السبت، 28 فبراير 2009
الجمعة، 27 فبراير 2009
Get Goghing with AdSense for search
A few months ago, we shared a number of AdSense for search optimization tips with you. Here's the story of one AdSense publisher who recently tried some of these techniques and saw substantial results after making a few small changes.
VanGoghGallery.com is an art resource site that provides information about the life and work of Vincent van Gogh. Site owner Greg Alexander runs the Van Gogh Gallery to educate and share information about the artist, and has also used the site to explore new Internet marketing techniques. Greg joined AdSense in 2007, and although he didn't know much about the program at first, he found it "a great opportunity to generate some revenue without spending the effort to sell ads." He also tried other ad providers, "but none of them yielded the results that AdSense did. In addition, AdSense was the only one that provided relevant ads for our visitors."
To help users navigate through the many pages of the Van Gogh Gallery, Greg added an AdSense for search box to the right column of his pages. By enabling SiteSearch and displaying search results on his own pages, he was able to help users find what they were looking for while staying on his site.
As an optimization experiment, Greg recently moved his search box to the center column of his pages and extended it to twice its original width.
In addition, Greg made slight changes to the search results pages -- he removed the borders from the ads and search results, and added a new search box to the search results pages. According to Greg, "altogether, these changes took less than 15 minutes to do."
After making these updates, Greg noticed a dramatic and immediate increase in the usage of search on the Van Gogh Gallery. He found that "the number of queries performed each day increased 8 to 10 times, and search ad clicks and revenues increased even more." His search earnings quickly grew from less than a dollar a day to double digits since his optimization test. "Now we frequently receive more search ad clicks than our total number of searches pre-optimization," says Greg. "I'm still amazed at how simple changes can have such an incredible impact."
Greg has started using the earnings from his AdSearch optimization efforts to build and host additional websites about other artists. "Ultimately," Greg says,"we hope to use the earnings to fund research trips to Europe to see the works of the masters and expand the quality of information we offer visitors to our sites."
Have you also tried our AdSense for search optimization tips and found success? Let us know.
VanGoghGallery.com is an art resource site that provides information about the life and work of Vincent van Gogh. Site owner Greg Alexander runs the Van Gogh Gallery to educate and share information about the artist, and has also used the site to explore new Internet marketing techniques. Greg joined AdSense in 2007, and although he didn't know much about the program at first, he found it "a great opportunity to generate some revenue without spending the effort to sell ads." He also tried other ad providers, "but none of them yielded the results that AdSense did. In addition, AdSense was the only one that provided relevant ads for our visitors."
To help users navigate through the many pages of the Van Gogh Gallery, Greg added an AdSense for search box to the right column of his pages. By enabling SiteSearch and displaying search results on his own pages, he was able to help users find what they were looking for while staying on his site.
As an optimization experiment, Greg recently moved his search box to the center column of his pages and extended it to twice its original width.
Before
After
In addition, Greg made slight changes to the search results pages -- he removed the borders from the ads and search results, and added a new search box to the search results pages. According to Greg, "altogether, these changes took less than 15 minutes to do."
After making these updates, Greg noticed a dramatic and immediate increase in the usage of search on the Van Gogh Gallery. He found that "the number of queries performed each day increased 8 to 10 times, and search ad clicks and revenues increased even more." His search earnings quickly grew from less than a dollar a day to double digits since his optimization test. "Now we frequently receive more search ad clicks than our total number of searches pre-optimization," says Greg. "I'm still amazed at how simple changes can have such an incredible impact."
Greg has started using the earnings from his AdSearch optimization efforts to build and host additional websites about other artists. "Ultimately," Greg says,"we hope to use the earnings to fund research trips to Europe to see the works of the masters and expand the quality of information we offer visitors to our sites."
Have you also tried our AdSense for search optimization tips and found success? Let us know.
الأربعاء، 25 فبراير 2009
Canonical Link Element: presentation from SMX West
A little while ago, Google and other search engines announced support for a canonical link element that can help site owners with duplicate content issues. I recreated my presentation from SMX West and you can watch it below:
You can access the slides directly or follow along here:
You can access the slides directly or follow along here:
By the way, Ask just announced that they will support the canonical link element. Read all about it in the Ask.com blog entry.
Thanks again to Wysz for turning this into a great video.
Thanks again to Wysz for turning this into a great video.
In fact, you might not have seen it, but we recently created a webmaster videos channel on YouTube. If you're interested, you can watch the new webmaster channel. If you subscribe to that channel, you'll always find out about new webmaster-related videos from Google.
الثلاثاء، 24 فبراير 2009
My content, your content, other people's content
Sometimes we receive reports about AdSense code appearing on websites that may contain content copied from other websites. We understand that many of our publishers are concerned about this issue, so we'd like to give you some information about the procedures and tools you can use to protect your content.
For example, let's suppose you own a movie blog, where you recently posted an article about your favorite actor. After publishing it, you notice that another website has copied and published your article without your permission. The owner of the other website doesn't respond to your requests to remove the content, and it is monetizing their pages with AdSense.
In a situation like this, where you believe that a site containing AdSense code is illegally copying your site's content, you can let us know by following the process described in our Help Center. It's our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other applicable intellectual property laws.
The notice should be sent directly from the owner of the copyrighted materials allegedly being infringed (in the example above, that's you), as we are unable to accept third-party copyright complaints. Also keep in mind that we are unable to process copyright complaints received through the AdSense policy violation report form. Once we've received a notice of infringement, we will take appropriate action. If you'd like more information about our DMCA process, please visit http://www.google.com/adsense_dmca.html.
Additionally, if you find a site that is scraping (misappropriating and republishing) your content, you can report it for a potential violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. To do this, fill out the form at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport (you must be logged into your Google Account to access this form).
For example, let's suppose you own a movie blog, where you recently posted an article about your favorite actor. After publishing it, you notice that another website has copied and published your article without your permission. The owner of the other website doesn't respond to your requests to remove the content, and it is monetizing their pages with AdSense.
In a situation like this, where you believe that a site containing AdSense code is illegally copying your site's content, you can let us know by following the process described in our Help Center. It's our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other applicable intellectual property laws.
The notice should be sent directly from the owner of the copyrighted materials allegedly being infringed (in the example above, that's you), as we are unable to accept third-party copyright complaints. Also keep in mind that we are unable to process copyright complaints received through the AdSense policy violation report form. Once we've received a notice of infringement, we will take appropriate action. If you'd like more information about our DMCA process, please visit http://www.google.com/adsense_dmca.html.
Additionally, if you find a site that is scraping (misappropriating and republishing) your content, you can report it for a potential violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. To do this, fill out the form at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport (you must be logged into your Google Account to access this form).
Introducing the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel
In his State of the Index presentation, Matt Cutts said that one of the things to look for from Google in 2009 is continued communication with webmasters. On the Webmaster Central team, we've found that using video is a great way to reach people. We've shown step-by-step instructions on how to use features of Webmaster Tools, shared our presentations with folks who were unable to make it to conferences, and even taken you through a day in the life of our very own Maile Ohye as she meets with many Googlers involved in webmaster support.
We plan on releasing more videos like these in the future, so we've opened up our own channel on YouTube to host webmaster-related videos. Our first video is already up, and we'll have more to share with you soon. If you want to be the first to know when we release something new, you can subscribe to us using your YouTube account, or grab this RSS feed if you'd like to keep track in your feed reader. Please let us know how you like the channel, and use the comments in this post to share your ideas for future videos.
And while we'll all do our best to make sure Matt Cutts understands that Rick Rolling is so last year, be careful where you click on April 1st.
We plan on releasing more videos like these in the future, so we've opened up our own channel on YouTube to host webmaster-related videos. Our first video is already up, and we'll have more to share with you soon. If you want to be the first to know when we release something new, you can subscribe to us using your YouTube account, or grab this RSS feed if you'd like to keep track in your feed reader. Please let us know how you like the channel, and use the comments in this post to share your ideas for future videos.
And while we'll all do our best to make sure Matt Cutts understands that Rick Rolling is so last year, be careful where you click on April 1st.
السبت، 21 فبراير 2009
自製"原子彈麵包"
有天我們就突然想要吃麵包,於是就自己開始動手做麵包. 景氣差也是要有應變方法,而且體會其中的樂趣也是幸福啊! 在忙碌的生活中,這也算是忙裡偷閒啦!不過在做這麵包以前, 我就有嘗試做過biscuit還有garlic bread (大蒜麵包). 大蒜麵包很好吃！不過biscuit可能是沒有等奶油全部軟化,導致攪和不均勻,鹽又放太多,導致失敗!下次一定要再試一次!我biscuit是遵循Food Network的名人主廚 Paula Deen的食譜去做, 她是一個不大笑沒辦法做菜的奶奶級廚師. 下次要試試她的Hurry Up Chicken Pot Pie,看起來好像很簡單又好吃!不過說真的,在做這麵包的時候,還沒有想到會變成這麼大! 就跟黑輪放到火鍋裡面一樣,突然就變小胖. Amazing!**這次的原子彈麵包是用幾樣簡單的材料作成**Flour (麵粉), for bread尤佳, 3杯
الجمعة، 20 فبراير 2009
Best practices against hacking
These days, the majority of websites are built around applications to provide good services to their users. In particular, are widely used to create, edit and administrate content. Due to the interactive nature of these systems, where the input of users is fundamental, it's important to think about security in order to avoid exploits by malicious third parties and to ensure the best user experience.
Some types of hacking attempts and how to prevent them
There are many different types of attacks hackers can conduct in order to take partial or total control of a website. In general, the most common and dangerous ones are SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).
SQL injection is a technique to inject a piece of malicious code in a web application, exploiting a security vulnerability at the database level to change its behavior. It is a really powerful technique, considering that it can manipulate URLs (query string) or any form (search, login, email registration) to inject malicious code. You can find some examples of SQL injection at the Web Application Security Consortium.
There are definitely some precautions that can be taken to avoid this kind of attack. For example, it's a good practice to add a layer between a form on the front end and the database in the back end. In PHP, the PDO extension is often used to work with parameters (sometimes called placeholders or bind variables) instead of embedding user input in the statement. Another really easy technique is character escaping, where all the dangerous characters that can have a direct effect on the database structure are escaped. For instance, every occurrence of a single quote ['] in a parameter must be replaced by two single quotes [''] to form a valid SQL string literal. These are only two of the most common actions you can take to improve the security of a site and avoid SQL injections. Online you can find many other specific resources that can fit your needs (programming languages, specific web applications ...).
The other technique that we're going to introduce here is cross-site scripting (XSS). XSS is a technique used to inject malicious code in a webpage, exploiting security vulnerabilities of web applications. This kind of attack is possible where the web application is processing data obtained through user input and without any further check or validation before returning it to the final user. You can find some examples of cross-site scripting at the Web Application Security Consortium.
There are many ways of securing a web application against this technique. Some easy actions that can be taken include:
SQL injection and cross-site scripting are only two of the many techniques used by hackers to attack and exploit innocent sites. As a general security guideline, it's important to always stay updated on security issues and, in particular when using third party software, to make sure you've installed the latest available version. Many web applications are built around big communities, offering constant support and updates.
To give a few examples, four of the biggest communities of Open Source content management systems—Joomla, WordPress, PHP-Nuke, and Drupal—offer useful guidelines on security on their websites and host big community-driven forums where users can escalate issues and ask for support. For instance, in the Hardening WordPress section of its website, WordPress offers comprehensive documentation on how to strengthen the security of its CMS. Joomla offers many resources regarding security, in particular a Security Checklist with a comprehensive list of actions webmasters should take to improve the security of a website based on Joomla. On Drupal's site, you can access information about security issues by going to their Security section. You can also subscribe to their security mailing list to be constantly updated on ongoing issues. PHP-Nuke offers some documentation about Security in chapter 23 of their How to section, dedicated to the system management of this CMS platform. They also have a section called Hacked - Now what? that offers guidelines to solve issues related to hacking.
Some ways to identify the hacking of your site
As mentioned above, there are many different types of attacks hackers can perform on a site, and there are different methods of exploiting an innocent site. When hackers are able to take complete control of a site, they can deface it (changing the homepage), erase all the content (dropping the tables of your database), or insert malware or cookie stealers. They can also exploit a site for spamming, such as by hiding links pointing to spammy resources or creating pages that redirect to malware sites. When these changes in your application are evident (like defacing), you can easily spot the hacking activity; but for other types of exploits, in particular those with spammy intent, it won't be so obvious. Google, through some of its products, offers webmasters some ways of spotting if a site has been hacked or modified by a third party without permission. For example, by using Google Search you can spot typical keywords added by hackers to your website and identify the pages that have been compromised. Just open google.com and run a site: search query on your website, looking for commercial keywords that hackers commonly use for spammy purposes (such as viagra, porn, mp3, gambling, etc.):
[site:example.com viagra]
If you're not already familiar with the site: search operator, it's a way to query Google by restricting your search to a specific site. For example, the search site:googleblog.blogspot.com will only return results from the Official Google Blog. When adding spammy keywords to this type of query, Google will return all the indexed pages of your website that contain those spammy keywords and that are, with high probability, hacked. To check these suspicious pages, just open the cached version proposed by Google and you will be able to spot the hacked behavior, if any. You could then clean up your compromised pages and also check for any anomalies in the configuration files of your server (for example on Apache web servers: .htaccess and httpd.conf).
If your site doesn't show up in Google's search results anymore, it could mean that Google has already spotted bad practices on your site as a result of the hacking and may have temporarily removed it from our index, due to infringement of our webmaster quality guidelines.
In order to constantly keep an eye on the presence of suspicious keywords on your website, you could also use Google Alerts to monitor queries like:
site:example.com viagra OR casino OR porn OR ringtones
You will receive an email alert whenever these keywords are found in the content of your site.
You can also use Google's Webmaster Tools to spot any hacking activity on your site. Webmaster Tools provide statistics about top search queries for your site. This data will help you to monitor if your site is ranking for suspicious unrelated spammy keywords. The 'What Googlebot sees' data is also useful, since you'll see whether Google is detecting any unusual keywords on your site, regardless of whether you're ranking for them or not.
If you have a Webmaster Tools account and Google believes that your site has been hacked, often you will be notified according to the type of exploit on your site:
Your site has been hacked or is serving malware? First, clean up the malware mess and then do one of the following:
Some types of hacking attempts and how to prevent them
There are many different types of attacks hackers can conduct in order to take partial or total control of a website. In general, the most common and dangerous ones are SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).
SQL injection is a technique to inject a piece of malicious code in a web application, exploiting a security vulnerability at the database level to change its behavior. It is a really powerful technique, considering that it can manipulate URLs (query string) or any form (search, login, email registration) to inject malicious code. You can find some examples of SQL injection at the Web Application Security Consortium.
There are definitely some precautions that can be taken to avoid this kind of attack. For example, it's a good practice to add a layer between a form on the front end and the database in the back end. In PHP, the PDO extension is often used to work with parameters (sometimes called placeholders or bind variables) instead of embedding user input in the statement. Another really easy technique is character escaping, where all the dangerous characters that can have a direct effect on the database structure are escaped. For instance, every occurrence of a single quote ['] in a parameter must be replaced by two single quotes [''] to form a valid SQL string literal. These are only two of the most common actions you can take to improve the security of a site and avoid SQL injections. Online you can find many other specific resources that can fit your needs (programming languages, specific web applications ...).
The other technique that we're going to introduce here is cross-site scripting (XSS). XSS is a technique used to inject malicious code in a webpage, exploiting security vulnerabilities of web applications. This kind of attack is possible where the web application is processing data obtained through user input and without any further check or validation before returning it to the final user. You can find some examples of cross-site scripting at the Web Application Security Consortium.
There are many ways of securing a web application against this technique. Some easy actions that can be taken include:
- Stripping the input that can be inserted in a form (for example, see the strip tags function in PHP);
- Using data encoding to avoid direct injection of potentially malicious characters (for example, see the htmlspecialchars function in PHP);
- Creating a layer between data input and the back end to avoid direct injection of code in the application.
SQL injection and cross-site scripting are only two of the many techniques used by hackers to attack and exploit innocent sites. As a general security guideline, it's important to always stay updated on security issues and, in particular when using third party software, to make sure you've installed the latest available version. Many web applications are built around big communities, offering constant support and updates.
To give a few examples, four of the biggest communities of Open Source content management systems—Joomla, WordPress, PHP-Nuke, and Drupal—offer useful guidelines on security on their websites and host big community-driven forums where users can escalate issues and ask for support. For instance, in the Hardening WordPress section of its website, WordPress offers comprehensive documentation on how to strengthen the security of its CMS. Joomla offers many resources regarding security, in particular a Security Checklist with a comprehensive list of actions webmasters should take to improve the security of a website based on Joomla. On Drupal's site, you can access information about security issues by going to their Security section. You can also subscribe to their security mailing list to be constantly updated on ongoing issues. PHP-Nuke offers some documentation about Security in chapter 23 of their How to section, dedicated to the system management of this CMS platform. They also have a section called Hacked - Now what? that offers guidelines to solve issues related to hacking.
Some ways to identify the hacking of your site
As mentioned above, there are many different types of attacks hackers can perform on a site, and there are different methods of exploiting an innocent site. When hackers are able to take complete control of a site, they can deface it (changing the homepage), erase all the content (dropping the tables of your database), or insert malware or cookie stealers. They can also exploit a site for spamming, such as by hiding links pointing to spammy resources or creating pages that redirect to malware sites. When these changes in your application are evident (like defacing), you can easily spot the hacking activity; but for other types of exploits, in particular those with spammy intent, it won't be so obvious. Google, through some of its products, offers webmasters some ways of spotting if a site has been hacked or modified by a third party without permission. For example, by using Google Search you can spot typical keywords added by hackers to your website and identify the pages that have been compromised. Just open google.com and run a site: search query on your website, looking for commercial keywords that hackers commonly use for spammy purposes (such as viagra, porn, mp3, gambling, etc.):
[site:example.com viagra]
If you're not already familiar with the site: search operator, it's a way to query Google by restricting your search to a specific site. For example, the search site:googleblog.blogspot.com will only return results from the Official Google Blog. When adding spammy keywords to this type of query, Google will return all the indexed pages of your website that contain those spammy keywords and that are, with high probability, hacked. To check these suspicious pages, just open the cached version proposed by Google and you will be able to spot the hacked behavior, if any. You could then clean up your compromised pages and also check for any anomalies in the configuration files of your server (for example on Apache web servers: .htaccess and httpd.conf).
If your site doesn't show up in Google's search results anymore, it could mean that Google has already spotted bad practices on your site as a result of the hacking and may have temporarily removed it from our index, due to infringement of our webmaster quality guidelines.
In order to constantly keep an eye on the presence of suspicious keywords on your website, you could also use Google Alerts to monitor queries like:
site:example.com viagra OR casino OR porn OR ringtones
You will receive an email alert whenever these keywords are found in the content of your site.
You can also use Google's Webmaster Tools to spot any hacking activity on your site. Webmaster Tools provide statistics about top search queries for your site. This data will help you to monitor if your site is ranking for suspicious unrelated spammy keywords. The 'What Googlebot sees' data is also useful, since you'll see whether Google is detecting any unusual keywords on your site, regardless of whether you're ranking for them or not.
If you have a Webmaster Tools account and Google believes that your site has been hacked, often you will be notified according to the type of exploit on your site:
- If a malicious third party is using your site for spammy behaviors (such as hiding links or creating spammy pages) and it has been detected by our crawler, often you will be notified in the Message Center with detailed information (a sample of hacked URLs or anchor text of the hidden links);
- If your site is exploited to place malicious software such as malware, you will see a malware warning on the 'Overview' page of your Webmaster Tools account.
Your site has been hacked or is serving malware? First, clean up the malware mess and then do one of the following:
- If your site was hacked for spammy purpose, please visit our reconsideration request page through Webmaster Tools to request reconsideration of your site;
- If your site was serving malware to users, please submit a malware review request on the 'Overview' page of Webmaster Tools.
Fontastic new options for your ad units
You've been asking for more control over the appearance of the ads on your sites, so we're happy to let you know that you can now change the font face of the text in ad units on pages in Latin-character languages. You can choose between Arial, Times, and Verdana font faces. Please note that while font options will appear in every account, they'll currently only be applied to ad units on pages primarily in Latin-based characters.
There are a few ways to customize the font face of your ad units. If you'd like to quickly change the font settings for every ad unit generated from your account, visit the 'Ad Display Preference' section of your Account Settings page to select a new account-wide font face. This will affect all units you've created in the past, regardless of whether you used the Manage Ads feature. By default, your ads are currently set to 'Standard AdSense font family', which we've found has performed well across browsers and displays.
However, you can also select custom font faces for specific ad units that you've created with the Manage Ads feature. When creating new ad units, you'll be prompted to select between the default 'Standard AdSense font family', your new account-wide font face (if you've selected one), or another font face. You can also change the appearance of existing ad units, by visiting the Manage Ads page of your account and updating your font choices for specific ad units. Once you've changed the font face of an ad unit away from the default, those selections will be maintained even if you change your account-wide settings later.
Just as with color and placement optimizations, we encourage you to test these new font options to find the best combination for your sites. For instance, you can try matching the font face of your ads to that of your sites. Enjoy the new font faces, and feel free to leave feedback in our comments field below.
There are a few ways to customize the font face of your ad units. If you'd like to quickly change the font settings for every ad unit generated from your account, visit the 'Ad Display Preference' section of your Account Settings page to select a new account-wide font face. This will affect all units you've created in the past, regardless of whether you used the Manage Ads feature. By default, your ads are currently set to 'Standard AdSense font family', which we've found has performed well across browsers and displays.
However, you can also select custom font faces for specific ad units that you've created with the Manage Ads feature. When creating new ad units, you'll be prompted to select between the default 'Standard AdSense font family', your new account-wide font face (if you've selected one), or another font face. You can also change the appearance of existing ad units, by visiting the Manage Ads page of your account and updating your font choices for specific ad units. Once you've changed the font face of an ad unit away from the default, those selections will be maintained even if you change your account-wide settings later.
Just as with color and placement optimizations, we encourage you to test these new font options to find the best combination for your sites. For instance, you can try matching the font face of your ads to that of your sites. Enjoy the new font faces, and feel free to leave feedback in our comments field below.
الخميس، 19 فبراير 2009
State of the Index: my presentation from PubCon Vegas
It seems like people enjoyed when I recreated my Virtual Blight talk from the Web 2.0 Summit late last year, so we decided to post another video. This video recreates the "State of the Index" talk that I did at PubCon in Las Vegas late last year as well.
and if you'd like to follow along, here are the slides:
Here's the video of the presentation:
and if you'd like to follow along, here are the slides:
You can also access the presentation directly. Thanks again to Wysz for recording this video and splicing the slides into the video.
Site maintenance on Saturday, February 21
Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance this Saturday, February 21st. While you won't be able to log into your AdSense or Google Ad Manager accounts between 10am and 2pm PST, we'll continue tracking your clicks, impressions, and earnings as usual. In addition, your ad serving won't be affected.
For our international readers, here's the start time of the maintenance in a few other cities:
London - 6pm Saturday
Cairo - 8pm Saturday
Mumbai - 11:30pm Saturday
Manila - 2am Sunday
Sydney - 5am Sunday
For our international readers, here's the start time of the maintenance in a few other cities:
London - 6pm Saturday
Cairo - 8pm Saturday
Mumbai - 11:30pm Saturday
Manila - 2am Sunday
Sydney - 5am Sunday
الأحد، 15 فبراير 2009
Reports being updated
Yesterday, we experienced an issue which caused AdSense and Google Ad Manager reports to be delayed through the day. The issue began at 4am PST and lasted several hours, but has now been resolved. No stats from yesterday were lost, and our engineers have been working to restore your reports with the clicks, impressions, and earnings accrued from your sites. Most publisher reports have now been updated with yesterday's data, with a few accounts still catching up.
Thanks for your continued patience, and we apologize for the alarm and inconvenience caused by this reporting delay.
Thanks for your continued patience, and we apologize for the alarm and inconvenience caused by this reporting delay.
السبت، 14 فبراير 2009
With love, from me (the AdSense Crawler) to you
We recently caught up with our friend the AdSense Crawler, who wanted to share this poem with our publishers:
Red roses are fine for showing your love,
Kisses, jewelry, and chocolate, they’re okay.
Yet my heart skips a beat from none of the above,
Ask me what thrills and delights me and I’ll say:
Great content’s what contents me when I visit your site,
Stuff your truffles and send me a rich word bouquet,
Keep your flowers, give me phrases, they’re what excite!
Every day crawling your pages is Valentine’s Day.
- The AdSense Crawler
Happy Valentine's Day!
Red roses are fine for showing your love,Kisses, jewelry, and chocolate, they’re okay.
Yet my heart skips a beat from none of the above,
Ask me what thrills and delights me and I’ll say:
Great content’s what contents me when I visit your site,
Stuff your truffles and send me a rich word bouquet,
Keep your flowers, give me phrases, they’re what excite!
Every day crawling your pages is Valentine’s Day.
- The AdSense Crawler
Happy Valentine's Day!
可憐的鄰居
有天早上醒來, 就在要開門check mailbox時, 突然有個景象從我眼前閃過.就是這個!!! 可憐的鄰居小孩, 被同學惡作劇,在他們家的樹上捲滿了衛生紙. 這是美國小鬼常用的惡作劇手法, 剛看見時我還真不知道說啥! 但下意識的衝到樓上,拿我的相機, 開大門,快速咖擦,閃人!不好意思嘛! 傍晚出門再仔細看,惡作劇的小鬼還分得真清楚, 我家前院跟鄰居前院中間好像有某種分界線似的, 我家部份就非常乾淨,鄰居的則是充滿衛生紙. 經過幾天的觀察, 鄰居大概過了三天後, 他們家的teenager才開始想辦法把衛生紙扯下來. 其實這種衛生紙可以溶解於水,但那幾天不下雨,sigh.. 他甚至把車開到樹下,踏到車頂上去拉,但其實非常難拉. 中間還有好心的路人慢跑經過來幫忙. 不過因為這幾天狂下雨,其實也溶解得差不多了. 還真麻煩呢!
家裡後院的檸檬樹&柳丁樹
自從搬到LA後, 最讓我嘖嘖稱奇的就是家裡後院的檸檬樹. 就這麼大辣辣的佇立在一旁,不管何時看都是呈現一片金黃色. 而且長出來的檸檬, 跟柚子一樣大. 於是我一次都摘了十擠棵擠成檸檬汁來喝, 也不用加糖, 健康又省錢喔!檸檬樹旁邊有棵低調的柳丁樹, 默默的閃在一旁, 有點被檸檬樹overshadow啦! 不過能摘下來的柳丁也有50幾顆左右,雖然不是非常甜,有點酸, 但是果汁很多喔!我每天吃兩顆,也感覺很健康. 來瞧瞧檸檬樹本尊再來看看金黃無敵大檸檬以及柳丁小媳婦的特寫
الجمعة، 13 فبراير 2009
Specify your canonical
Carpe diem on any duplicate content worries: we now support a format that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. If your site has identical or vastly similar content that's accessible through multiple URLs, this format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.
Let's take our old example of a site selling Swedish fish. Imagine that your preferred version of the URL and its content looks like this:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish
However, users (and Googlebot) can access Swedish fish through multiple (not as simple) URLs. Even if the key information on these URLs is the same as your preferred version, they may show slight content variations due to things like sort parameters or category navigation:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&category=gummy-candy
Or they have completely identical content, but with different URLs due to things such as a tracking parameters or a session ID:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678
Now, you can simply add this <link> tag to specify your preferred version:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish" />
inside the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&category=gummy-candy
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678
and Google will understand that the duplicates all refer to the canonical URL: http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish. Additional URL properties, like PageRank and related signals, are transferred as well.
This standard can be adopted by any search engine when crawling and indexing your site.
Of course you may have more questions. Joachim Kupke, an engineer from our Indexing Team, is here to provide us with the answers:
Is rel="canonical" a hint or a directive?
It's a hint that we honor strongly. We'll take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.
Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as <link rel="canonical" href="product.php?item=swedish-fish" />?
Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the <link> tag. Also, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL.
Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?
We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us.
What if the rel="canonical" returns a 404?
We'll continue to index your content and use a heuristic to find a canonical, but we recommend that you specify existent URLs as canonicals.
What if the rel="canonical" hasn't yet been indexed?
Like all public content on the web, we strive to discover and crawl a designated canonical URL quickly. As soon as we index it, we'll immediately reconsider the rel="canonical" hint.
Can rel="canonical" be a redirect?
Yes, you can specify a URL that redirects as a canonical URL. Google will then process the redirect as usual and try to index it.
What if I have contradictory rel="canonical" designations?
Our algorithm is lenient: We can follow canonical chains, but we strongly recommend that you update links to point to a single canonical page to ensure optimal canonicalization results.
Can this link tag be used to suggest a canonical URL on a completely different domain?
No. To migrate to a completely different domain, permanent (301) redirects are more appropriate. Google currently will take canonicalization suggestions into account across subdomains (or within a domain), but not across domains. So site owners can suggest www.example.com vs. example.com vs. help.example.com, but not example.com vs. example-widgets.com.
Sounds great—can I see a live example?
Yes, wikia.com helped us as a trusted tester. For example, you'll notice that the source code on the URL http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nelvana_Limited specifies its rel="canonical" as: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nelvana.
The two URLs are nearly identical to each other, except that Nelvana_Limited, the first URL, contains a brief message near its heading. It's a good example of using this feature. With rel="canonical", properties of the two URLs are consolidated in our index and search results display wikia.com's intended version.
Feel free to ask additional questions in our comments below. And if you're unable to implement a canonical designation link, no worries; we'll still do our best to select a preferred version of your duplicate content URLs, and transfer linking properties, just as we did before.
Added: This link-tag is currently also supported by Ask.com, Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo!.
Let's take our old example of a site selling Swedish fish. Imagine that your preferred version of the URL and its content looks like this:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish
However, users (and Googlebot) can access Swedish fish through multiple (not as simple) URLs. Even if the key information on these URLs is the same as your preferred version, they may show slight content variations due to things like sort parameters or category navigation:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&category=gummy-candy
Or they have completely identical content, but with different URLs due to things such as a tracking parameters or a session ID:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678
Now, you can simply add this <link> tag to specify your preferred version:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish" />
inside the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&category=gummy-candy
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678
and Google will understand that the duplicates all refer to the canonical URL: http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish. Additional URL properties, like PageRank and related signals, are transferred as well.
This standard can be adopted by any search engine when crawling and indexing your site.
Of course you may have more questions. Joachim Kupke, an engineer from our Indexing Team, is here to provide us with the answers:
Is rel="canonical" a hint or a directive?
It's a hint that we honor strongly. We'll take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.
Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as <link rel="canonical" href="product.php?item=swedish-fish" />?
Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the <link> tag. Also, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL.
Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?
We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us.
What if the rel="canonical" returns a 404?
We'll continue to index your content and use a heuristic to find a canonical, but we recommend that you specify existent URLs as canonicals.
What if the rel="canonical" hasn't yet been indexed?
Like all public content on the web, we strive to discover and crawl a designated canonical URL quickly. As soon as we index it, we'll immediately reconsider the rel="canonical" hint.
Can rel="canonical" be a redirect?
Yes, you can specify a URL that redirects as a canonical URL. Google will then process the redirect as usual and try to index it.
What if I have contradictory rel="canonical" designations?
Our algorithm is lenient: We can follow canonical chains, but we strongly recommend that you update links to point to a single canonical page to ensure optimal canonicalization results.
Can this link tag be used to suggest a canonical URL on a completely different domain?
No. To migrate to a completely different domain, permanent (301) redirects are more appropriate. Google currently will take canonicalization suggestions into account across subdomains (or within a domain), but not across domains. So site owners can suggest www.example.com vs. example.com vs. help.example.com, but not example.com vs. example-widgets.com.
Sounds great—can I see a live example?
Yes, wikia.com helped us as a trusted tester. For example, you'll notice that the source code on the URL http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nelvana_Limited specifies its rel="canonical" as: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nelvana.
The two URLs are nearly identical to each other, except that Nelvana_Limited, the first URL, contains a brief message near its heading. It's a good example of using this feature. With rel="canonical", properties of the two URLs are consolidated in our index and search results display wikia.com's intended version.
Feel free to ask additional questions in our comments below. And if you're unable to implement a canonical designation link, no worries; we'll still do our best to select a preferred version of your duplicate content URLs, and transfer linking properties, just as we did before.
Added: This link-tag is currently also supported by Ask.com, Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo!.
الخميس، 12 فبراير 2009
Our new Help Forum, now in seven more languages
Back in October, we launched a brand new English Help Forum to make it easier for publishers to ask questions and share advice. Now, we're happy to announce that this Help Forum platform is available for publishers in seven additional languages: French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. To start posting on these forums, sign in with your Google Account.
If you're using the new platform for the first time, some of the new features you'll notice include the ability to vote on a best response to each question, receive answers to your posted questions by email, and subscribe via RSS feed. We've also introduced more community-building aspects to the forum, such as a customizable profile page and a rating system that rewards you for your contributions. Finally, we've integrated a CSE search box on each page, which will allow you to find answers to your questions across the Forum, Help Center, and the blog.
Our Help Forums are also available on Google Groups in Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Slovak, and Turkish -- we'll be sure to let you know when we're able to migrate these languages to our new platform.
If you're using the new platform for the first time, some of the new features you'll notice include the ability to vote on a best response to each question, receive answers to your posted questions by email, and subscribe via RSS feed. We've also introduced more community-building aspects to the forum, such as a customizable profile page and a rating system that rewards you for your contributions. Finally, we've integrated a CSE search box on each page, which will allow you to find answers to your questions across the Forum, Help Center, and the blog.
Our Help Forums are also available on Google Groups in Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Slovak, and Turkish -- we'll be sure to let you know when we're able to migrate these languages to our new platform.
Help us help you
You're a webmaster, right? Well, we love webmasters! To ensure we give you the best support possible, we've set up a survey to get your thoughts on Webmaster Central and our related support efforts. If you have a few extra minutes this week, please click here to give us your honest feedback.
Thanks from all of us on the Webmaster Central Team.
Thanks from all of us on the Webmaster Central Team.
الأربعاء، 11 فبراير 2009
Google Friend Connect introduces the social bar
In our previous Google Friend Connect posts, we've enjoyed connecting with you, the webmasters, and hearing your feedback about Friend Connect. We're now standing on our own two feet -- find us over at the new Social Web Blog where we just announced the new social bar feature.
The social bar packages many of the basic social functions -- sign-in, site activities, comments, and members -- into a single strip that appears at the top or bottom of your website. You can use it alone, or use it to complement your existing social gadgets, by putting it on the top or bottom of as many of your webpages as you want.
For anyone visiting your site, the social bar offers a snapshot of the activity taking place within your website's community. One click on any these features produces a convenient, interactive drop-down gadget, so users get all the functionality of the Friend Connect gadgets, while you save real estate on your website. With the social bar, visitors can:
To try out the social bar before deciding whether to add it to your website, visit:
http://www.ossamples.com/socialmussie/
The social bar packages many of the basic social functions -- sign-in, site activities, comments, and members -- into a single strip that appears at the top or bottom of your website. You can use it alone, or use it to complement your existing social gadgets, by putting it on the top or bottom of as many of your webpages as you want.
For anyone visiting your site, the social bar offers a snapshot of the activity taking place within your website's community. One click on any these features produces a convenient, interactive drop-down gadget, so users get all the functionality of the Friend Connect gadgets, while you save real estate on your website. With the social bar, visitors can:
- Join or sign in to your site, view and edit their profiles, and change their personal settings.
- View recent activity on your website, including new members and posts on any of your pages.
- Post on your wall or read and reply to others' comments.
- See the other members of your site, check out other peoples' profiles, and become friends. Users can also find out if any of their existing friends are members of your site.
To try out the social bar before deciding whether to add it to your website, visit:
http://www.ossamples.com/socialmussie/
الاثنين، 9 فبراير 2009
Payments by Western Union now available in Indonesia
We're excited to introduce Western Union Quick Cash as a new payment method for Indonesia. If you're located in Indonesia, you can now sign up to receive your AdSense payments in cash using the worldwide Western Union money transfer service. This payment method is quick, easy, and free -- that means no more waiting for checks to arrive in the mail or to clear at the bank.
A few things to keep in mind:
A few things to keep in mind:
- Payments follow our normal payment schedule and will be available for pickup at your local Western Union agent the day after they are issued.
- You'll need to present a government-issued ID that matches your AdSense payee name when picking up your payment. If you need to update or correct the payee name listed in your account, please follow the instructions listed in our Help Center.
- Payments by Western Union are currently only available to individual payee names, but not to businesses.
- Payments must be picked up within 35 days of issue or they'll expire. If this happens, a payment hold will be placed on your AdSense account and the payment will be credited back to your account.
- Payments will be made in US dollars, but depending on your local Western Union agent, they may be picked up in your local currency.
الجمعة، 6 فبراير 2009
Six ways to experiment with AdSense and grow your earnings
Welcome to our first-ever guest blog post on Inside AdSense. We're thrilled to have none other than Blogging Evangelist himself, Darren Rowse, to share his expert tips on AdSense optimisation.
Darren first discovered blogging in 2002, and initially thought he'd turn it into a hobby to supplement his full-time job. These days, Darren runs a handful of successful blogs, his most popular being Digital Photography School, and has co-authored a book. He also posts regular tips and advice on ProBlogger.net, a respected and successful resource for bloggers around the world.
We recently caught up with Darren at his home office in Melbourne Australia, and asked him about his experience with Google AdSense.
October 4, 2003 is a date I'll never forget - that was a day that my life changed. It was the day that I discovered AdSense and added it to my very first blog. I added that first advertisement to my blog on a whim, with what I thought was the lofty dream that I might be able to pay for my blogs hosting costs. Over 5 years later, those little text ads have paid my mortgage, fed my family, and enabled me to move my blogging from a hobby, to a part time job, to a full time job and beyond.
It's not been an 'overnight success' by any means but as I've learned to use it, AdSense has been one of my highest online income streams.
My #1 Tip for Using AdSense
If I had to narrow my advice on using AdSense down to a single word it would be 'experiment'. Let me explain.
That day back in October of 2003 I had no idea on what I was doing. The next day when I logged in to see how much I'd earned it was barely enough to buy me a coffee.
However, on that day I decided that those few dollars in earnings showed potential and I determined within myself to learn how best to use AdSense to grow that income. Almost everything I've learned since that day has been through trial and error.
It has been a long process of testing and tracking results. You see, while there are a few good home truths that seem to work on most sites, every website that I've used AdSense on is different. Some things work well on some sites, but it is rare to find something that will work on every site. As a result I tend to experiment with my use of AdSense in these six ways:
There are books, blogs, articles, forums, and other kinds of resources available to AdSense publishers to help them learn how to use AdSense better. However, in my experience the best way to learn is to 'do'. Put time aside to try new things and then put more time aside to review what you learn.
But don't leave it at that. When you learn something -- test it against something else (do some research on A/B split testing to learn how to do this). This continual learning will help you to grow in your own expertise of AdSense and increase your earnings.
Darren first discovered blogging in 2002, and initially thought he'd turn it into a hobby to supplement his full-time job. These days, Darren runs a handful of successful blogs, his most popular being Digital Photography School, and has co-authored a book. He also posts regular tips and advice on ProBlogger.net, a respected and successful resource for bloggers around the world.
We recently caught up with Darren at his home office in Melbourne Australia, and asked him about his experience with Google AdSense.
October 4, 2003 is a date I'll never forget - that was a day that my life changed. It was the day that I discovered AdSense and added it to my very first blog. I added that first advertisement to my blog on a whim, with what I thought was the lofty dream that I might be able to pay for my blogs hosting costs. Over 5 years later, those little text ads have paid my mortgage, fed my family, and enabled me to move my blogging from a hobby, to a part time job, to a full time job and beyond.
It's not been an 'overnight success' by any means but as I've learned to use it, AdSense has been one of my highest online income streams.
My #1 Tip for Using AdSenseIf I had to narrow my advice on using AdSense down to a single word it would be 'experiment'. Let me explain.
That day back in October of 2003 I had no idea on what I was doing. The next day when I logged in to see how much I'd earned it was barely enough to buy me a coffee.
However, on that day I decided that those few dollars in earnings showed potential and I determined within myself to learn how best to use AdSense to grow that income. Almost everything I've learned since that day has been through trial and error.
It has been a long process of testing and tracking results. You see, while there are a few good home truths that seem to work on most sites, every website that I've used AdSense on is different. Some things work well on some sites, but it is rare to find something that will work on every site. As a result I tend to experiment with my use of AdSense in these six ways:
- Ad Position - Most AdSense publishers have seen the neat little heat map that AdSense has produced to show where ads work best on websites. In general it works fairly well and is a great place to start, but make sure you experiment with new positions for ads and see what works best for your site.
Hint: Ads near (or even surrounded by) content have worked the best. I've also found ads at the end of content perform well. People get to the end of reading your article and then are looking for something to do or click -- an ad positioned there can work well.
- Numbers of Ads - More ads earn more than less ads... don't they? Unfortunately it isn't always the case.
Test different combinations and numbers of ad units on your site. There's usually a 'tipping point' where you hit a ceiling of how many ads your users will accept -- push it too far and you could hurt reader engagement, traffic, and in the long run your earnings. On the flip side of this, don't be afraid to have more than one or two ads on a page, particularly if you have long pages with lots of content. - Ad Design - I can still see the first ads that I first used on my blog back in 2003. I can still see them because they fried their imprints into my retina -- they were so LOUD!
I figured that the ads would do best if people noticed them so I went for the most crazy color scheme I could come up with. Over the years I began to experiment with different combinations of ads and found that more subtle or blended ads tended to work best for me. Having said that, you can sometimes blend too much, to the point that the ads become invisible to your reader. So test different colors and designs of ads to see which work best. Use the ad rotating tool that AdSense offer publishers to rotate different designs to work against ad blindness among regular readers. - Ad Sizes - AdSense offers us a range of different ad sizes, so experiment with them all to see which works best. Hint: Some might think that the bigger the ad the better it performs. This is not always true.
For example, I found that the 'large rectangle' ad (336 x 280) didn't work as well for me as the smaller 'medium rectangle' ad (300 x 250). It turns out that more advertisers (at least those in my niche) prefer the medium rectangle ad as it's a more standard ad unit size than the larger one. Again, the key is to experiment and see what works best for your site and niche. - Ad Formats - I've found that choosing image and text ads works better than just choosing text ads, but that's not the only choice we get as AdSense publishers.
AdSense also allow us to run link units, AdSense for search, etc. I've found that each of these different formats will work differently from site to site. I've had blogs where the link unit ads were the best performing units on the site while on other sites it didn't really perform at all. You'll never know unless you test it! - Which Content Converts? - One of the best advances that AdSense has made in the last year has been the integration between it and Google Analytics. To be honest I'm still digging into the metrics that this opens up, but the insight that this gives has amazing potential to increase earnings.
By looking at this data you can see what type of content is converting and what isn't. You can also see what type of traffic is converting and what isn't. For example, I've found that search engine referrals are converting better than traffic from social media sites on one of my blogs. Knowing this is powerful as it tells you what type of ads to serve to what types of traffic, what type of promotion to put effort towards, and what type of content to write more of.
There are books, blogs, articles, forums, and other kinds of resources available to AdSense publishers to help them learn how to use AdSense better. However, in my experience the best way to learn is to 'do'. Put time aside to try new things and then put more time aside to review what you learn.
But don't leave it at that. When you learn something -- test it against something else (do some research on A/B split testing to learn how to do this). This continual learning will help you to grow in your own expertise of AdSense and increase your earnings.
الاشتراك في:
الرسائل (Atom)