Speeding up the AdSense-Analytics integration on your AdSense account

I believe I was the only one in the World who didn’t believe that the integration of Google Analytics in AdSense is possible, and smelled conspiracies all over the net. For my shock a while ago on the Official AdSense Blog appeared an announcement that they will gradually roll out this feature for all of the AdSense publishers, starting with those who live in North America. The bad part is, that I don’t live there, but in Europe.

So I had to wait. I also expressed my feeling about the fact that I couldn’t jump on the band-wagon in every possible way, but no one listened, at least that’s what I thought.
Then in my RSS reader a new entry appeared: Extending AdSense for domains to all publishers, obviously, this was posted on the Official AdSense Blog as well.
Great, I thought; another feature which is rolled out gradually, another thing which I can not use just because I don’t live in North America.

But, as I started to read, I observed a note just below the header:

Want to integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics? Improved reporting was on publisher wish lists this year, so we’re spreading the reporting cheer this holiday season. Fill out our interest form, and we may be able to enable the feature earlier for you.

I went ahead and filled out the form. And a miracle happened: in less than 24 hours my AdSense account was boosted with Analytics.

Hugs and kisses for the AdSense team.

AdSense transforming in non-contextual advertising program?

Since AdSense appeared on the market, it was known for every publisher that it’s one of the greatest contextual ad serving networks. They advertise on every possible way that “[...] Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on your site, you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages. [...]”

And that’s almost OK. They really serve ads which are related to the (website’s) content, but. There always has to be a but, right? What about learn even more about the users before serving those ads?
I explain: Devoracles.com has quite a lot of content related to Google, Google Chrome and AdSense. So it’s quite easy to predict that if possible, AdSense will show Google-related ads for the users cos those are also relevant to our content. And if you look at our ads, you’ll see that sometimes there are Google related ads. If you look at the right ads in the right time, you will see that there are Google Chrome ads, too. Like, “Download Google Chrome“, or something like that.

Now look at the image on the left. What’s wrong with the image? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it! I see adverts which keeps telling me to download Google Chrome even though — ironically — I’m seeing the advert through Google Chrome.
That’s the feature of contextual advertising? Advertising Coke and iPhone for the biggest fans of these products? Come on, Google, this can’t be right!

Say bye-bye to pagead2.googlesyndication.com and then welcome (or not) googleads.g.doubleclick.net

Since my first AdSense payout, when they really prove me that the system works and you really can earn money with AdSense, I was wondering why isn’t there a hostname for AdSense. I mean, like adsense.com for example. I know it redirects to the real AdSense pages, but for the matter of the example why the ads are hosted on a third domain, which has a kinda weird name anyway, googlesyndication, what a weird name.
Then Google bought Doubleclick. One of the greatest online advertising networks on the Globe. I thought they will start to use the Doubleclick servers for serving the AdSense ads. And so it happened, nonetheless to mention, in a half a year even our favorite John Doe would have transfer the files needed to serve the ads from one server to the other. I don’t know if anybody else noticed, but our tiny ads are served from the googleads.g.doubleclick.net hostname. But why is that good for us? I mean, it’s good for me, cos the “doubleclick” word is at least related in a way or other to ad serving. But why is that good for the AdSense publishers? I tell you what: it isn’t.

The only thing which has changed in our benefit is that the ad code is not 4kB but 3. Probably they stopped using the Prototype framework which is so uncool anyway, I would have expect something more from them. Oh, wait, that’s more than 1kB, so that can’t be.
Another thing which didn’t get changed is our ad codes. When a user loads a page, the browser makes a request to the old googlesyndication domain, which then bounces (redirect, nerds) the connection to the googleads.g.doubleclick.net. Since redirecting always costs load-time, some of the pages I manage and has AdSense ads implemented, now loads with almost 300ms slower. Per ad code. Thanks to the redirection I guess, since the file size is smaller I see no other plausible reason. You may say that 300 milliseconds is not a big deal. But what if a publisher has three AdSense ads on a page? That’s legal. 3 times 300 makes 900 additional milliseconds, let’s say a second. One second additional is a big deal for the website owners!
On another side of the note, can somebody explain for me, why the Flash ads have errors in them and I get the debugger popping up all the time? And when did I opt in for Flash ads anyway? I opted in for “Image and Text ads”, Flash ads are something else guys. At least if they would look cool…

As an end note, can somebody enlighten me why do I see only and only Google Chrome ads, anywhere I go?

Update: While I realize that my words seems to be offending, my intention was not to hurt anybody’s feelings, neither the guys’ from AdSense or from Doubleclick. I do appreciate your work and the post was just a “steam off”.
So, sorry ’bout that.

Google server running cPanel

While setting up a web-server is not a big deal, cPanel makes the whole process so much easier. Seemingly, Google takes the advantages of this software, too. We already knew that Google uses the open-source and so-popular Apache web-server, most likely because it can be adapted to various situations and has the lowest footprint yet amazing capabilities. But that they use cPanel is a new thing, here’s the proof:

cPanel is good for beginner server administrators, but for professionals it’s like a WYSWYG editor for the web-developers. It’s good cos it’s simple to use, bad, because it adds one more daemon process to the persistent processes list, which is less than ideal for servers which are bombarded with so many connections like the Google servers.

Another thing which is interesting: as I stated above cPanel makes setting up web-servers extremely easy. But why do Google need this help when the employment requirements for a server administrator job are the following :

• BA/BS in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 3 - 5 years experience with UNIX systems administration (5-15 years for Senior position).
• Solid scripting skills in Shell, PHP, Perl or Python.
• Proven technical troubleshooting and performance tuning experience.
• Experience in a high-volume or critical production service environment.
• Ability to handle periodic on-call duty as well as out-of-band requests.
• Tack-sharp analytical abilities.
• A strong sense of ownership, urgency, and drive.
• Fluent written communication and unusual verbal agility are strong assets.
• SQL experience a plus, MySQL a plus.
• Experience leading short projects involving outside teams is a plus.

The picture was taken when we typed “google.com” in the address-bar of Firefox and we resolved to that page. This can be caused by they putting the server too fast in the cluster, even before they could mirror the homepage’s software.

Google Moderator - Questions (un)answered?

I want to know more about Google. Who doesn’t? I guess 99.9% of the webmasters does and at least half of the World’s population. Google is mysterious, they keep things hidden from the public eye and when I first saw the announcement about there’s a place where Google engineers will answer our questions, I got excited. (While that article doesn’t state the Googlers vs. Webmasters question war, it exists, believe me)

I’m not social at all. I rather search 2 weeks to read an acceptable answer for my question instead asking someone to answer that question, but I thought I make an exception and ask the infamous engineers one-two things.

Can I say I have two favorite Google engineers? OK, so I have two favorite Google engineers; the first is Matt Cutts because we both hate spam and fishing … sorry, phishing and we both love cats. Ok, I don’t but it sounds cool. The second engineer is Adam Lasnik. He’s a search evangelist, whatever that means. But he seems to be cool and also hates spam, so I rather sympathize him than don’t.

OK, I asked 5 simple questions for them. Most of them were towards any engineer, one for Matt and one for Adam. I list 3 questions here and a short explanation for each question:

1. Do you plan in the near future any webmaster meeting in the central or generally in EU?
   I asked this cos I would really like to go to a such meeting and I think many of us would like to see the almighty Googlers, ask a few questions for them or just simply attack them because their site is not listed in Google or got penalized. Not a hard question, I’d even accept an “I don’t know”, but no, Adam seems to ignore me…
2. This bugs me for ages: Can you check the users’ MAC address? I’ve read somewhere that you can, if so hat off…
   Well, the myth says it’s technically impossible, but some ‘great’ webmasters say it IS possible. I just want a confirmation from an authoritative source, nothing more. Nonetheless to say that I wouldn’t publish it on the internet that Google is able to check users’ MAC address. OK, maybe I would but it’s not my intention at the moment
3. Take this query: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en=investigation@fdic.gov The query’s first 6 result is a forged 404, not good for the user. Can something be made against this? While others are posting useful content, those are like spam: useless
   Oh why, oh why do you list almighty Google custom 404 pages with almost no content when good webmasters have good content? Please tell me! You say to make pages for the users, I think good webmasters really follow this way and we create useful pages for the users and what we get? We get pushed down to the 15th place just because the first 14 result is a custom 404 page. How did we hurt you, to get this harsh punishment?

While I don’t think this article will change anything, I had to let the steam off. I also realize that both Matt and Adam are extremely busy Googlers and when they finish their work, they have their own, personal life.
But, Google Moderator has been created to get questions answered. I really appreciate the approach, truly. But if we ask questions and no one answers them, what’s the point?

Review - My own Google Laptop Backpack

Since I bought a notebook I had hard times when I had to travel: where to put my notebook when I travel? I can’t put it in the luggage for the obvious reason that I can’t work with the notebook while traveling. I can’t hold it in my hand because where I live rains a lot and notebooks doesn’t like rain. I can’t put it in the briefcase cos then I have no space for the documents I usually travel with.
I needed a laptop bag. OK, but laptop backpack or a traditional briefcase-like laptop bag?

If I choose a laptop bag, then I have both of my hands occupied: in right the briefcase as always, in the other the laptop bag. This made me to choose the laptop backpack!

Probably you noticed already from my previous posts that I’m one of those who are fan of the infamous Google. This is why I chose to get a Google Laptop Backpack.

The Google Laptop Backpack costs in Europe $54.82 (USD) plus VAT. Since the weight of the laptop backpack is far from light, there were only two choices for shipment: UPS express or UPS standard delivery. One thing I adore in UPS is that you can track the package on its road, so you know when to expect it. Since UPS don’t has offices in my country yet, after the Google Laptop Backpack arrived in my country, they handed the package to DHL and they delivered the package to my front door. On time! UPS informed me that the package will arrive to me in seven days, and in my front door between 9 AM and 7 PM. So it happened: DHL rang at my front door at exactly 5 PM, on the seventh day after the laptop backpack from Google was shipped in the UK.

Now about the Google laptop backpack. Its design is kinda weird, but probably it’s just me. Seemingly it’s made 100% of polyester which is odd, since Google is probably one of the greatest supporters of the Green Initiatives. But at least it’s waterproof. On the bottom of the Google laptop backpack there’s a thick rubber layer which will come handy when I will drop it in the snow of the Alps.

The backpack has 4 pockets: 2 big in which you can easily put your laptop in (they are huge) and 2 smaller, perfect for the cables, mouse, keyboard and the charger, notebooks and pens. In one of the smaller pockets there’s a hidden(-ish) pocket which can be perfect for hiding stuff from your girlfriend and wife’s sight.
The backpack itself is around 2lbs (~1 kilogram), which is not much if you consider the rubber from the backpack’s and the consolidation of the pockets. The zippers are massive enough to not remain in your hands when you open and close the Google laptop backpack, which is good again since I usually break every zipper I encounter.

Am I satisfied so far with my brand new Google laptop backpack? If I take in consideration that the Google-store employees were extremely helpful, the shipment arrived on time to me, the backpack looks cool (and weird in the same time), the shell is tough and waterproof, I think I’m satisfied with it. So far. Will see when I manage to break the zippers.

Google Adwords Phishing messages

Be aware, that nowadays a great mass of phishing messages travel on the net which tries to steal your Google AdWords credentials. Please do not answer or click links from these e-mails, or if you already provided the phishers your login credentials, contact AdWords support as soon as possible.
Also, if you get emails which smells fishy, contact Google as soon as possible, forwarding them the phishing email and if possible the email headers, too.

Here is an email I got a few minutes before, it’s the 7th I got this week.

Our system was unable to process a payment for your outstanding Google AdWords account balance using your primary credit card. For the time being, your account is still open, and your ads are still running. However, we require you to update the payment information in your AdWords account very soon in order to ensure continued ad serving.

Please update your credit card information in order to trigger our billing system to try processing your payment again. If you plan to use the same credit card(s), please use the ‘Retry Card’ button on the Billing Preferences page of your account. Otherwise, please follow the steps below to update the information in your AdWords account.

1. Log in to your AdWords account at: http://adwords.google.com
2. Click the ‘My Account’ tab.
3. Click ‘Billing Preferences’ link.
4. Click Edit next to the appropriate ‘Payment Details’ section.
5. Enter your new or updated payment information.
6. Click ‘Save Changes’ when you have finished.

In the future, you may wish to use a back up credit card in order to help ensure continuous delivery of your ads. You can add a back up credit card by visiting your Billing Preferences page or visit the AdWords Help Centre for more.

Tip: You can review the status of your billing on the Billing Summary page, under the ‘My Account’ tab. If a payment has been declined, click ‘Payment Declined’ beside the line item to review information for that particular payment. Once your payment has been processed successfully, you can view and print an invoice from your Billing Summary page.

—————————————————————— This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions, please visit the Google AdWords Help Centre at https://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=en_GB to find answers to frequently asked questions and a ‘contact us’ link near the bottom of the page. —————————————————————-

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

The first link, which points nowhere taken me to the page which is shown on the picture on the left and each link taken me to a page where I’d had to provide some of my details, including credit card number/expiration or adwords account credentials.

If you get emails like this, please forward them as soon as possible either to Google’s phishing reporting address (phishing@google.com) or to Devoracles (catcher@devoracles.com) and we’ll forward them to Google.

66 Android screenshots

I don’t know about you, but I’m quite full with Google’s Android project. I collected some pics over my the past few weeks when even at the local fuel station I could hear only about Android. Is that normal that you can’t go in a place where you don’t hear about Android? I feel I can’t find such a location.
So, some pictures look awesome, some doesn’t but worth a look anyway. I included some real-usage pics too.

First lets’ see the User Interface (UI) of the Andriod:

Credit goes to those who took the time and created the screenshots.

So, what do you think about the Android?

PageRank Bug or a miracle?

While for some of the webmasters the last few days can be the most happy day in their short life, some of them are crying at the doors of the Google Dome for a good answer.

Why? Google’s tenth birthday resulted a worldwide Page Rank update in the Google datacenters, which made some webmasters go mad, because sites with a page rank of 6 or even more suddenly dropped to 3-4.
And why some webmasters are happy? Because their domains got extremely high rankings. I saw people whos websites with no 0 or no page rank suddenly got a page rank of 3-4 or even higher.
My case is even weirder. One of the domains I use for development purposes, never opened for the public and behind a HTTP authentication, all of sudden got a PR 8? I guess that’s , well, weird.

The recent page rank update it seems started the day before yesterday, so that makes Friday, September 26, 2008. In a moment all the sites I visit on a daily basis had their page ranks changed.
How do I check page rank? That’s simple: Google Toolbar.
By the way, which is more plausible: Google updated the PageRanks and for some websites they were extremely generous, or as they also released the new Google Toolbar, they adjusted something in the algorithm which calculates the PageRank , and they accidentally coded a bug in the algorithm?

Get at least $1 per click with AdSense, hacking the relation between AdSense and AdWords

This article will be weird a bit, but in the same time very logical.
I’m an AdWords publisher, we create ads which appear in the search engines’ sponsored results or on thee content network, on AdSense publisher’s websites.
It was a hard way to learn that some keywords we are bidding on, cost a lot for us. Basically, because of bidding. AdWords is just an auction site, the only difference between Ebay and AdWords is that we don’t bid on items, but on keywords. Due to the bidding, some keywords are very expensive.

An example: I wrote an article about asbestos insulation in a PC case. If I would like to advertise that article using AdWords, I would bid on keywords like these:

• asbestos
• fireproof insulation
• mesothelioma
• asbestos cancer
• etc.

There is a problem with these keywords, specifically that I have to bid over $50 to $70 to use them. That means that if somebody clicks my ad, I will pay up to $70, for one single click.
And here comes the relation between AdWords and AdSense. While the AdSense publisher on whom website my advertisement was clicked will not get all that money because AdWords has a quite high commission, it will still get much more than the usual $0.05 or $0.1 .
So, we, AdSense publishers might get an idea which keywords pay better, and write articles or post content related to those keywords. Be aware though, that the webmaster guidelines states that we should publish our content for the User, you who reads this article, not for search engines or revenue centered, in our case to get better CPC in AdSense. But what if the article actually IS interesting? I guess then the above guideline is not applied on us.

Highest Paying AdSense Keywords

Do exist such a list? The answer is disappointing: no, there’s no such list, and can’t really exist. The lists you can find all over the net either for free or for money are useless, because the AdWords advertisers are constantly changing the ads, they bid on different keywords each day or week, so if I publish now a list of highest paying keywords, in a week or even in a few days it will become outdated, useless.
One thing is sure though. Even though the keywords are constantly changing, the highest paying keywords will always be related to the following things:

• Asbestos, related illnesses and services
• Auto insurance
• Life insurance
• Loans and related services
• Lawyers
• Cosmetic surgery in Los Angeles and Florida

While you can write articles related to the above keywords with the scope of getting better CPC it’s not a very wise act. You should write your content for your users, to be interesting for the users. If you write articles with the scope of high revenue and it’s not interesting for your users, you basically cut the tree under yourself.

While you may argue on the truth of this article, keep in mind that I tested this phenomena and I wrote about my own experience.