In the last chapter, we talked about content. Google won't let you ask visitors to click on your ads, or use other deceptive ways to make them click. But good content is an endorsement in itself. Some of its charm rubs off on the ads, making the ads more believable and interesting! If you have a website with impartial product reviews, for instance, visitors are more likely to click the ads to learn more about a product, check out the latest prices or order online. It’s crucial to create content that’s genuinely interesting. But your work doesn’t stop there. After setting up your AdSense Account, the first thing you want to do is play with your ad formats and placement to make the ads blend in. That's where the bulk of the "easymoney" is hiding.
But once you've got that right, what next?
You start tweaking the text and making all sorts of other changes to improve your CTR. But every time you make any sort of change to your ads, you must track the results. Consider this example:
Joe Drinker has a great website about "How to make Beer at Home". It's doing well on AdSense, but not well enough. His week’s stats look something like this:
Joe is pretty happy with his CTR but wonders if he can raise his CPM and in the process, lift his earnings. So he looks up highpriced keywords related to his subject, and works the term "beer cans" into his content. A few days later he logs into the stats on his AdSense account and finds that that change has actually HURT his income:
Joe has not only disappointed a lot of collectors who come looking for beer cans his site contains lots of keywords but little in the way of good content he has also discouraged visits from people who want to make beer at home. His search ranking has gone down, making his website harder for people to 108 find him and lowering his impressions. It's also hurt his earnings per click as the people who visit the site leave faster. What's worse is that he's also risked his AdSense standing! Now, does that make it a bad idea to optimize your website for AdSense? Not at all. It is actually a good idea, if you do it right. And by that I mean… No Shortcuts! There is a simple, stepbystep process to optimize your website for high paying search terms. And this method is almost foolproof! So why isn't everybody doing this? Simply because very few web publishers know how to use Tracking to their advantage. Tracking will not only help you minimize your mistakes, it will also reveal hidden pockets of money that you would have never found otherwise. Read on to find out how YOU can use Tracking to skyrocket your CTRs and increase revenues perclick. TIP: Click here to learn about FREE tools to optimize your website for highpaying search terms.
12.1 How To Track With Channels
Google has its own FREE tracking feature called "Channels". Channels remind me of spy movies, where a smart chip is planted in the arm of a super sleuth, making it easier to track his activities or whereabouts. AdSense now hands you 200 such chips. Use them to track ads on specific domain names or to group ads according to specific ad formats, keywords, their location on the page etc. You can use any other factor that might impact their effectiveness, based on the type of website you have. Channel those clicks! Google tells you many things about each Channel, such as the ad impressions, clickthroughs and earnings data. You can use the channel reports to find out which channels are making you the most money and how to increase your earnings for other channels.
12.2 How To Create A URL Channel
Google lets you create two kind of channels: URL channels and custom channels. With URL channels you can track clicks across your site’s pages. You can do this by entering four different kinds of URL in the “create new channel” box. Each type of channel gives you information of different accuracy: example.com tracks all the pages in your site and gives a general picture of what your site is doing; subdomain.example.com tracks all the pages in one particular subdomain; subdomain.example.com/widgets tracks all the pages in a specific directory; and subdomain.example.com/page.html tracks the clicks on one specific page. That’s a huge range of choices, from an overview of a site that might have hundreds of pages through groups of pages that concern particular subjects to the clicks you’re getting on just one page. So if you had three sites, one about custom cars, one about custom bikes and one about speedboats, the first thing you’d do is create a general channel for each site. You should always create a channel for each one of your sites.
That will let you see not just how much money you’re making overall, but how much money each site is making. You’re not going to get too far without that sort of information! Now, let’s say that the custom car site had tabs for American cars, European cars, Japanese cars and classic cars. Each tab is a subdomain and you could create a channel for each subdomain too. Now you could see which topic is making the most money. And if you discussed one car on each page, you could also create channels for the individual pages and see which cars are the most popular and deliver the highest earning clicks. Sounds good, right?
And it’s now very easy to do. Back in the bad old days, Google required you to manually change AdSense tags for each ad block you wanted to track. Many AdSense partners complained about these pesky old channels until Google launched the URL Channels to make life easier. Now all you have to do is sign in and click the tab marked “AdSense Setup” followed by the “Channels” link.
Fig. 12.1 Spot the Channels
And the next step is to use the link marked “URL Channels” and enter the URLs you want to track. That’s it! You don’t have to do anything else. Google will start tracking the URLs you’ve added automatically. So apart from creating URL Channels for each of your sites, which of the other URL Channels should you create? As far as I’m concerned, you can’t have too much information. Major areas should certainly be covered and if you can go as far as tracking each page without going over the 200 channel limit, so much the better. It’s certainly worth tracking a few individual pages to make sure that the revenues are spread out across different parts of the site. If you find that one page is making lots of money and another is making none, you’ll want to know the reason why.
12.3 How To Create A Custom Channel
The URL Channels are especially useful if you have several websites, and have a general idea of the formats, colors, alignment etc. that works best for you. Remember though, you still need the original, Custom Channels if you want to track ads across different domain names, based on ad sizes, formats, colors etc. For instance, if I want to track leftaligned ads across all my websites (sites with different domain names), I need to group them together into a single channel and manually change the channel code for each page. First, I name the new channel:
Fig. 12.2 Here comes a new channel...
Then I choose the Ad Type, Layout and Color of the ads I want to track: Finally, it’s simply a matter of allocating an alternate URL if I don’t want public service ads, selecting the channel and copying and pasting the code onto each of the pages that contain these kinds of ad.
Fig. 12.3 Defining the ads to track in my new channel.
Of course, I would then have to repeat the process if I wanted to track ads of a particular color or size. That’s very different to the process you use to create a URL Channel. URL Channels are tracked automatically without the need for you to paste code. With Custom Channels, you’re going to have to go back to your own site, add the code in the appropriate pages and upload the changes to your server. While that’s a bit of a headache, it’s a headache worth having.
Custom channels provide such a broad range of information from how different locations are doing to how particular types of ad units affect your revenues that without them, you’re working in the dark.
12.4 What Custom Channels Should You Create?
With the range of Custom Channels limited only by your imagination, it’s not always easy to figure out which channels you need to create. I’d recommend that you build channels based on the following: Location Do ads do better at the top of your blog pages or on the side? Do you get more clicks from ads that you’ve slipped into the article or from the ads at the bottom of the page. Try creating different channels for each sort of location so that you can track how different locations are doing.
Ad Unit Different ad units can deliver different results. You might be using four or five different types of ad units across your sites. Make a channel for each type of unit so that you can get an idea about which units are the most attractive. Of course, location and ad unit are related but you won’t be untangle the data unless you have it! Color I keep saying that the color of your ads should match the color of your site. But not all your sites are the same color! You might well find that some color schemes win you more clicks than others a fact which could influence your overall site design. Create different Custom Channels for different colors and you’ll have a better idea of how your designs affect your income. Link Units It’s certainly worth creating a channel to track the performance of your link units. These are special in their own right and you should know how they perform in comparison to your other ad units. While Google can now track ad performance for your specified domain name, please don't expect URL or Custom Channels to give you data about your visitors, such as who referred them to your website or which web browser they use. These are details only your server logs can tell you.
12.5 Creating Multiple Channels
In the past, one of the biggest challenges for publishers was to decide which characteristic they should track on each of their ad units. Should they follow an ad unit’s color? Its position? Its size? Now those decisions are much easier. It’s possible to paste up to five Channel codes into one ad unit, allowing publishers to collect different information about the same ad. When you check your Channels, you’ll be able to how all your leaderboards or doing, as well as all your ads related by topic or color. That’s a huge help when it comes to understanding what your site is doing.
12.6 Your Channel Names
How To Keep Your Channels Secret And Win Channel Targeted Ads Channels are extremely useful tools. You won’t be able to make the most of your site unless you’re using Channels to track the performance of your ad units and acting on what you find. But there is one small problem with using Channels: the Channel name appears in your source code. That’s unlikely to cause you any serious problems but it is something you need to know. There are two reasons for that. First, you always want to maintain your privacy and create a professional impression. If you’re making your site available to the public which is the only way it’s going to make money you don’t want anything on there that you wouldn’t want the world to know. That includes the terms you’ve used for your Custom Channels. But the second reason is that when you create your channels, you’ll also be asked to mark a checkbox that says: “Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement.” If you mark that box and you should advertisers will be able to try to place their ads across that channel. (They’ll still have to bid in the usual way but if the advertisers are keen enough to choose your site by Channel, there’s a good chance that they’ll also be keen enough to bid high enough to win.) So if you’ve created a Channel for all of the ad units placed at the top of your Web pages, then an advertiser who chose to advertise across that Channel could be sure that his ads would get prime placement. That mean your Channel names should be clear not just to yourself but to anyone else looking in too. If a Channel that tracks the ad units embedded in articles about Toyota cars for example, is called “Toy_art,” an advertiser could get the wrong idea... if he has any idea at all. If the Channel were called “Toyota_articles” though, he’d know exactly where his ads would appear.
But getting the name right isn’t the only thing you should do to tempt advertisers to bid on Channeltargeted ad placements. You should also add a description that makes it both clear to advertisers what exactly they’ll be getting when they bid and attractive for them to do so. Something like: “Ads will appear in our topperforming units: above the fold and embedded in our main article.” That should help to encourage users to place your ads. Of course, you also want to make your approach as attractive as possible. Advertisers aren’t going to be too interested in trying to get their ads into a leaderboard that you’ve put at the bottom of the page. Let them try to get into the best positions on your page and raise the overall price of your clicks too. You do that by targeting your highestperforming ad units for Channelbased advertising. And finally, you should use ad placement invitations on Channels you’ve created for different topics. That will make it clear to advertisers that their ads will only appear on relevant pages.
12.7 How To Read Your Server Logs Various
AdSense Tracking programs are currently sold on the Internet. This type of software runs on your own server which means it has access to vital visitor information. These packages are not affiliated with Google, but you can use most of them without violating the AdSense TOS. External tracking software can tell you many things that the Channels don't reveal, such as: Where your visitors are coming from; Where the adclickers are coming from; What search keywords led them to your web page.
Your stats package should compile and interpret your log files. It will tell you how many people visited your pages, how long they stayed, which are the most popular pages, what countries/domains they visit from, and how many bookmarked your site. Just about all the information you need. One thing that external Tracking software cannot do for you, is to tell you exactly how much MONEY a specific ad (or a group of ads) is making for you. Only Google's Channels can tell you that. External tracking software can tell you an ad's CTR, but your AdSense income also depends on factors such as the earnings per click, content relevance, your ranking on Google Search Results and many other factors besides.
I do recommend the use of external tracking software in addition to Google's Channels. Why? Because Channels can be quite confusing if you use them by themselves. Consider this example: In this hypothetical case, Jim has a website about fast cars, where he discusses his passion with thousands of likeminded visitors. He decides to find out which ads are doing better than the others. Jim groups all ads with a blue border into a specific channel, which he called "Blue_Border". He finds that the blueborder ads generated a 5% CTR (click through ratio), while the rest of the ads generated around 2% CTR on average:
Next morning Jim tweaks all his ads to give them a blue border. The result? The ads in the "Blue_Border" channel continue to generate 5% CTR, while the rest of the ads (which also have a blue border now) are still generating 2% CTR. Very confusing!
Clearly, there's something else that's making Jim's visitors click and it probably has nothing to do with the blue border.
What is that hidden ingredient that's jacking up those clickthrough ratios? The Channels won't tell. Jim now decides to install an external tracking software on his website. After looking through his server logs, he finds that ads with the term "Car Accessories" are getting the maximum clickthroughs.
How does Jim know that? Simple. His tracking software tells him which ads his visitors are clicking. He also knows which sites his visitors are going to. Jim found that of all his visitors, those who searched for the term "Car Accessories" were generating the maximum clickthroughs on his web pages. Naturally, ads with the term "Car Accessories" were doing better than the others. Should Jim now optimize his website for the search term "Car Accessories"? For most web publishers, that's good enough to get down to work. But Jim is skeptical. Jim wants to know if his "Car Accessories" ads are also his top income generators.
To find out, he creates a Channel to track the earnings of all ads with the term "Car Accessories" in it. He calls the new channel "Car_Accessories". A few days later, Jim logs in to his AdSense account to check his earnings. He finds that about 30% of his income is drawn from visitors looking for car accessories.
That's significant, but it raises another question in Jim's mind.
Where is the remaining 70% of his income coming from?
He looks through his tracking reports once again and finds that ads with the term "Car Parts" are also doing well. He found that while "Car Accessories" took the lead with 5% CTR, the "Car Parts" ads were generating a healthy 3% CTR.
Jim is excited. He knows he's on to something big!
Jim's tracking software has helped him uncover two great "leads". Which of these will lead him to his top income generator?
The plot thickens… To find out, Jim now creates another channel called "Car_Parts".
A week later, he logs in to compare his earnings for each channel.
Here are Jim's results:
Total AdSense income for one week = $1666.67
"Car_Accessories" Channel = $500 (30% of total AdSense earnings)
"Car_Parts" Channel = $1000 (60% of total AdSense earnings)
Remaining Ads = $166.67 (10% of total AdSense earnings)
Incredible! Jim now knows that his "Car_Accessories" ads might be getting him the most clicks, but his "Car_Parts" ads are making him the most money!
Google won't tell you all reasons why the "Car_Parts" ads are making Jim more money. But Jim knows that the keyword "Car Parts" is probably more expensive, and that his website ranks better for that term.
FINALLY
Jim is ready to act on this information. Let's take a look at his various options:
1. He can use it to optimize his page for the search term "Car Parts", so that his content is more relevant. Jim knows from experience that when his ranking for the search term "Car Parts" goes up, so will his earnings per click. But it does have a downside. It might LOSE him his "Car Accessories" traffic! Jim knows that the price of keywords keeps fluctuating with the bids placed by AdSense advertisers. A keyword that's not so hot today can trigger a frenzied bidding war tomorrow! Jim doesn't want to lose his most responsive visitors, earning him a decent $500 per week.
2. Jim can optimize his page for "Car Accessories". But that comes with the huge risk of losing a whopping 60% of his earnings.
3. Jim can launch dedicated web pages for "Car Parts" and "Car Accessories".
4. Jim can optimize his page for BOTH search terms. Jim decides to go with option 4 optimize for BOTH search terms! Jim knows the old saying that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one at all. That's why he decides to play his cards carefully. Jim understands visitor behavior. He knows that his visitors like to read in "bite sized" portions. They take a bite here and a nibble there. But they never read a web page like a book, starting from the top and reading right through to the bottom. He tweaks his layout to make the "Car Parts" articles more visible. He smartly uses the hot car photos on his website to create several points of interest in his neatly laid out website. Jim knows that people will instinctively look at the car photos, then be drawn in by detailed information about car parts followed by the strategically placed Google ads.
To leverage this opportunity, Jim creates new space for content by tweaking the framework of his web page. Now Jim can capitalize his page layout by drawing people in with short, interesting 'content hooks' that build interest in the Google ads. He adds new sidebars with juicy tidbits about hot new car accessories. These will act like instant magnets to visitors looking for car accessories. More importantly, they run right alongside the AdSense ads, which tempt people with hot new offers on Car Accessories. A specially designed "Accessories I love" section invites visitors to scroll down for more. Here Jim provides news, updates and impartial reviews about the Car Accessories Market. He entices visitors to check out new product launches with an integrated Google Search Box, which enables them to search within his website or search the entire web for relevant content. These changes not only make Jim's web pages more relevant; it makes his visitors more receptive to the ads. And there's more. Jim can now create new income streams for himself by plugging in new links to pages dedicated to car accessories, car parts and other keywords that are already attracting highly responsive visitors to his existing pages. Jim used his channels and server logs to drill deep and come up with a real goldmine of information. You too can use these secrets to zero in on ads that make you the most money and to find hidden sources of AdSense income.
12.8 Fast DecisionMaking With A/B Testing
One of the problems with tracking Channels is that collecting all the data you need can take time. If you wanted to know whether you should put a skyscraper or a small square in your sidebar, you’d have to start with one type of ad unit, collect results for at least a week to make sure that they’re representative, replace that unit with the second type, follow those results for a week and compare. Sound tough? Well, now there’s an easier way. Normally, playing with the AdSense code is a big nono. But this script comes right from Google itself and has been approved for this specific use only:
Simply, replace the lines that say “your first ad unit code goes here” and “your second ad unit code goes here” with the ad codes for each of the two units you wish to test. The result will be that the two ads are rotated randomly so that each will appear half the time. As long as those two ad units are similar in every respect but one and each has a unique Channel name, you’ll be able to see exactly which type of ad unit is earning more after about a week or so. This is an extremely useful exception to AdSense’s rules about changing its ad code, but I wouldn’t recommend that you do it across your entire site. It’s always best to do your testing on a separate page or group of pages and then make the changes across the site once you’ve got the information you want. That would minimize your losses if the original ad unit works better.
12.9 Tracking Tools
There’s a whole range of different tracking tools available to fill the gaps left by Google’s Channels. Here is a quick rundown of the main ones:
AdSense Log
http://www.metalgrass.com/adsenselog/index.html
Created by MetalGrass, this stats analyzer has easyto read graphs and charts. They also use Google’s own stats rather than tapping into your server’s MySQL. You can check your account as frequently as you want and the log will even you give you a sound, an email or a popup window when new data is available. Price $50. Free 30day trial.
AsRep
http://www.asrep.com
AsRep lets you track all of your stats in real time. That includes each of your three regular ad units, an AdLink unit and up to two search boxes on each page. asRep The program also captures colors, format and channels, and whether the units are showing ads or alternates. Price $50. Unlimited evaluation version available.
CSV AdStats
http://www.nix.fr/en/csvadstats.aspx
CSV AdStats is less of a tracker and more of a number cruncher. You can download Google’s CSV data file and conduct a full stats analysis to check averages and create charts.
A useful way to squeeze more sense out of your stats. Google AdSense Tracking Script http://www.bizdirectory.org/adsense/ The Google AdSense Tracking Script lets you see the domains and files where clicks occurred, hourly and daily stats and who clicked what, where and when. Price $100.
TWO TOOLS YOU CAN’T DO WITHOUT! If you are serious about making money with Google AdSense, there are two tools that you really need to download. I was closely involved in the production of both of them. I’d like to say that I didn’t create these tools to make a profit, but that’s not really true. I did create them to make a profit... but a profit as an AdSense publisher not as a software developer. The fact is, none of the tracking software that I saw on the market was giving me all the information I wanted. And I want to know everything! I want to know where my users are coming from, what they’re looking for, which ads they’re clicking, how many unique visitors I’m receiving, which colors work best etc. etc. With AdSense, I don’t think it’s possible to have too much information.
No one was really willing to supply me the tools to gather and analyze that information. So I built them myself. AdSense Detective The first of these tools is AdSense Detective. I developed AdSense Detective together with my good friend, Robert Puddy, who’s really another AdSense giant. We wanted that program to fill in all the knowledge and data gaps that we possibly could.
That’s why in AdSense Detective, you’ll be able to discover: Which domains, directories and pages of your websites users clicked; The referring domains, pages and search terms that sent you visitors; Which ad units, colors and formats were bringing you the most clicks; The precise copy of the AdWords that you can check against page relevance; The search terms used by visitors to find your page; and... The exact AdSense channels of every ad clicked so that you can see which position on your page is bringing you the most money! If you’ve got all that information, then frankly you’ve got everything you need to bring home the bacon.
As one of my readers, I am pleased to offer you a free onemonth trial subscription to AdSense Detective! AdSense Buddy
Of course, you still have to analyze and process all that data. That’s what my next tool does, and you can download it for no charge at all. At time of writing, it’s in beta. By the time of reading though, it should be available for download at www.AdSenseBuddy.com. The idea of the program is to make it as simple as possible for you to make sense of your stats. And because the program has been created by someone who not only knows AdSense, but uses it every day, you can be sure that it was made with the end user in mind so it should give you everything you could ask for.
If there’s something I’ve left out, you probably don’t need it. You’ll be able to follow your CTR and note your impressions. You’ll be able to see your results by just rolling over the task bar. And I’ve even included an AdSense journal so that you can keep track of what’s working and what isn’t. That alone makes it worth downloading.
And it’s really simple to use. Once you’ve received your registration key, you simply enter your AdSense email address and password. Immediately, you’ll see a popup summarizing your latest stats. (Want to see them again? Just mouse over the icon in the system tray.) Below those stats, you’ll also get links to the latest discussions at AdSenseChat.com. That will make sure you’re always up to date and that you’ve always got something to read! You can also download data to cover any time period you want and view the information as graphs to make your analysis a breeze. But it’s really the journal that I’m most proud of. The fact that you can keep a record of your changes together with the results of your changes makes following your stats very, very easy. I don’t know how I managed for so long without it. And like I said, it’s absolutely free, so enjoy!
But once you've got that right, what next?
You start tweaking the text and making all sorts of other changes to improve your CTR. But every time you make any sort of change to your ads, you must track the results. Consider this example:
Joe Drinker has a great website about "How to make Beer at Home". It's doing well on AdSense, but not well enough. His week’s stats look something like this:
Joe is pretty happy with his CTR but wonders if he can raise his CPM and in the process, lift his earnings. So he looks up highpriced keywords related to his subject, and works the term "beer cans" into his content. A few days later he logs into the stats on his AdSense account and finds that that change has actually HURT his income:
Joe has not only disappointed a lot of collectors who come looking for beer cans his site contains lots of keywords but little in the way of good content he has also discouraged visits from people who want to make beer at home. His search ranking has gone down, making his website harder for people to 108 find him and lowering his impressions. It's also hurt his earnings per click as the people who visit the site leave faster. What's worse is that he's also risked his AdSense standing! Now, does that make it a bad idea to optimize your website for AdSense? Not at all. It is actually a good idea, if you do it right. And by that I mean… No Shortcuts! There is a simple, stepbystep process to optimize your website for high paying search terms. And this method is almost foolproof! So why isn't everybody doing this? Simply because very few web publishers know how to use Tracking to their advantage. Tracking will not only help you minimize your mistakes, it will also reveal hidden pockets of money that you would have never found otherwise. Read on to find out how YOU can use Tracking to skyrocket your CTRs and increase revenues perclick. TIP: Click here to learn about FREE tools to optimize your website for highpaying search terms.
12.1 How To Track With Channels
Google has its own FREE tracking feature called "Channels". Channels remind me of spy movies, where a smart chip is planted in the arm of a super sleuth, making it easier to track his activities or whereabouts. AdSense now hands you 200 such chips. Use them to track ads on specific domain names or to group ads according to specific ad formats, keywords, their location on the page etc. You can use any other factor that might impact their effectiveness, based on the type of website you have. Channel those clicks! Google tells you many things about each Channel, such as the ad impressions, clickthroughs and earnings data. You can use the channel reports to find out which channels are making you the most money and how to increase your earnings for other channels.
12.2 How To Create A URL Channel
Google lets you create two kind of channels: URL channels and custom channels. With URL channels you can track clicks across your site’s pages. You can do this by entering four different kinds of URL in the “create new channel” box. Each type of channel gives you information of different accuracy: example.com tracks all the pages in your site and gives a general picture of what your site is doing; subdomain.example.com tracks all the pages in one particular subdomain; subdomain.example.com/widgets tracks all the pages in a specific directory; and subdomain.example.com/page.html tracks the clicks on one specific page. That’s a huge range of choices, from an overview of a site that might have hundreds of pages through groups of pages that concern particular subjects to the clicks you’re getting on just one page. So if you had three sites, one about custom cars, one about custom bikes and one about speedboats, the first thing you’d do is create a general channel for each site. You should always create a channel for each one of your sites.
That will let you see not just how much money you’re making overall, but how much money each site is making. You’re not going to get too far without that sort of information! Now, let’s say that the custom car site had tabs for American cars, European cars, Japanese cars and classic cars. Each tab is a subdomain and you could create a channel for each subdomain too. Now you could see which topic is making the most money. And if you discussed one car on each page, you could also create channels for the individual pages and see which cars are the most popular and deliver the highest earning clicks. Sounds good, right?
And it’s now very easy to do. Back in the bad old days, Google required you to manually change AdSense tags for each ad block you wanted to track. Many AdSense partners complained about these pesky old channels until Google launched the URL Channels to make life easier. Now all you have to do is sign in and click the tab marked “AdSense Setup” followed by the “Channels” link.
Fig. 12.1 Spot the Channels
And the next step is to use the link marked “URL Channels” and enter the URLs you want to track. That’s it! You don’t have to do anything else. Google will start tracking the URLs you’ve added automatically. So apart from creating URL Channels for each of your sites, which of the other URL Channels should you create? As far as I’m concerned, you can’t have too much information. Major areas should certainly be covered and if you can go as far as tracking each page without going over the 200 channel limit, so much the better. It’s certainly worth tracking a few individual pages to make sure that the revenues are spread out across different parts of the site. If you find that one page is making lots of money and another is making none, you’ll want to know the reason why.
12.3 How To Create A Custom Channel
The URL Channels are especially useful if you have several websites, and have a general idea of the formats, colors, alignment etc. that works best for you. Remember though, you still need the original, Custom Channels if you want to track ads across different domain names, based on ad sizes, formats, colors etc. For instance, if I want to track leftaligned ads across all my websites (sites with different domain names), I need to group them together into a single channel and manually change the channel code for each page. First, I name the new channel:
Fig. 12.2 Here comes a new channel...
Then I choose the Ad Type, Layout and Color of the ads I want to track: Finally, it’s simply a matter of allocating an alternate URL if I don’t want public service ads, selecting the channel and copying and pasting the code onto each of the pages that contain these kinds of ad.
Fig. 12.3 Defining the ads to track in my new channel.
Of course, I would then have to repeat the process if I wanted to track ads of a particular color or size. That’s very different to the process you use to create a URL Channel. URL Channels are tracked automatically without the need for you to paste code. With Custom Channels, you’re going to have to go back to your own site, add the code in the appropriate pages and upload the changes to your server. While that’s a bit of a headache, it’s a headache worth having.
Fig. 12.4 Creating the code for my new Channel.
Custom channels provide such a broad range of information from how different locations are doing to how particular types of ad units affect your revenues that without them, you’re working in the dark.
12.4 What Custom Channels Should You Create?
With the range of Custom Channels limited only by your imagination, it’s not always easy to figure out which channels you need to create. I’d recommend that you build channels based on the following: Location Do ads do better at the top of your blog pages or on the side? Do you get more clicks from ads that you’ve slipped into the article or from the ads at the bottom of the page. Try creating different channels for each sort of location so that you can track how different locations are doing.
Ad Unit Different ad units can deliver different results. You might be using four or five different types of ad units across your sites. Make a channel for each type of unit so that you can get an idea about which units are the most attractive. Of course, location and ad unit are related but you won’t be untangle the data unless you have it! Color I keep saying that the color of your ads should match the color of your site. But not all your sites are the same color! You might well find that some color schemes win you more clicks than others a fact which could influence your overall site design. Create different Custom Channels for different colors and you’ll have a better idea of how your designs affect your income. Link Units It’s certainly worth creating a channel to track the performance of your link units. These are special in their own right and you should know how they perform in comparison to your other ad units. While Google can now track ad performance for your specified domain name, please don't expect URL or Custom Channels to give you data about your visitors, such as who referred them to your website or which web browser they use. These are details only your server logs can tell you.
12.5 Creating Multiple Channels
In the past, one of the biggest challenges for publishers was to decide which characteristic they should track on each of their ad units. Should they follow an ad unit’s color? Its position? Its size? Now those decisions are much easier. It’s possible to paste up to five Channel codes into one ad unit, allowing publishers to collect different information about the same ad. When you check your Channels, you’ll be able to how all your leaderboards or doing, as well as all your ads related by topic or color. That’s a huge help when it comes to understanding what your site is doing.
12.6 Your Channel Names
How To Keep Your Channels Secret And Win Channel Targeted Ads Channels are extremely useful tools. You won’t be able to make the most of your site unless you’re using Channels to track the performance of your ad units and acting on what you find. But there is one small problem with using Channels: the Channel name appears in your source code. That’s unlikely to cause you any serious problems but it is something you need to know. There are two reasons for that. First, you always want to maintain your privacy and create a professional impression. If you’re making your site available to the public which is the only way it’s going to make money you don’t want anything on there that you wouldn’t want the world to know. That includes the terms you’ve used for your Custom Channels. But the second reason is that when you create your channels, you’ll also be asked to mark a checkbox that says: “Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement.” If you mark that box and you should advertisers will be able to try to place their ads across that channel. (They’ll still have to bid in the usual way but if the advertisers are keen enough to choose your site by Channel, there’s a good chance that they’ll also be keen enough to bid high enough to win.) So if you’ve created a Channel for all of the ad units placed at the top of your Web pages, then an advertiser who chose to advertise across that Channel could be sure that his ads would get prime placement. That mean your Channel names should be clear not just to yourself but to anyone else looking in too. If a Channel that tracks the ad units embedded in articles about Toyota cars for example, is called “Toy_art,” an advertiser could get the wrong idea... if he has any idea at all. If the Channel were called “Toyota_articles” though, he’d know exactly where his ads would appear.
But getting the name right isn’t the only thing you should do to tempt advertisers to bid on Channeltargeted ad placements. You should also add a description that makes it both clear to advertisers what exactly they’ll be getting when they bid and attractive for them to do so. Something like: “Ads will appear in our topperforming units: above the fold and embedded in our main article.” That should help to encourage users to place your ads. Of course, you also want to make your approach as attractive as possible. Advertisers aren’t going to be too interested in trying to get their ads into a leaderboard that you’ve put at the bottom of the page. Let them try to get into the best positions on your page and raise the overall price of your clicks too. You do that by targeting your highestperforming ad units for Channelbased advertising. And finally, you should use ad placement invitations on Channels you’ve created for different topics. That will make it clear to advertisers that their ads will only appear on relevant pages.
12.7 How To Read Your Server Logs Various
AdSense Tracking programs are currently sold on the Internet. This type of software runs on your own server which means it has access to vital visitor information. These packages are not affiliated with Google, but you can use most of them without violating the AdSense TOS. External tracking software can tell you many things that the Channels don't reveal, such as: Where your visitors are coming from; Where the adclickers are coming from; What search keywords led them to your web page.
Your stats package should compile and interpret your log files. It will tell you how many people visited your pages, how long they stayed, which are the most popular pages, what countries/domains they visit from, and how many bookmarked your site. Just about all the information you need. One thing that external Tracking software cannot do for you, is to tell you exactly how much MONEY a specific ad (or a group of ads) is making for you. Only Google's Channels can tell you that. External tracking software can tell you an ad's CTR, but your AdSense income also depends on factors such as the earnings per click, content relevance, your ranking on Google Search Results and many other factors besides.
I do recommend the use of external tracking software in addition to Google's Channels. Why? Because Channels can be quite confusing if you use them by themselves. Consider this example: In this hypothetical case, Jim has a website about fast cars, where he discusses his passion with thousands of likeminded visitors. He decides to find out which ads are doing better than the others. Jim groups all ads with a blue border into a specific channel, which he called "Blue_Border". He finds that the blueborder ads generated a 5% CTR (click through ratio), while the rest of the ads generated around 2% CTR on average:
Next morning Jim tweaks all his ads to give them a blue border. The result? The ads in the "Blue_Border" channel continue to generate 5% CTR, while the rest of the ads (which also have a blue border now) are still generating 2% CTR. Very confusing!
Clearly, there's something else that's making Jim's visitors click and it probably has nothing to do with the blue border.
What is that hidden ingredient that's jacking up those clickthrough ratios? The Channels won't tell. Jim now decides to install an external tracking software on his website. After looking through his server logs, he finds that ads with the term "Car Accessories" are getting the maximum clickthroughs.
How does Jim know that? Simple. His tracking software tells him which ads his visitors are clicking. He also knows which sites his visitors are going to. Jim found that of all his visitors, those who searched for the term "Car Accessories" were generating the maximum clickthroughs on his web pages. Naturally, ads with the term "Car Accessories" were doing better than the others. Should Jim now optimize his website for the search term "Car Accessories"? For most web publishers, that's good enough to get down to work. But Jim is skeptical. Jim wants to know if his "Car Accessories" ads are also his top income generators.
To find out, he creates a Channel to track the earnings of all ads with the term "Car Accessories" in it. He calls the new channel "Car_Accessories". A few days later, Jim logs in to his AdSense account to check his earnings. He finds that about 30% of his income is drawn from visitors looking for car accessories.
That's significant, but it raises another question in Jim's mind.
Where is the remaining 70% of his income coming from?
He looks through his tracking reports once again and finds that ads with the term "Car Parts" are also doing well. He found that while "Car Accessories" took the lead with 5% CTR, the "Car Parts" ads were generating a healthy 3% CTR.
Jim is excited. He knows he's on to something big!
Jim's tracking software has helped him uncover two great "leads". Which of these will lead him to his top income generator?
The plot thickens… To find out, Jim now creates another channel called "Car_Parts".
A week later, he logs in to compare his earnings for each channel.
Here are Jim's results:
Total AdSense income for one week = $1666.67
"Car_Accessories" Channel = $500 (30% of total AdSense earnings)
"Car_Parts" Channel = $1000 (60% of total AdSense earnings)
Remaining Ads = $166.67 (10% of total AdSense earnings)
Incredible! Jim now knows that his "Car_Accessories" ads might be getting him the most clicks, but his "Car_Parts" ads are making him the most money!
Google won't tell you all reasons why the "Car_Parts" ads are making Jim more money. But Jim knows that the keyword "Car Parts" is probably more expensive, and that his website ranks better for that term.
FINALLY
Jim is ready to act on this information. Let's take a look at his various options:
1. He can use it to optimize his page for the search term "Car Parts", so that his content is more relevant. Jim knows from experience that when his ranking for the search term "Car Parts" goes up, so will his earnings per click. But it does have a downside. It might LOSE him his "Car Accessories" traffic! Jim knows that the price of keywords keeps fluctuating with the bids placed by AdSense advertisers. A keyword that's not so hot today can trigger a frenzied bidding war tomorrow! Jim doesn't want to lose his most responsive visitors, earning him a decent $500 per week.
2. Jim can optimize his page for "Car Accessories". But that comes with the huge risk of losing a whopping 60% of his earnings.
3. Jim can launch dedicated web pages for "Car Parts" and "Car Accessories".
4. Jim can optimize his page for BOTH search terms. Jim decides to go with option 4 optimize for BOTH search terms! Jim knows the old saying that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one at all. That's why he decides to play his cards carefully. Jim understands visitor behavior. He knows that his visitors like to read in "bite sized" portions. They take a bite here and a nibble there. But they never read a web page like a book, starting from the top and reading right through to the bottom. He tweaks his layout to make the "Car Parts" articles more visible. He smartly uses the hot car photos on his website to create several points of interest in his neatly laid out website. Jim knows that people will instinctively look at the car photos, then be drawn in by detailed information about car parts followed by the strategically placed Google ads.
To leverage this opportunity, Jim creates new space for content by tweaking the framework of his web page. Now Jim can capitalize his page layout by drawing people in with short, interesting 'content hooks' that build interest in the Google ads. He adds new sidebars with juicy tidbits about hot new car accessories. These will act like instant magnets to visitors looking for car accessories. More importantly, they run right alongside the AdSense ads, which tempt people with hot new offers on Car Accessories. A specially designed "Accessories I love" section invites visitors to scroll down for more. Here Jim provides news, updates and impartial reviews about the Car Accessories Market. He entices visitors to check out new product launches with an integrated Google Search Box, which enables them to search within his website or search the entire web for relevant content. These changes not only make Jim's web pages more relevant; it makes his visitors more receptive to the ads. And there's more. Jim can now create new income streams for himself by plugging in new links to pages dedicated to car accessories, car parts and other keywords that are already attracting highly responsive visitors to his existing pages. Jim used his channels and server logs to drill deep and come up with a real goldmine of information. You too can use these secrets to zero in on ads that make you the most money and to find hidden sources of AdSense income.
12.8 Fast DecisionMaking With A/B Testing
One of the problems with tracking Channels is that collecting all the data you need can take time. If you wanted to know whether you should put a skyscraper or a small square in your sidebar, you’d have to start with one type of ad unit, collect results for at least a week to make sure that they’re representative, replace that unit with the second type, follow those results for a week and compare. Sound tough? Well, now there’s an easier way. Normally, playing with the AdSense code is a big nono. But this script comes right from Google itself and has been approved for this specific use only:
Simply, replace the lines that say “your first ad unit code goes here” and “your second ad unit code goes here” with the ad codes for each of the two units you wish to test. The result will be that the two ads are rotated randomly so that each will appear half the time. As long as those two ad units are similar in every respect but one and each has a unique Channel name, you’ll be able to see exactly which type of ad unit is earning more after about a week or so. This is an extremely useful exception to AdSense’s rules about changing its ad code, but I wouldn’t recommend that you do it across your entire site. It’s always best to do your testing on a separate page or group of pages and then make the changes across the site once you’ve got the information you want. That would minimize your losses if the original ad unit works better.
12.9 Tracking Tools
There’s a whole range of different tracking tools available to fill the gaps left by Google’s Channels. Here is a quick rundown of the main ones:
AdSense Log
http://www.metalgrass.com/adsenselog/index.html
Created by MetalGrass, this stats analyzer has easyto read graphs and charts. They also use Google’s own stats rather than tapping into your server’s MySQL. You can check your account as frequently as you want and the log will even you give you a sound, an email or a popup window when new data is available. Price $50. Free 30day trial.
AsRep
http://www.asrep.com
AsRep lets you track all of your stats in real time. That includes each of your three regular ad units, an AdLink unit and up to two search boxes on each page. asRep The program also captures colors, format and channels, and whether the units are showing ads or alternates. Price $50. Unlimited evaluation version available.
CSV AdStats
http://www.nix.fr/en/csvadstats.aspx
CSV AdStats is less of a tracker and more of a number cruncher. You can download Google’s CSV data file and conduct a full stats analysis to check averages and create charts.A useful way to squeeze more sense out of your stats. Google AdSense Tracking Script http://www.bizdirectory.org/adsense/ The Google AdSense Tracking Script lets you see the domains and files where clicks occurred, hourly and daily stats and who clicked what, where and when. Price $100.
TWO TOOLS YOU CAN’T DO WITHOUT! If you are serious about making money with Google AdSense, there are two tools that you really need to download. I was closely involved in the production of both of them. I’d like to say that I didn’t create these tools to make a profit, but that’s not really true. I did create them to make a profit... but a profit as an AdSense publisher not as a software developer. The fact is, none of the tracking software that I saw on the market was giving me all the information I wanted. And I want to know everything! I want to know where my users are coming from, what they’re looking for, which ads they’re clicking, how many unique visitors I’m receiving, which colors work best etc. etc. With AdSense, I don’t think it’s possible to have too much information.
No one was really willing to supply me the tools to gather and analyze that information. So I built them myself. AdSense Detective The first of these tools is AdSense Detective. I developed AdSense Detective together with my good friend, Robert Puddy, who’s really another AdSense giant. We wanted that program to fill in all the knowledge and data gaps that we possibly could.
That’s why in AdSense Detective, you’ll be able to discover: Which domains, directories and pages of your websites users clicked; The referring domains, pages and search terms that sent you visitors; Which ad units, colors and formats were bringing you the most clicks; The precise copy of the AdWords that you can check against page relevance; The search terms used by visitors to find your page; and... The exact AdSense channels of every ad clicked so that you can see which position on your page is bringing you the most money! If you’ve got all that information, then frankly you’ve got everything you need to bring home the bacon.
Fig. 12.5 More data than you can shake a stick at from AdSense Detective.
As one of my readers, I am pleased to offer you a free onemonth trial subscription to AdSense Detective! AdSense Buddy
Of course, you still have to analyze and process all that data. That’s what my next tool does, and you can download it for no charge at all. At time of writing, it’s in beta. By the time of reading though, it should be available for download at www.AdSenseBuddy.com. The idea of the program is to make it as simple as possible for you to make sense of your stats. And because the program has been created by someone who not only knows AdSense, but uses it every day, you can be sure that it was made with the end user in mind so it should give you everything you could ask for.
If there’s something I’ve left out, you probably don’t need it. You’ll be able to follow your CTR and note your impressions. You’ll be able to see your results by just rolling over the task bar. And I’ve even included an AdSense journal so that you can keep track of what’s working and what isn’t. That alone makes it worth downloading.
Fig. 12.6 AdSenseBuddy’s journal makes it a breeze to keep track of your changes.
And it’s really simple to use. Once you’ve received your registration key, you simply enter your AdSense email address and password. Immediately, you’ll see a popup summarizing your latest stats. (Want to see them again? Just mouse over the icon in the system tray.) Below those stats, you’ll also get links to the latest discussions at AdSenseChat.com. That will make sure you’re always up to date and that you’ve always got something to read! You can also download data to cover any time period you want and view the information as graphs to make your analysis a breeze. But it’s really the journal that I’m most proud of. The fact that you can keep a record of your changes together with the results of your changes makes following your stats very, very easy. I don’t know how I managed for so long without it. And like I said, it’s absolutely free, so enjoy!
