, visit our Help Center. We hope the new My ads page will help make the ad unit creation process a quicker and more impactful experience for you. Share your feedback and suggestions over on our Google+ page.




Referensi: Inside AdSense - Creating new ad units just got easier.

AdSense features, Optimization

New ad sizes for Google AdSense

We've heard from both publishers and advertisers that new, larger ad formats provide a great canvas for rich creatives and perform well on many sites. Today, we’re pleased to share two new ad sizes - 970 x 250 Billboard and the 300 x 1050 Portrait - that will help you reach more advertisers while also enhancing user experience and engagement on your site.

300x1050_256.png

As with most of our ad sizes, both of these ad units can accommodate standard text ads in addition to image ads. Additionally, they can show similar-sized image ads when doing so will maximize the performance of your ad unit. In this case, a 300 x 250 ad would serve in the 970 x 250 ad unit and a 160 x 600 would serve in the 300 x 1050 ad unit.

As both of these new sizes are large ad units, you can place a maximum of one per page. As always, remember to keep a balance between your content and ads and ensure your ad placements comply with our AdSense program policies.

We’re always looking for your feedback and suggestions to help us provide you with the ad sizes you need to stay flexible to your advertiser and user needs. Stay tuned for more updates coming soon and share your feedback in the comment section below.

Posted by Alexey Petrov, AdSense Product Specialist
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Referensi: Inside AdSense - New ad sizes for Google AdSense.

Optimization, Other, Tips

Score goals with AdSense during the World Cup (part 5 of 5)

Welcome to the final part of our World Cup series. Today we’ll share some AdSense-specific tips and tricks to help grow your revenue potential. We'll cover some old but steadfast recommendations plus more advanced seasonal optimisation tips to help ensure you’re well prepared for the World Cup.

1. Increase ad coverage: Place up to three ad units, plus three link units per page. This can help increase the click rates and views on your site, and potentially boost your earnings. It’s important to remember that a good balance between content and ads is essential. Placing too many ads on a page may cause a high bounce rate and loss in revenue.

2. Use the best performing ad formats: Wider ad formats usually perform better compared to others. Some ad formats also have more advertiser demand. Typically ad formats like the 728x90 Leaderboard, the 336x280 Large rectangle, the 300x250 Medium Rectangle, and the 300x600 Large Skyscraper are the most popular formats among the advertisers and more effective in terms of potentially increasing revenue. During big sporting events, advertisers are often focusing on viral engagement. Enabling expandable ads will help you capture this opportunity.

3. Be careful with blocking controls: Review which ad categories you’re currently blocking and why you’re blocking them. Overblocking can lead to a decline in your earnings potential, especially in times of increased traffic to your site and bigger advertiser spend on categories such as CPG, Auto, Entertainment Food and Beverage and Travel.  

4. Ensure optimal ad position: Choosing the best locations to insert the ads can be challenging.  Use Google Analytics to get a heatmap on where your users are clicking. You’ll also find more new resources on the AdSense Help Center regarding the best performing ad placements for each website category. Recently we have new articles about ad placement specific to sports and travel.

That wraps up our World Cup blog series. We hope you’ve gained some new insights, inspiration and ideas on getting your site ready for the World Cup. Check back here in a two weeks when we’ll be sharing news of a fantastic Google initiative around World Cup insights.

Posted by Marta Lysiak - Inside AdSense Team
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Referensi: Inside AdSense - Score goals with AdSense during the World Cup (part 5 of 5).

Other

Score goals with Google during the World Cup (part 4 of 5)

Welcome to the fourth part of our World Cup blog series. Today, we’ll take a closer look at reaching your audience across devices. 

Is your website optimized for your mobile users? Throughout the World Cup, fans will be looking for great content, regardless of whether they’re viewing it from a desktop, tablet or mobile device. “In 2013, internet traffic from mobile devices surpassed traffic from desktop, and that figure is continuing to grow”*.

Today, approximately 60%** of online users are now multi screen users. In many instances, this means they’re online on social networks, news sites or mobile messaging apps while also watching TV. During live sporting events, this number grows further. Euro 2012 and the 2012 Olympics were good examples of this trend as illustrated below.
“Source: Smartadserver Blog - London Olympics 2012: The impressive Mobile Infographic” 
With this in mind, think about whether you should be preparing additional mobile-optimized content to share with your users during events like the World Cup, especially during the opening ceremony, key matches and the finals. Looking at how your users digest your content is important. If they receive a link on their smartphone but are unable to view the content because it’s not mobile-optimized, they’ll feel frustrated at the poor experience. On the other hand, If the user is delighted with the content and their first visit to your site is a positive experience, they’ll likely come back again and again. We recently shared some best practices on driving user engagement and loyalty through smart mobile site design - take a look and see if there’s any practices you can apply to your own site. If you haven’t created a mobile-friendly site yet and would like to outsource this, take a look at Google’s recommended vendors.

If you already have a mobile optimized site, don’t forget that you can grow your earnings potential by understanding which mobile ad sizes are most effective for you. Moreover, if you’ve created an app, use Google AdMob to monetise it and grow your earnings.

Check back tomorrow for the final post in our World Cup series, when we’ll be talking about growing your site with Google AdSense.

*Source: Morgan Stanley Research
** Source: GfK, March 2014, US and UK

Posted by Barbara Sarti - Adsense Specialist
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Referensi: Inside AdSense - Score goals with Google during the World Cup (part 4 of 5).