Is AdSense working for you? Are you frustrated at your inability to make big money from AdSense regardless of your best efforts? Wonder if you will ever make real money from your blog? Well, read on, for I'm going to show you how to increase AdSense CPC the quick and easy way.

But before that, let's quickly walk you through the basics. CPC means "Cost Per Click". What's that? It means advertisers who use the AdSense program pay Google every time someone clicks on their adverts. When you join the AdSense network, you will be running AdSense ads on your blog or web pages and get paid 68% of the bid price for the advert - the rest goes to Google.

So if Google gets paid $4 for every click made on a specific ad for a certain keyword, you will get paid $2.72 every time a visitor to your website clicks on that ad, the one that is placed by Google on your web page.

Now, if you want to make real money from the AdSense program, you should try to maximize the CPC price. This means having the right kind of adverts on your web pages, the sort that make you the most amount of money per click.

You cannot decide the CPC of the ads that are placed on your blog. All you can do is to build your website or blog in such a way that Google places high value adverts or those with higher CPC on your web pages. Google decides where to place the ads through an automated system.

Why Click Through Rate (CTR) Matters

There is another important thing you need to keep in mind in this context, apart from the CPC. It is called the CTR or the Click Through Rate. The CTR is the percentage of visitors that click on the ads on your web pages.

Ideally you will want more visitors that click on the ads than those who just read your blog posts and ignore the ads completely. You will want a higher CTR in order to increase AdSense CPC. Is that clear enough?

So, if you have a CTR of 4% with a CPC of $1.5 - which indicates that 4 visitors of every 100 click on your ads - that is much better than a CTR of 2% with a CPC of $2.40. With the first, you will make $20.40 a day if you have a daily traffic of 1,000 visitors, and with the second, you will only make $16.32 a day from a daily traffic of 1,000.

So, it's not enough to have a high CPC, you also need a high CTR. That's why, to make big money from your blog, you will need to focus on increasing AdSense CPC as well as the CTR.

Now, before I give you tips on boosting your AdSense CPC, let's try to understand why your current AdSense CPC is so low.

Reasons why your AdSense CPC is Low

1. Niche
   Your website or blog belongs to a less profitable niche, one where your audience doesn't click on the ads. So if you have a blog that covers politics, for example, it's not your fault that you have a low CTR, it may have to do with your niche. Now, real estate blogs on the other hand, they have high CTRs.
2. Geography
   It has to do with where your audience comes from. If much of your audience is located in a country where the clicks don't cost much, then you will have a low CPC as well.
3. Mobile
   Maybe your website isn't mobile friendly as yet. Since the Mobile-Friendly update launched on April 21, 2015, Google penalizes websites that are not mobile friendly, through lower position on the SERPS and lower CPC values.
4. Programmatic media buys
   Programmatic buying by advertisers has resulted in a massive slump in income for many bloggers that depend on Google AdSense for a living. Nothing you could do about that.
5. Blocked advertisers
   You may have blocked a few advertisers for many reasons. You may have blocked your competitors from advertising on your site and you may have blocked a few companies whose policies you don't agree with. Well, the problem with that is that you will get penalized for this by AdSense through lower CPCs.
6. Video
   You may have a successful YouTube channel, but the placement of YouTube ads on your website or blog has meant that the money is going to YouTube and not to AdSense. So you have a lower CPC.
7. Poor targeting
   It's the advertisers' fault! They have no clue on how to target the right blogs for their products or services. So you have a men's fashion blog and for some strange reason you get adverts for women's fashion and accessories. Well, it's poor targeting by the advertisers, not your fault, but that lowers your CTR and CPC.
8. Economy
   There is little you can do when there is a recession in your country or across the world and people are just not buying enough. So advertisers have no choice but to limit their marketing expenditure and your CPC suffers as a consequence.
9. Seasonality
   It could be a seasonal thing. If you have a blog that offers match day predictions for the English Premier League, you won't have too many visitors during the off season when there are no matches played. So you will have a lower CPC at this time. Similarly, if you promote gifts or greeting cards on your website, you will have high CPC ads during the Holiday Season, and lower CPC ads for the rest of the year.
10. Ads sizes
    Not all ads are the same. Some ads convert much more than others. Not having enough converting ads can reduce your CPC. Pay attention to the size of the ads - there are some sizes that convert better.
11. Improper ad placement
    You have violated AdSense ad placement policies in some way without actually realizing it, and have been penalized by Google for it. Google has strict policies on the ads, and they frown upon the practice followed by some publishers where they trick users into clicking on the ads. This has to be avoided at all cost.

So, these are the 11 reasons why your AdSense CPC is low. Now, how can you increase AdSense CPC?

Here are 16 Quick and Easy Tips to Increase AdSense CPC

1. Optimize your content for high value keywords - Do your keyword research and identify the best paying keywords within your niche. The way AdSense works is that advertisers bid for keywords. There are some keywords that get the best bids and have a much higher value. Those are the keywords that you should focus on and optimize your content for.
   
   There are some keywords that could be worth $100 or more per click. Do your research on them and include them as naturally as possible in your content. In the US, the best paying keywords are available in categories such as business services, bail bonds, casino, lawyer and asset management. Create content relevant to such popular niches and optimize your articles and blog posts with the best paying keywords.





2. Focus on long tail keywords - It's not enough just to have the best paying keywords. You should do your research on SEO tools such as Google Keyword Planner and SEMRush and identify the best paying long tail keyword phrases which are relevant to your readers. Include these keywords in your content. Make sure to use the best SEO practices to optimize your content with these keywords - but keep it natural, don't stuff keywords without considering the grammatical correctness and the flow of the writing.
3. Create engaging, high quality and profitable content - The quality of the content is the most important thing to be considered. You should have a clear idea of what your readers are looking for and provide them with the right kind of solutions to their problems. You should write content that creates value to a highly targeted audience, who are looking for information within a niche. The content should be SEO friendly and placed prominently on Google's SERPs. The higher the traffic, the more people that read your content, the higher will be your AdSense CPC. As simple as that!
4. Make good use of the AdSense Ad Review Center - The AdSense Ad Review Center is a tool that allows you to review individual ads so that you can decide whether to block them or to display them on your web pages. This gives you a much higher level of control and transparency over the ads that appear on your website or blog. It gives you complete control over what sort of products, services or brands are promoted on your website or blog. You should make use of this tool to display adverts from high paying advertisers only. Remember - not all AdSense adverts are supported by this tool. Ad Review Center only allows you to block ads at the product level and not at the website level.





5. Figure out the best ad sizes - The right kind of ad sizes and placements bring you the best paying CPCs. There are some ad sizes that are very effective for certain platforms, such as mobiles and tablets, but not so successful on other platforms, such as laptops. Choose the best ad sizes for various platforms and experiment with them till you get a CPC that you are comfortable with.
6. Use Smart Pricing to your advantage - Advertisers of today want higher ROI and want real clients. Google understands this and makes an accurate projection on the conversion rate of the ads before deciding which ads to serve and where to place them. This is based on a "Smart Pricing" model which Google uses these days. You can use Smart Pricing to your advantage by displaying relevant ads, attracting high quality traffic to your blog and creating amazing content.
7. Make use of the Competitive Ad Filter - the Competitive Ad Filter is similar in a lot of ways to Ad Review Center discussed earlier. The purpose of this tool is to filter out any unwanted ads and to prevent them from appearing on your site. You can use this tool to block ads from your competitors. You can block entire AdSense accounts or specific domains. Now, this doesn't do much for your CPC, but it ensures that your competitors don't display their ads on your site. The last thing you want is for your customers to be led to your competitors' websites.
8. Follow Google's Mobile-Friendly guidelines - Since April 21, 2015, Google has made the mobile-friendliness of a website as one of the premier rankings factors for its algorithm. You have to optimize your website for the mobile; if you don't you will get penalized by Google in a big way. You must have a responsive web design.
   
   Advertisers like websites that are mobile friendly. Some pay more for mobile clicks than for desktop clicks and other prefer to advertise exclusively on the mobile. This is especially true of local businesses within a certain geographical area. So, to increase your CPC, make your website more mobile friendly.
9. Experiment, mix and match, try out new things with your ads - Google AdSense has a special called "Experiments" which allows you to try out different things with your ads. You can do split testing on different ad formats, try different advertisers, make changes to the font type and background color, change ad sizes, change color schemes, block certain ad categories, etc. and find out what works and what doesn't. When you feel comfortable about something, stick to it for the long haul.
10. Make use of the Google Ecosystem - Google likes publishers who are loyal to its platform. So join the Google Ecosystem, be a part of it. This means being on Google+, making use of Google Webmaster Tools, creating a Google Business account, having a YouTube channel of your own, using Google Docs, and so on. Spend more time on the Google platform, use more Google resources to earn Google's trust. Earning Google's trust is a surefire route to a higher CPC.
11. Focus on certain high paying geographical areas - You should always focus on high CPC regions where advertisers pay more for clicks. So if your content is aimed at audiences within the United States, Sweden, Japan, Norway or Netherlands, you will most certainly have a much higher CPC compared to targeting countries such as India, South Africa, Bangladesh and Indonesia. You might want to purchase local ___domain addresses and created content specific to the high CPC region. You may even want to narrow down your geographical region to just cities - for example, any content focused on New York City, Dallas or London gets high paying ads.
12. Make use of information from both Google Analytics and Google AdSense and link them for a better insight into your web traffic - Both Analytics and AdSense provide you with excellent information on your web traffic, revenue earned and deliver useful reports. Connect your Google Analytics and AdSense accounts for a better insight into your traffic, and get a sense of the audience behavior on your site - what they click more, where your highest CPC traffic is located and so on.
13. Show only relevant ads - You should make sure that Google serves only the most relevant ads on your web pages. The way to do that is to make your content SEO friendly and easy to crawl for the search engine bots. You can start by focusing on the basics such as headings, meta tags and formatting your content. Also, turn off the remarketing ads in favor of contextual ads. All of these things could increase your CPC over time.
14. Reduce the number of ad units on your blog - Try something different such as reducing the number of ad units on your blog. By reducing the supply, you can have the advertisers bid more for the limited space, which can lead to an increase in your CPC. It is about making the supply/demand mismatch work to your advantage.
15. Use the Matched Content feature on AdSense - Google has a content recommendation service called as Matched Content for AdSense. So it this is available only to major publishers, but you can try and find out if you qualify for it or not. This involves replacing your local article recommendation engine with that of Google. The idea is to promote only the most relevant and most profitable content on your site to your visitors.
16. Allow Placement Targeting - Advertisers are always willing to pay more for quality placement. Google has made it possible for advertisers to target specific sections within your website or specific formats. This is called as Placement Targeting. For this you will have to group the ads into Custom Channels - as many as 500 URLs - and give advertisers easy access to relevant content on your website.

Final Thoughts

I have discussed why your AdSense CPC is low and given you 16 quick and easy tips on increasing it. However, there are no hard and fast rules here. If none of the steps given above work, try something else to increase AdSense CPC. Just keep experimenting till something sticks. Hope you enjoyed reading this. As usual, I look forward to your questions and suggestions. Just send them in the comments below.

If you want to boost the AdSense revenue, then you have to try and use all the tools at your disposal to increase the RPM and take your income to new heights. AdSense custom channels are some of the best tools that you can use in this regards. The best thing about these custom channels is that advertisers love them and you can easily adapt them to your needs!

What are AdSense custom channels?

When you hear about Google AdSense custom channels, you will most likely be confused in regards to what they are and what they do. But despite the name that can confuse some people, the reason why they were created is that they offer a really good value for AdSense users. Simply put, these custom channels are designed as a reporting tool, and they enable you to manage your ad inventory without that much of a hassle.

You can also use them to turn the ad inventory into a solution that advertisers can target. As a result, you will be able to boost the AdSense revenue in no time. Aside from that, you can also generate a lot of competition for the advertisers. Of course, you do need to have a good amount of traffic to be appealing to the advertisers. But if you use this tool adequately, the overall results can be downright unique. The custom channels are designed to work with a variety of content hubs as well as publishers. But of course, you have to put all your knowledge to the test.

AdSense custom channels A/B testing and analytics

In case you want to boost your revenue with custom channels, you will have to figure out which are the best ads you have, and then you add them into custom channels. You can find the Custom Channels in the Advanced Reports section.


Here you can filter the type of ads you want to track, and you can also view an overview, active views, engagements, clicks and even custom information.

Thanks to the AdSense custom channels, you will get to track things like page performance for that ad, what surrounding content was the best, ad placement results, ad size performance and other relevant info. All these things do add up very well, and they are bound to bring you a unique and distinct set of features.

A/B testing is also easy to do with AdSense custom channels. You track the performance of a text ad against another text ad, or you can opt for a more complex ad test. In fact, you can even make image to text ad comparison if you want. The idea here is to use the power of reports to see which type of ad delivers the best performance.

Depending on your niche, some types of ads will work better when compared to others. So, the idea is to pick the right one that suits your needs. It's the best approach and one that does pay off immensely in the end.

How can you track what blog portion delivers the best revenue?

This is a very good question and a tricky one to answer as well. There are many reasons why you may be unable to answer this adequately. However, it all comes down to a single comparison. For example, you have a site about technology and another one about healthy eating. Both of them are blogs, but the healthy eating one delivers a much better RPM when compared to the technology one.

Obviously, when you do A/B testing and see this, you will most likely focus on creating more healthy eating content and less tech content. But your task is to figure out what went wrong with the technology blog too. You can use the power of AdSense custom channels to figure out what caused that issue. Studying the performance over time will help you see what is wrong and this way you can adapt the situation to your advantage.

Creating a targetable ad inventory with AdSense custom channels

AdSense custom channels offer your online assets to the advertisers so that they can be targeted without a problem. Basically, the companies that have a video ad about their phone repair services will want an ad slot on your phone-related pages, not on the homepage or anything else. The idea is to opt for targeting, and that's where AdSense custom channels excel very well. Besides, advertisers have a limited budget, so they do want to get the very best results from you.

What type of benefits do you get from this? First, you will see that allowing advertiser targeted ads will bring in more competition for ad ___location and better performing ads. You will also work with advertisers that are knowledgeable and know what they want. Google said they select the best performing ads for your page, so obviously this will help you as well. Plus, advertisers can do smart pricing and earn more money by getting targeted audiences. Simply put, everyone wins with this type of approach, and that's what manages to deliver the very best outcome.

How can you set up AdSense custom channels?

You need to figure out what you want to measure and share to the advertisers. Basically, you create an ad unit, and you can add that to the AdSense custom channels. You can add multiple ones if you want, that is up to you to make the right pick.

Simply put, you go to My Ads in the AdSense console > Content, and then you select Custom channels. Here you will have to press the New Custom Channel Button. Add a name to the custom channel, and then you can select the ad units that you want. It's important to let these ad units targetable; you will have a small option related to targeting under this.


You can also remove ad placements if necessary. If you want to see the performance, you just need to go to Performance Reports > Advanced Reports > Custom Channels.

How to optimize ad placement channels?

There are some methods you can use to achieve this. Edit some of the best performing channels and as we mentioned above, mark them as targetable. This will offer you a list with some interesting features. You will see the fields that are shown to advertisers. You can also pick where ads appear, and if necessary, the ad ___location can be for multiple places if you want.


At this point, you will also need to opt for a description of your website, and you should also tell the advertisers why they should be interested in placing ads on your site. Make sure that you harness all your copywriting power. It's not an easy thing to do, but it may be able to pay off extremely well in the end.

A good idea is not to make all your channels targetable. What you want is to target solely the ones that are valid for you, as that's what will make things shine for sure. It's a very important idea to try and focus on the most important channels at first. If this does work very well for you, then you can adapt it to the most important channels as you see fit.

Keep testing

It's always important to keep testing, because the more you do that, the better the results will end up being for you in the end. AdSense custom channels are designed to be an analytical tool, so it doesn't matter how many channels you have. If you have around 500, that's great, if not, experiment and try to create as many channels as you can.

You shouldn't expect each channel to deliver its best performance. It will take quite a lot of time and effort to adapt everything to suit your needs. But the idea here is that the more you focus on interacting with the audience, the better the results will be for sure. As long as you know how to handle all of this, the experience will be great, and your site will benefit from that.

Plus, you shouldn't expect AdSense custom channels to deliver the best possible value right off the bat. These things do tend to take quite a bit of time for them to work adequately. At first, it may be a bit simple, but as time passes you will see that the results get increasingly better.

The reason is simple, it will just make things a lot better for you, and the AdSense custom channels performance will increase too. Plus, you get to learn what's wrong and opt for what is meaningful. While it can take some time and effort to set up everything adequately, AdSense custom channels do work very well. So, try to create and adapt AdSense custom channels to your needs, then the AdSense RPM will increase exponentially!

Recently, page-level ads were made available for blogspot bloggers and webmasters which means that you can now display AdSense Ads right on your mobile templates. You can now monetize your efforts on the templates as you do with mobile apps thanks to the Google Admob Ads.

Why Choose AdSense Page-level ads?

There are a number of reasons why you choose page-level ads from AdSense to bolster your revenue stream.

• Increase Revenues
• Provide Better User Experience
• Two New Formats
• Doesn't Count Against 3 Ad Limit
• Optimized and Responsive to Mobile Needs

Page-level Ad Formats

Today, the two types of page-level ads available include Anchors which are ads places at the bottom of the screen and Vignettes which are full screen ads that work similar to Admob's Interstitial adverts.
Vignettes tend to be more effective for mobile advertising.

How to Setup Page-Level Ads in Blogspot Blogs

The good news is that you can install these ads from AdSense fairly quickly and easily thanks to the process which guides you through.

1. Log into your AdSense Account
2. Click on this link
3. Click the two toggle buttons to switch on "Anchor/overlay ads" and "Vignette ads"


4. Scroll down and click the "Get Code" button


5. Copy the code


6. Go to Blogger, then Template and Backup your Template
7. Click the 'Edit HTML' button and search for the </head> tag
8. Paste the page-level ad code above the </head> tag

Note: You will also need to replace the attribute async with async="async" in order to help complete the process, otherwise Blogger will give you an error message. Once you have completed these steps, all you need to do is save it to your template.

Test Page-level ads in your Blogger template

After installation, get out your mobile device so you can test the AdSense page-level ads and see if they are working correctly. You will need to be a visitor to your site in order to check out the ads.

• Type #googleads at the end of the URL so you can access them
• Select the ad format from the tabbed box that will appear above the body of the blog
• Check out the ads

You will get to see the ads in action before the public does so that you can tell if they are working fine. If you are impressed with what you see, then it is ready to go. However, if you see something that you want to change or if the ads are not present, you'll need to start over again.

The Effectiveness of Page-level ads

Since October, 2015 when these ads were first rolled out the effectiveness that they have demonstrated is considerable. Today, the ads have been used in countries all over the world and they continue to impress. For those who have already used these mobile ads on WordPress or other blogger blogs you can see just how effective they have been in terms of reaching all of your visitors. In addition, the effect on your revenue may be considerable depending on the popularity of your blog.

In the end, AdSense page-level ads are remarkably effective for mobile use and will help you build a stronger income base for your blog.

Want to know which part of your site or blog will bring you more profit? Add AdSense inside posts and then check out the famous Google AdSense heat map. Recent studies, however, showed that placing AdSense after the first paragraph of a site or blog is one of the best AdSense placement. Unfortunately, the default Blogger platform offered by Google doesn't allow placement of ad after the first paragraph. But because it has become one of the most profitable areas, plenty of webmasters have tried to take advantage of the best AdSense placement. How can you enjoy the same level of profit?

To solve the problem, we will just move the locations of the ads to be displayed by adding JavaScript and DIVs. With the following script, you can easily choose the paragraph or heading after which you want to inject the ad to. This way, you won't have to manually change every post.

How to Display AdSense Ads after the First Paragraph in Blogger

1. Log into your Blogger account, select your blog and click "Template" on the left side. Open the Template editor using the "Edit HTML" button.

2. Once the editor has opened, click anywhere inside the code area and press the CTRL + F keys (or Command + F) on your keyboard to open the editor' search box. Search the following line (press Enter to find it):

<data:post.body/>

Note: You will find multiple occurrences of <data:post.body/> but you need to stop at the second one, or if you don't see any changes, test the last one.

3. Add the below DIVs in red before and after like this:

<div id='adsense-target'><data:post.body/></div>

4. Copy the AdSense code that you want to show and use this tool to convert it into plain text. After conversion, add the following HTML and replace the "ADSENSE CODE HERE" text with the converted ad code just above the line that we just found:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<div id='adsense-content' style="display:block;text-align: center">ADSENSE CODE HERE</div></b:if>

Align AdSense Left or Right

By default, the Google AdSense ad unit will appear in the middle just after the first paragraph. If you are unhappy with the results and want to wrap text around the ad, you can choose one of the options below:

a) Align AdSense on the left - change <div id='adsense-content' style="display:block;text-align: center"> with:

<div id='adsense-content' style="display: inline-block;float: left;margin:15px 15px 15px 0px">

After modifying it, the ad will display something like this:


b) Align AdSense ad on the right of the content - change <div id='adsense-content' style="display:block;text-align: center"> with:

<div id='adsense-content' style="display:inline-block;float:right;margin:15px 0px 15px 15px">

5. Finally, right after <div id='adsense-target'><data:post.body/></div> from step 2, add this script:

<script type='text/javascript'>
function insertAfter(addition,target) {
var parent = target.parentNode;
if (parent.lastChild == target) {
parent.appendChild(addition);
} else {
parent.insertBefore(addition,target.nextSibling);
}
}
var adscont = document.getElementById(&quot;adsense-content&quot;);
var target = document.getElementById(&quot;adsense-target&quot;);
var linebreak = target.getElementsByTagName(&quot;br&quot;);
if (linebreak.length &gt; 0){
insertAfter(adscont,linebreak[0]);
}
</script>

Note:
- To insert the ad after the second paragraph, change "0" from the line in red with "2".
- If you want to put AdSense just below the heading h2 or heading h3 of a post, replace br from &quot;br&quot; with h2 or h3.

6. Click "Save template" to save the changes and you're done.

With this trick, you can insert AdSense after the first paragraph automatically in Blogger with ease. Now it's your turn to decide which format works best on your site.

A lot of things can happen online, some of which are beyond your control. One of these is invalid click activities that are caused by a number of things, but can lead you into one unfortunate situation - getting banned from AdSense for good. Since you need AdSense to keep track of your website's performance, you should do anything possible to protect yourself against invalid clicks.

StatCounter can help you in this mission. This is a web traffic analysis tool that lets you track all clicks and exit links. Through it, you will know where a majority of your invalid clicks are coming from, and the corresponding IPs that you can then block to protect your AdSense account.

Getting started is as easy as signing up and creating an account. You can then create a new project for a website that you want to track. Like most analytics tools, StatCounter is fairly easy to use. Make sure to select a counter or Invisible tracking, and opt to receive reports in a weekly or monthly basis, so that you can keep an eye on invalid AdSense clicks.


After entering the appropriate information, press the "Add Project" button which will take you to the "Choose an installation Guide for your website" page - here click the "Default Installation Guide" link. Now, StatCounter will give you a code along with instructions on how to install this code on your website. After adding the code, press the "Check Installation" button on the right toward the bottom of the page in order to finish the installation process.

Tracking Exit Links

Once you have added StatCounter to your website, your reports will be available within minutes. Now let's see how to track invalid AdSense Clicks using StatCounter.

Click on Stats and click on the menu called "Exit Link Activity". This will show all the links that visitors clicked on to leave your website. Here, you can also find Date, Time, Exit Link Clicked and the page on which the exit link was clicked.


The exit link could be a advertisement or a link to other website. To display only the clicks on the AdSense ads, use the "Exit Link Match" filter to 'google adsense'. This way, you will be able to see how many clicks are there on advertisements and at what time the click was made.

To see even more information about a particular visitor who clicked on the link, click on the magnify icon. This will show you the Search Referral, IP Address of the visitor, Host Name, their Location, how many times they've visited your blog before, Visit Length, Browser, OS, Resolution, ISP, and the pages they viewed including the exit links.


So this is how you can track the invalid AdSense clicks using StatCounter. Although you may have to disable advertisements on your website temporarily to avoid a potentially disastrous situation, such as being click bombed, it is a better alternative than being kicked out of AdSense permanently. Through StatCounter, you will be able to detect invalid clicks or any suspicious activities that will inflate the number of clicks on an ad. Since you can't control an advertiser or publisher's desire to increase their earnings, you should monitor click through rates or the cost per clicks you are making. If there is a sudden increase of clicks but you make zero CPC, it's time to track down on these invalid Adsense clicks and put a stop to them.

Monitoring your website's performance shouldn't be a chore but a necessity. After all, how else will you know how to serve your audience better - and acquire new ones - if you don't know how they get to you, what they do on your site and who they are? Google Analytics is a tool that does all that, but despite its sophistication, your account can be suspended for invalid activity.

This is the one thing that you have to avoid because the process of reinstating your account may take a while. That said, how can you detect invalid activity?

Before answering the question, here are some terms that you need to familiarize yourself with as they will appear throughout the rest of this post:

DEFINITIONS

• Clicks: number of times a user has clicked on your advertisements
• CPC: cost per click; what you get whenever a user clicks on your ads
• Pageviews: refers to the action the user takes of viewing a page with an ad displayed
• CTR: click through rate; calculated as (clicks / pageviews) x 100 and is given in percentage
• Estimated Earnings: calculated as (clicks x CPC); the value goes up or gown while the earnings are still in verification process

Ways to Detect Invalid Activity in Google AdSense

1. You have a CTR above 20%. The normal range for CTR is 1% to 11%, but anything above these tells Google that there is something iffy and that may not bode well for you. So, if you notice this, make necessary changes so that you maintain a healthy CTR.
2. You have a lot of clicks but no CPC. As in, your assigned CPC is 0.00. For example, if you get about 50 clicks and don't have a CPC set, that tells Google that something funky is going on and they will not hesitate to take action. Keep in mind that they do take matters like this seriously, and which is why they employ both human and machine checking to analyze clicks and impressions.
3. You're estimated earnings rise then fall suddenly. For example, you get estimated earnings of $1.00 but the next minute this drops to $0.0. Whether it drops to zero or half the original estimated earnings amount after you refreshed the page, you know that something is up.
4. You have many clicks from one country but less pageviews. Google operates on the belief that if a user clicked on an ad, they are interested in what it has to say. So, if the pageviews are really low, that sends a wrong signal to Google and causes them to think that something fishy is happening.

So, make sure to check your AdSense performance regularly so you can spot discrepancies and address them as soon as possible before Google decides to suspend your account.

It is amazing when you see a webmaster using a blogspot blog stealing an AdSense Java Script Code and using it on their website. They will usually keep your unique publisher ID while showing ads from your account. While their action may be unintentional in terms of them not caring which ID that they use, the net effect is that you are now involved in their illegal action.

Whatever their reason for doing so, once they are caught and banned for using illegal and plagiarized materials, chances are that Google will also ban your Adsense account as well because it violates the terms of service and the program polices even though you may not have been aware that this happened to you. It doesn't really matter to Google because they see your unique publisher ID and assume that it is you posting the illegal materials.

In addition, there are websites that also use the iFrame HTML program that will embed to the post and pages of your website as well. This means that you are now violating the Terms of Services as well as the Program Policies because they are showing the AdSense ads inside an iFrame which is forbidden. Again, because it is your website, Google will assume that it is you unless you can take appropriate action.

While this may seem unfair, it must be noted that Google has recognized the practices of others in using the websites and unique publisher ID, so they have developed a new feature called "Access and Authorization" that you can find within the dashboard of AdSense. It is here that you can only allow certain sites to show ads for your account and not have to worry about getting punished for something that you did not do.

Access and Authorization Usage

You will need to log into your AdSense account and then proceed to "Site Authorization" which will then let you check the mark to allow only certain ads to be shown for your account. When you check the box that allows only certain sites, it will ask you which domains that you are allowing to show on your website and what has permission to use your ad code:


Here, you will need to type in all the websites or domains that you have granted permission and save the changes you have made by clicking the "Save" button. While it may be tempting to not list any, you will need to list the following in order to fully comply with the request and not create any more confusion:

• Your Domains: Any domains and sub-domains that you own where you want to monetize them with AdSense.
• Country Specific TLDs: Basically, any country-specific TLDs of Google will need to be included as well, for example a .blogspot.com blog (see the screenshot below). To find a complete list of all Google domains, click HERE.
• Translate Site: If some of your customers are using translation sites to visit your website, then you'll want to at least include the major ones such as Google Translate and others. You can find a list of the major ones or stick to Google if you like.
• Yahoo & Bing Domains and Sub-Domains: Wherever your articles are being read, you'll need to include these sites as well.
• Articles: If you are using articles from other websites that have your ad code and you have promised to share your AdSense revenue with the parties involved, then you will need to enter all of the article URL codes separately in order to make sure that they are authorized.

If you were to use a ___domain name that is not on your list of authorized websites, but it does use your ad code, then you will see alerts on your dashboard to notify you. If these are legitimate sites that you want to use your ad code, but simply did not put them on the list you can do so thanks to the warning provided on your dashboard:

We've noticed your ad code has appeared on websites you haven't authorized. To avoid lost revenue, make sure to authorize any sites you own to display ads by visiting your account settings.

However, if these sites are not authorized, then you can feel comfortable by ensuring that their ___domain is not on your list and Google will not punish you for the theft by others.

Also, keep in mind that any ___domain name that is using your ad code and is not authorized will remain in place and not generate any money for you. So, you cannot profit by the theft of others even when they are using your ad code. While this may seem unfair in a sense, the way the process works does keep your website from being punished for what someone else has done.

Additional Notes for Using Access and Authorization on AdSense

There are a number of things that you will need to be aware of when using this particular program. First, be sure that you check it frequently so that you can catch any warning early on. You only need to sign into your account and check the dashboard where the authorization is located. By checking frequently, you can catch those who are authorized and add them to your account.

Remember that any partner websites of Adsense such as youtube.com, blogspot.com, blogger.com etc. are fully authorized to show your ads without having to add them to your account listing. All partner websites of AdSense qualify, so you only need to restrict yourself to the sites that are outside that particular area.

When you add a ___domain to your list of sites that are authorized to use your ad code, they will automatically be added to your list of sites that you own as well. This means that you don't have to add them twice and can limit your efforts to just the first authorization part.

You'll want to use this feature in order to avoid any misunderstanding and especially to avoid being punished for something that you did not do. However, you'll need to prepare a bit before entering all of the applicable domains that can use your ad code. By taking a little time and going over all the places where they appear, you can add them in and get the greatest benefit from this particular feature of AdSense.

If you have any more questions, you might also try posting them here in the Adsense help forums.