Google announced it has expanded its sensitive category blocking feature for AdSense to Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese. The goal is to expand it worldwide eventually.

The feature is already available in English, French, German, Spanish, It…

Google has launched a new feature for its Mobile for AdSense apps, which lets developers in the U.S. and Canada, who are participating in the beta program, to monetize their iPad apps.

"The new iOS SDK supports ad serving in iPad apps using thre…

Google is retiring the old version of AdSense for Search and telling users to switch to the new version powered by Google Custom Search, which has been offered for a while.

If you see "powered by Google" on the logo on the search results pa…

Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan points out how poorly Google handles those gaming Google News, using Google Trends as a starting point.

Do you find Google News to be too heavily polluted? Share your thoughts.

He foun…

AdSense publishers who live near Boston, Chicago, or New York – or can travel to one of those cities on short notice this summer – should consider filling out an application and maybe packing a bag.  Google’s looking for people to participate in w…

Google has kept its AdSense revenue share numbers a secret for quite some time, but has now decided to disclose them – or at least some of them. They’ve revealed the percentages for AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search, but are remaining mum on some of the other offerings. Still, content and search are the two biggies.

Is Google’s revenue split better or worse than you expected? Let us know.

The company says this is an effort to increase transparency (though the situation in Italy likely played a significant role), and is now displaying the revenue shares right in the new AdSense interface, in the ‘Account Information’ section of the ‘Account Settings’ page (the numbers will also be available soon in the existing interface).

"AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide," says Neal Mohan VP, Product Management. "This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites. The remaining portion that we keep reflects Google’s costs for our continued investment in AdSense — including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads. It also reflects the costs we incur in building products and features that enable our AdWords advertisers to serve ads on our AdSense partner sites. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed."

"We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations," adds Mohan. "As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that we keep reflects our costs, including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies. The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when we increased it."

John Battelle brought up some confusion around a 15% "serving" fee, known as an "AFC Deduction", which he says was commonly used for negotiated contracts with large publishers, but Google says it was never used for publishers who signed up directly on the Google website. The company told him, "There is no 15% serving, or any other, fee for those online publishers."

In fact, Arlene from Google’s Inside AdSense team stepped into the comments on the announcement to address this and other questions that had been coming up. She said:

The 68% revenue share for AdSense for content applies to all online publishers, and is not an average revenue share. If you’re showing AdSense for content ads on your pages, you’re receiving 68% of the amount advertisers pay for those ads. While the revenue share can vary for some major online publishers with whom we negotiate individual contracts, these amounts are not in any way averaged together. Also, there isn’t anything additional taken off the top. You get 68 percent, period.

The transparency around revenue share could become more critical if Facebook ends up offering its own AdSense-like product around the Open Graph. This has been widely speculated upon, and if it ever comes to fruition, it could become a real competitor to AdSense due to the comprehensive targeting abilities that would come with it.

Do you think a Facebook ad network would make for a worthy competitor to AdSense? Comment here.

Danny Sullivan suggests that Google’s transparency could lead to competitors offering up better deals, but Google appears comfortable with its competition thus far. "We believe our revenue share is very competitive, and the vast number of advertisers who compete to appear on AdSense sites helps to ensure that you’re earning the most from every ad impression," says Mohan.

At this point, Google is still not disclosing its revenue shares for AdSense for mobile applications, feeds, or games. The reason for this the company gives, is that these are still evolving, and they’re still learning about the costs associated with supporting them. Revenue shares may change in the future, but they don’t have any changes planned yet.

Does knowing the AdSense revenue share percentages change the way you feel about the AdSense program? Tell us what you think.

Facebook is infiltrating sites all over the web. These sites are happy to add Facebook’s social plug-ins. What if Facebook launched an AdSense-like product – a product that lets publishers stick relevant ads from Facebook on their sites for a cut of the money? They would be HIGHLY, HIGHLY targeted because the more sites that use plugins like Facebook’s like button, the more users will share their likes with Facebook, which goes to the profile, which is where Facebook already draws its information from to serve its own ads today.

Should Google be worried? Share your thoughts.

These ads are already pretty well targeted, when the user has enough information in their profile. Social plugins like the like button will only facilitate the population of such information in the profile.

Apparently Mashable founder Pete Cashmore has a similar view on this, as he says in an article for CNN, "Google makes the vast majority of its money from ads — these ads typically match your search terms, or the content of the Web page you’re viewing. Google has certainly worked to personalize these ads, but its knowledge of your friends and interests is more limited than Facebook’s. The data gleaned from thousands of Facebook Like buttons around the web could make for an ad network that rivals Google’s AdSense."

Ian Schafer at AdAge has also contemplated such a scenario. "It seems to be an inevitability that all of this intelligence will one day be applied to power a socially targeted ad network as big (or bigger than) Google’s AdSense," he says. "It would be a network that would theoretically deliver even better results for advertisers, resulting in higher CPMs/CPCs/CP-whatevers that can deliver higher payouts to publishers, making a choice between the two platforms a not-too-difficult one for those publishers."

The Like button is a game changer because all of a sudden you have the whole world wide web of content to "like" not just what’s within your immediate network within Facebook and what you may have taken the time to add to your profile two years ago. It keeps user interests current and enables an infinite amount of interest indication that advertisers would salivate for.

If Facebook were to launch an AdSense-like product, that doesn’t necessarily mean Google would completely lose out. I can certainly see a lot of sites going forward with both. When pressed to make a choice between the two, however, it could make things interesting for the industry at large.

Would you serve AdSense ads or Facebook ads on your site if such a scenario were to come to fruition? Let us know.

Google has rewritten its link unit matching system for AdSense. Link units in AdSense ads display a list of topics that are relevant to the content of the publisher’s page. When a user clicks a topic, Google shows a page of related ads. AdSense publishers can earn from valid user clicks on the ads on this resulting page.

"Many publishers have found that link units offer monetization similar to that of ad units and provide a more integrated user experience," says Jerry Krikheli, Engineering Manager for Link Units.

"The new system is much smarter: it not only uses more sophisticated topic ranking algorithms but also continuously optimizes by learning which topics have the most appeal to the visitors of your site," explains Krikheli. "The results are overwhelmingly positive — topic quality, user response rate to topics and ads, and monetization metrics have all improved in significant, measurable ways."

Google says link units are effective because they’re targeted to the interests of users. "Because users directly interact with the ad unit, they’re more likely to be interested in the ads they eventually see," the company says.

Do you use link unit ads?

Google has eliminated the limit to how many categories AdSense publishers can filter from their sites. There are 11 categories, and users can filter as many of them as they want.

"The category filtering feature allows you to prevent ads that fall into specific categories like ‘religion’ and ‘dating’ from appearing on your pages," says Arlene Lee of Google’s Inside AdSense team. "You can filter categories by visiting your Ad Review Center, located under the AdSense Setup tab. Click the ‘change’ link to view available categories to filter. Your selections will be applied to ads in English, French, German, and Spanish, no matter how they’ve been targeted to your site."

"We also recommend taking a look at the columns showing how much of your recent revenue and ad impressions are generated by each of the categories," says Lee. "This will give you an idea how applying these filters may affect your account."

Previously, users could only filter up to 8 of the 11 categories, which include cosmetic procedures and surgery, dating, drugs and supplements, get rich quick, politics, religion, ringtones and downloadables, sexual and reproductive health, sexually suggestive, video games, and weight loss.

Google’s doesn’t guarantee that every related ad will be filtered, and recommends that users who see undesired ads block  the individual ad or advertiser using the competitive ad filter or the blocking features in the Ad Review Center.

Google has made some adjustments to how it uses referral URLs for contextual matching of AdSense ads. Google has started expanding the use of query words in referral URLs to a few hours.

Basically what this means is that Google is using user’s search history to determine what ads to show on sites using AdSense. If a user arrives at one AdSense site via a search results page, and then goes to another AdSense site within a few hours, they might see ads based on the referral data from the first one.

"The technical way that we’re doing this is by associating the relevant query words in the referral URL with the existing advertising cookie on the user’s browser," says AdSense Associate Product Manager Rebecca Illowsky. "After a short period of time (a few hours) the query words are no longer used for the purposes of matching ads. Of course, users can continue to opt out of our advertising cookie at any time here."

"This allows us to deliver more relevant ads on a wider range of AdSense partner sites that a user may browse over the course of a few hours," she adds. "Using signals from the referral URL is just one part of our teams’ continuing efforts to deliver even better contextually matched ads on your website."

Some people claim to have already seen a rise in clickthrough rate since Google made these changes. Commenting on Google’s explanation, one reader says, "I saw a rise in CTR and was wondering [if] something was cooking so I guess this was it."

Have you seen a rise in AdSense CTR recently? Let us know.

Google has launched an AdSense feature that lets AdSense publishers donate their earnings to Haiti earthquake relief efforts.

"We’re currently accepting donations from AdSense publishers with an unpaid account balance through January 31, 2010," says Google’s Elizabeth Ferdon. "To see what your unpaid account balance is, please visit the ‘Payment History’ page within your account. Your January earnings will post in the next few days, so feel free to refer to your ‘Advanced Reports’ page for an earnings estimate until those are finalized."

Publishers can donate either a portion or all of their unpaid balances as of the end of January. "As you may expect, there are certain restrictions to donating, and all our normal policies still apply — so even if you’re donating, please don’t ask others to click on your ads in order to increase your earnings," says Ferdon.

Google will not process donation requests from publishers whose request to donate more than their unpaid balance through January 31, or if they are subject to tax-withholding, their account has been disabled for invalid activity or other violations of terms and conditions, or if their accounts display the messages: "please submit your tax information", "please enter your PIN", or "please verify your phone number".

Partners in Health is the organization that will receive the donations. They will go to proivde medical aid.

Related Articles:

> Google Launches Relief Site To Help Haiti

> Twitter Helping Haiti Earthquake Victims

> BusinessWire Offers Free Haiti-Related Press Release Distribution

Google announced today that AdSense for Domains is now using optional keyword hints more often. Keyword hints are provided by the user, who enters keywords into a field to assist Google in the targeting of ads for potentially ambiguous domains. Google’s Randy Heath explains:

These keywords are suggestions supplied to Google by domain owners about the types of content users are looking for when they arrive on an undeveloped domain. They are used to help our system determine the best ads to place on these domains. For example, with the domain www.rockstarsand.com, a publisher might suggest the keywords "bitumen" and "mining" so that ads may appear from advertisers offering oil extraction products.

Keyword hints remain optional. When keyword hints are provided by the publisher, our ad-matching systems will use them more often. As always, we aim to provide the most relevant ads for the user, the best value for advertisers, and the best returns for publishers. This means in some cases, keyword hints will be ignored when we have evidence that other targeting approaches perform better.

Keyword hints have to adhere to Google’s policy guidelines for AdSense for Domains. The company also recommends the following guidelines to maximize effectiveness:

- Limit your keywords to 3-5 phrases
- Ensure your keywords/phrases are separated by commas
- Ensure your hints are relevant to the domain
- Stick to one theme for potentially ambiguous domains.

Google says it is working on additional product improvements for AdSense for Domains, and these will be announced in the coming months.

Related Articles:

> Google Launches AdSense Product Ideas Page

> Google Makes Risky AdSense For Domains Expansion

> YouTube Videos in AdSense Could Drive Clicks

Big businesses with huge pageviews fueled by Google have emerged in recent years that exist only because of a unique SEO / Adwords relationship with Google. Google gives them a huge presence in the long tail SERPS and they in turn give Google increased revenue by being a Google Adsense partner. Not just any Adsense partner, but a Google partner that turns Google search generated traffic into billions of Adwords clicks totaling tens of billions of dollars. 

Demand Media, for instance, was created with this business model. Figure out what people are searching for, create somewhat unique content in bulk that matches the title tags and other keywords in the search terms, place Google ads all over this content and  voila … Demand Media’s eHow.com articles rank on the first page of Google search result for hundreds of thousand of searches. By the way, Demand Media is reportedly going to generate $200 million in revenue this year and may be worth a billion dollars in large part because of these Google Adwords clicks.

It is a fascinating business model; A content assembly line creates content specifically for Google searches and Google then pays millions for Google ads clicked on that content. Unfortunately, it does raise questions about whether Google has a conflict of interest in being both the main supplier of traffic and revenue for these bulk article sites while also earning substantial revenue for itself? After all, if these articles didn’t result high in Google searches this mass content production model wouldn’t work.

I have followed the SEO industry for years and our WebProNews reporters have interviewed countless Google product managers on the subject of ranking well in Google.  Google’s mantra has been for publishers to make quality content for their users and not for its search engine. Google’s position is that quality content will rise to the top of its SERPS. 

However, Google seems to be sending content creators a mixed message. Demand Media is creating as many as 5,000 articles and videos each day for the purposes of ranking in Google. If Google’s message is for publishers to create content for their readers, not just to rank in Google, then why is Demand Media’s content ranking so well in Google? 

The answer could be that for thousands of long tail searches, Demand Media’s content is quality enough. The vast majority of Google searches on any given day include a search term that will get less than a hundred searches a day. What content farms such as Demand Media do is provide articles and videos that are optimized for these rarely searched terms. The content is often mediocre, but it is unique and it has a title tag and other keywords that match these targeted searches. 

The problem as I see it is that while Google is highly ranking the content of these mass production publishers it also has a financial incentive to do so. Almost all content farms use Google Adwords for their revenue. So while Google on the one hand encourages publishers to make content for their readers and not just for search ranking, it is in partnership with sites that do just that. 

This should make publishers wonder about their business models. Should they spend thousands paying reporters and editors to create quality content for their users or should they simply create a content farm that pays little for bulk quantities of articles and videos but gets lots of Google love?  

I guess if you can make content for the purpose of ranking in searches … but make it targeted, unique and not horrible, then you might find that Google well reward you quite well.

Is this the future of online publishing?

Google announced that it has made some messaging changes in the AdSense interface. The changes concern users’ earnings.

Google has added the words "Estimated" and "Finalized" next to "Earnings" throughout users’ accounts. The company says the move was made to be more transparent. The changes in messaging do not reflect any changes to the way finalized earnings are calculated. The company says they’re simply intended to give users a clearer idea of Google’s estimations of earnings and what is actually finalized.

"As you may have noticed in the past, the earnings on the Overview and Advanced Reports pages may sometimes differ from the earnings listed on your Payment History page," says Elizabeth Ferdon of Google’s AdSense Payments Team. "This is because earnings on your Overview and Advanced Reports pages reflect initial estimations based on our records."

"We aren’t able to provide finalized earnings on these pages because they still need to be verified for accuracy, a process that takes place a few days after the end of every month. The finalized sum is then posted on your Payment History page by the 10th of the next month," adds Ferdon.

Google says it can’t say how much amounts would differ for any specific publisher, and that most publishers won’t see a significant difference anyway.

Earlier this week, Google introduced the ability to search for ads in the Ad Review Center. The option is currently available to only a limited number of publishers who are using the new AdSense interface (launched a few weeks ago). The company said, however, it will be rolling it out more widely as they invite more publishers to test the new interface.

Related Articles:

> Google Launches AdSense Product Ideas Page

> Google Ignoring Its Own Policy on Desktop AdSense?

> YouTube Videos in AdSense Could Drive Clicks

AdSense is an important fixture in a lot of people’s lives; it can represent anything from spending money (hey, little splurges do the heart good) to what pays the mortgage.  And now, individuals have a chance to shape it more to their liking, as a new Product Ideas for AdSense page has launched.

Try not to get your hopes up; as word spreads and more people contribute ideas, the odds of any one suggestion making it in front of an important Googler will decrease.  Also, there’s no guarantee that any of the recommendations will be implemented.

Still, a post on the Inside AdSense blog stated, "[W]e can guarantee that we’ll take the top ideas (as voted by you), and bring them to the AdSense Product Management team for review.  By submitting an idea, you agree that Google may use the idea to develop and enhance Google’s products and services."

So sign into the Product Ideas for AdSense page with your Google account, make a suggestion, or vote for an existing one that you like before the end of December 15th.  Just about everything’s fair game, from simple tweaks to entirely new features.

Then just maybe, as a result of participating, you’ll be able to upgrade "spending money" to "mortgage payments" or "mortgage payments" to "retirement package."

Related Articles:

> Google Ignoring Its Own Policy On Desktop AdSense?

> YouTube Videos In AdSense Could Drive Clicks

> Google Tests New AdSense Interface