Evaluating Your Site’s Eligibility

The AdWords program is available to anyone willing to pay for qualified clickthroughs.
Google prevents the display of ads that are not sufficiently relevant
to gain a minimum clickthrough rate, sparing consumers irrelevancy on their
search results pages. Above all, Google protects the consumer search experience
on the Google site. Next on the food chain is the AdWords advertiser,
whom Google strives to protect from poor-quality exposure. For that reason,
Google limits AdSense host sites in certain ways.
To keep the value chain sparkling throughout the AdSense network, Google
establishes the following basic guidelines and terms-of-service rules:
 Vanity sites aren’t allowed. This limitation is perhaps confusing because
some sites start out as personal expressions but add informational, editorial,
and service value over time. Google is the only arbiter of these situations.
A 15-year-old who puts up a Web page showing pictures of her
dog probably wouldn’t be allowed to run AdSense ads. An amateur historian
who describes Civil War reenactments and collects articles probably
would be allowed to run AdSense ads. AdSense sites don’t have to be
commercial, but they must contain content of some substance. Google
leans toward professional sites, whether they’re operated by individuals
or companies.
198 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
The optimization piece of the AdSense puzzle
Relevance is the name of the game at Google,
no matter how you approach it. On the front end,
searchers seek sites relevant to their keywords.
On the back end, advertisers seek relevant
matches between their ads and consumers
using the search engine. When it comes to
AdSense, relevance is likewise crucial to the
content publisher. The Webmaster needs ad
displays relevant to site content. If the ads are
irrelevant, visitors ignore them at best and are
annoyed with them at worst.
Google does its part by applying its relevancy
algorithm to the content site, deducing what it’s
about and serving up targeted ads. My experience
is that Google does a fine job . . . when the
site is well optimized. Here, I’m harking back to
Chapter 4, and pulling the Google business
process full circle. The major elements of building
your business with Google — optimizing
the site, building PageRank, advertising in
AdWords, and syndicating with AdSense — are
tied together by keywords. In this case, publishers
in the AdSense program get the relevancy
that they — or, more accurately, their
sites — deserve. Finely optimized pages, with
clear keyword associations built into their tags,
headers, and editorial content, get the most
finely relevant AdWords ads. Relevancy brings
higher clickthrough rates and more revenue.
 Content sites are scrutinized for appropriateness. Like many terms-ofservice
rules applying to hosted content, Google’s guidelines prohibit
running AdSense ads on sites that promote illegal behavior, pornography,
or gambling. In a similar vein, excessive profanity can get an
AdSense site excluded from the program, as can content promoting hate
or violence. Copyright infringement of any sort (music, books, video) is
also out of the question.
 The site must be functional. This is basic optimization. Make sure your
links work and that the site is available to visitors without undue delay
or difficulty. Remember, Google crawls the entire site and can easily discover
dysfunctional navigation.
 You may not reference the displayed ads in your content. Just let the
ads appear. Don’t talk about them, and — most importantly — don’t
advise your visitors to click them. Don’t click the ads yourself. (See a special
warning about this point in the last paragraph in this section.) Don’t
offer incentives for clicking the ads or plead with visitors to support your
site by clicking any advertising on any page running AdSense ads. You
should probably avoid mentioning any of your advertising throughout
the site. Google is serious about protecting the clickthrough quality on
behalf of its advertisers. Clickthroughs are supposed to represent qualified
leads to the advertiser. If you dilute the quality of your site’s clickthroughs,
Google will cut you off like a stern bartender at closing time.
 Use only supported languages. Google currently supports sites whose
main language is English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese,
Japanese, or Spanish. AdWords advertisers have access to greater language
support, including Danish, Finnish, and Chinese. But the issue is
not just displaying ads in the language of your site but also crawling and
identifying your site effectively.
 Competing ads are not allowed. Before you advertising veterans get
alarmed, Google means “competing” in a strict sense. You can’t run other
ads derived from search engines, or text ads that look substantially similar
to AdWords ads. You’re certainly permitted to run banner ads (see
Figure 11-2) and, in most cases, simple sponsored links. Affiliate links are
definitely allowed.
To be accepted into the AdSense program, Google must check out your site’s
suitability. Interested parties simply apply online (a short contact form, which
includes your URL for their review). Once accepted, participating sites begin
by simply placing AdSense HTML code on their Web pages. (I describe this in
more detail in the Chapter 12.) AdSense ads start appearing almost immediately.
When that happens, Google is alerted to the presence of a new AdSense
site in the network and reviews the site for eligibility. Sites that fail to qualify
are discontinued soon after they begin hosting ads.
Chapter 11: Introducing the Google AdSense Program 199
The exact order of events is as follows:
1. Apply for and open an AdSense account.
As with other Google accounts, starting an account is free. The AdSense
program has no activation fee nor do you have to provide payment information.
However, you do need to provide a Social Security number or
tax ID number as well as an address so that Google can pay you. The
necessary tax-form submission is accomplished online — no need to
print and mail any forms.
2. Select an ad style for the AdWords ads that will appear on your pages.
Google provides interactive pages so that you can choose a display
configuration and the colors of the ad text and borders, as shown in
Figure 11-3.
3. Clip the code.
As you select display properties, Google creates HTML for pasting into
your page(s), as shown in Figure 11-4. The code uses javascript to call
the ads and pull them from Google to your site.
Figure 11-2:
This site is
running a
top-page
banner ad
and Google
AdWords
(through the
AdSense
program) in
the right
column.
200 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
Figure 11-4:
Google
provides
ready-made
HTML code
tailored to
your ad
style
choices.
Figure 11-3:
Select color
palettes and
ad layout
styles for
your
AdSense
pages.
Chapter 11: Introducing the Google AdSense Program 201
4. Incorporate the code.
Here, you put Google’s code into your page documents. You decide
which pages will run AdWords displays, and where on the page the ads
will appear. You need to have a working knowledge of HTML, or use a
page-building program that understands javascript and lets you drag it
around the page.
5. Upload your new pages and wait.
Your new pages, embedded with Google’s code addition, must be
uploaded to your server, of course. In most cases, Google ads start
appearing instantly when the pages are visited. If you visit your own site
immediately after uploading, you’ll probably see ads.
6. Google crawls your site.
Soon after your AdSense-enhanced site is first visited, Google crawls your
pages. Google is extremely responsive to new AdSense sites and performs
a relevancy crawl within minutes, in many cases. Whether or not your site
is in Google’s main Web index, it is still crawled for AdSense. In the (usually
brief) time between uploading your AdSense-enhanced pages and
Google’s AdSense crawl, the ads served to your site might not seem relevant.
Google fills the ad space with broadly targeted public service ads,
in most cases. Keep watching your pages — click your browser’s Reload
button or sequentially visit your pages. In most cases, within minutes you
see a change from broad, untargeted ads to highly relevant, sharply targeted
ads. The better your site is optimized, the more relevant its ads
will be.
Note: Chapter 12 probes the details of each of these steps. Google’s AdSense
pages also walk you through the steps in simple fashion. If you’re certain
your site is eligible, and you want to dive in without reading Chapter 12, feel
free. Experienced Webmasters can’t damage their sites with AdSense. You
can always bail out, temporarily or permanently, by simply removing the
AdSense code from one or more pages. (Each AdSense page operates independently.)
And you can always make changes when you want to alter the
display properties of the ads.
AdSense is not a path into Google’s main Web index. In reading this chapter
and in understanding that Google crawls every AdSense site, you might think
that clipping AdSense code and planting it on your pages is the quickest way
to get your site crawled. This tactic is neither a quick nor a slow way of getting
into the Web index and starting a PageRank. Google’s AdSense index is
separate from the Web index. Being in one does not put you in the other and
doesn’t hasten the other to crawl your site.