How do I put Google AdSense on my blog?

Note: This article assumes you are using a classic template. On a Layouts-enabled blog, just add a new page element and select the AdSense option.

Adding AdSense to your blog is easy. Go to the Template tab in Blogger and you'll see an "AdSense ads" tab below it:


If you don't have an AdSense account already, you can sign up for it right here within Blogger. Just enter a valid email address, choose a password, fill in some contact information (so you can get paid!) and then Blogger will register your account for you right away. If you do have an account already, just use the "sign in" link instead.


Once you've completed the sign-up form, or logged in to an existing account, you'll see a special preview version of your template, showing your blog as it will look with your new ads:


Using the menus above the preview, you can easily change the size, shape, and color of your ads, without ever needing to edit the code directly. The color menu has some preset color schemes, but also some flexible options that try to match, contrast, or blend with whatever template you happen to be using. Try them all out and see which setting works best.


Once you've decided how you'd like it to look, just save the changes and republish your blog. Then go check your email.

While you were deciding on layouts and colors, you probably received a confirmation email from AdSense. Find that email and click on the link it gives you to confirm your email address. Be sure to read the rest of the confirmation email as well, since it will contain other information on finishing the registration and approval process. Until your email address is confirmed and your AdSense application is approved, your ads will only show public service announcements (PSAs) rather than targeted ads. Since you don't get revenue from PSAs, you'll want to be sure to do this soon, so the AdSense bot can crawl your site and determine appropriate ads to show.

And now you're done! Congratulations -- you've got AdSense!

Notes:

• There may be a bit of a delay before the AdSense bot gets to your site and you start getting targeted ads, though that should happen within 48 hours. Just be patient and it will get there in time.
• This feature does not currently provide a way of moving the ads, though the default location used is one that tends to provide the best results. If you would like to move it elsewhere, such as to your sidebar, you will need to edit your template code directly. See How to put AdSense in your blog's sidebar for more details.
• You can see how well your ads are doing by checking the 'Reports' tab on the AdSense website to look at your Ad performance. Keep in mind that reports appear an hour or so after a change has been made (and may sometimes be delayed up to 24 hours).
• To change your payment information, or other account details after you've signed up you'll need to go to the main AdSense site and log in to your account there.
  

How do I put AdSense after my individual blog posts?

If you're new to AdSense and not too familiar with making modifications to your blog's template, you can follow these instructions for placing AdSense code after your posts. Note: These instructions assume you are using a classic template, rather than Layouts.

Assuming you have already signed up and been approved for a Google AdSense account, you should be able to log in here. Once you're signed in, click the AdSense Setup tab near the top of the page. Choose "AdSense for content" as the product and the wizard will guide you step-by-step through the process. To cut right to the chase, focus on these steps:

1. Choose Your Ad Units - Select either text ads, image ads, or both.
2. Choose Your Ad Format - To fit ads in between your posts, it's best to choose one of the following ad layouts.
   
   * Banner (468 x 60)
   * Medium Rectangle (300 x 250)
   * Square (250 x 250)
   * Half Banner (234 x 60)
   
   
3. Choose a color palette - They are very cleverly named but it's really just a matter of your preference.
4. Copy your AdSense code - At the end of the wizard, there's a box with code in it. Highlight all of that code and copy it.
5. Paste the code somewhere - Notepad or Text Edit or something like that is a good place for now.
6. Go to Blogger.com and sign in - Choose the blog you want to put ads on and click the template tab.
7. This is less of a step and more of a precaution - Copy your entire Blogger template and save it in Notepad or Text Edit just in case.
8. Find the place in your template that says this; you might have to scroll down pretty far:
   
9. Paste the AdSense code you saved earlier right after that line.
   
10. PUT YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE! Save your template changes and republish your blog.
    

Note: Due to technical constraints, we can't control the fact that your ad code will be reproduced after each individual blog post. However, rest assured that our system will automatically display only the first 3 available ad units. So no worries about violating AdSense program policies.

Why Small Businesses Should Be Concerned About Click Fraud - and What They Can Do to Help Minimize It

With an estimated 20 percent of total Pay-Per-Click sales having been lost to click fraud last year, small business advertisers should be aware that they could easily lose big if they don't take steps to identify click fraud in their campaigns.

The Internet advertising industry is booming, with the search engine advertising segment growing more than 55 percent last year alone. However, as with any industry, Internet advertising is plagued by its own set of complicated and hard-to-fix problems, among which click fraud ranks at the top of the list costing small business advertisers their hard-won budgets and threatening the fidelity of the industry as a whole.

How many clicks does it take to get to the center of the click fraud problem? Well, according to recent reports millions. That's just a rough estimate of the number of worthless clicks that advertisers are aware of but can do nothing about. It's been estimated that as much as 20 percent of total sales have been lost to click fraudsters. As a result the average pay-per-click now costs 45 cents, up from 40 cents in 2003 and 30 cents in 2002, according to financial analysts. In an over $9 billion industry where some bids reach as high as $12 that holds much significance.

Click fraud is not some new, high-tech crime. It began early in the history of the mainstream Internet through the use of programs that automatically surf websites to increase traffic figures. However, click fraud can be undertaken by humans as well as by software programs, intentionally and unintentionally. People are often the tools used to carry out click fraud scams. While the most common form of click fraud occurs through using online bots to click on advertisers' links or search engine spiders accidentally clicking on a link, a growing form of click fraud is executed by rogue affiliates of search engines such as Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture who host the major search engines' sponsored ads on their website and use low-wage, unqualified workers from various parts of the world, specifically India and Asia, to click on these text links and other ads so they can collect the profits. And even another form of fraud is perpetuated by advertisers' competitors clicking repeatedly on ads with the aims of depleting the competitor's advertising budget and essentially deleting their link.

The major search engine players such as Google (Google AdWords) and Yahoo! (Overture), have taken their own measures to help combat this growing problem. For good reason they are fearful that as a result of click fraud, advertisers will be dissuaded from pay-per-click advertising. Still advertisers, especially small business advertisers, must take individual measures to lower the ratio of dollars spent on fraudulent clicks. With some small businesses only having a budget of a few hundred dollars, a well-placed click fraud campaign can wipe out that small budget in a day. However, although there are numerous software programs and companies which claim they can help to locate and prevent click fraud, it is still nearly impossible for even the most advanced programs to combat specific forms of click fraud, specifically, affiliate and competitor fraud.

Click Fraud: Somebody Is Cheating You

Click fraud has been discussed among the affiliate and search engine marketing (SEM) communities for several years. Yet many online media buyers are unfamiliar with the term. Admittedly, when I began researching this topic, the first thing I learned was that I've got a lot to learn about click fraud.

I'm willing to bet you do, too.
Why is click fraud important? Simple: Click fraud means someone is cheating you and your clients. If we're vigilant protectors of our clients' interests, that should be important to us.

Click fraud is the practice of artificially inflating the number of clicks or conversions in an online campaign. This often occurs in search and affiliate marketing. The problem hasn't been discussed much outside of those environments. But click fraud potentially extends into any performance-based display advertising environments.

How prevalent is it? I've seen different figures stating up to 10 to 50 percent of click activity is suspect -- an astonishing number. In other words, your CPC (define) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) buys are potentially half as effective as they could be because of fraud.

Who's stealing from you and your clients?

• The amateurs. Kids or people with no social lives set up small Web sites and become a part of an affiliate network or Google's AdSense program. To generate a little income, they get with other small site publishers and click on each others' ads.
• The pros. Unethical and criminal publishers set up elaborate Web site networks and automated systems (bots) to generate fraudulent clicks, conversions, or both. In addition, reportedly programs have been set up in places such as India, Russia, and China, where people are paid to click on ads.
• Your competitors. Believe it or not, sometimes your competitors want so badly to win, they resort to clicking on your paid search listing or within other performance-based environments just to drive up your advertising costs.
  

How can you prevent click fraud? For the most part, companies offering solutions are focused on the affiliate and search marketing arenas. I predict they'll expand their services to encompass performance-based display advertising very soon.

Click fraud is something of a ticking bomb and carries the same sort of reputation-besmirching potential as pop-ups and spam. If we address the issue now, we can get a handle on it before the industry panics. The last thing we need is yet another issue that causes people to lose confidence in online advertising.

There's a lot to learn about click fraud and how to control it. The good news is there's a lot of information out there on the topic. The best places to start are affiliate and search marketing sites and forums. The important thing is you be the one to bring the issue to your clients' attention, as opposed to them asking you about it.

Expert Click Fraud Tips

What is fraud filtering technology?
Search engines are now implementing fraud filtering technology to help prevent and catch click fraud. Overture in particular has taken great strides to improve their fraud filtering technology, and they have dedicated additional resources to handling advertiser fraud cases. Click fraud at overture is taken very seriously, and they have a team of professionals to develop additional technology to prevent pay per click fraud. This fraud filtering technology is also used by other search engines as well, and is still in development. Click-through protection and fraud filtering software is very important to advertisers, and is key in the prevention of click fraud.

What to do if you suspect click fraud.
If you suspect that your company or website is being affected by click fraud, contact the search engine you are advertising with right away. As an internet advertiser the majority of the burden rests on you to identify click fraud, and take the steps to protect yourself. If you have identified fraud ask for a refund on the fraudulent clicks, and in many cases you will be promptly refunded. Take advantage of the tools that search engines like Google and Overture offer to prevent and stop fraud from happening. You also may want to consider investing in software that prevents pay per click fraud.

How to spot pay per click fraud
There are a few things you can do to track and prevent click fraud. If you have good server logs you can track referrals to find fraud. You can also look into fraud detection software. Click fraud at Google, and other large search engines, can be prevented if you know what alert signals to look for. Some indicators of possible pay per click fraud are: Abnormally high search frequency for expensive words, Great spikes in search frequency at a particular time, and repeat clicks from a specific IP address. If you stay alert you can help prevent click fraud What Is Click Fraud?

Click fraud is an illegal practise through which false clicks on PPC advertisments are generated, with the purpose of swerving advertising data, with no possibility whatsoever for a conversion to occur. That is, purely stealing from advertisers who pay for each click.

Fraudulent clicks are also referred to as “invalid”, “malicious” or “artificial”.

Click fraud results in great costs for the advertiser and it is so much more frightening as it is difficult to track down.

Why Does It Occur?
The main trigger-reasons are:

• the intention to obstruct or cause important losses to a competitor's business — when competitors want to run up a bill for an advertiser;
• the intention to make money by forcing the advertising system — when CPC affiliates want to increase per-click commissions on the traffic they generate for the ads. Some web owners even create websites especially for this purpose and then artificially inflate their CTR.
• extortion — when hackers create software that perform fraudulent clicks and use it to threaten various companies in order to obtain money;
• vengeance — when it is done by former or discontent employees.
  

How Is It Done?
Manually generated clicks
A widely spread practise particularly in some regions of Europe, Oceania or South East Asia — but not only here — where surfers are paid to click on paid-ads on their employer’s websites or on his competitors' sites. This system of fraud is almost imposible to identify, if done properly.
Automated methods
Software applications or “hitbots”, designed to click on paid ads. Some of these use clever algorithms to determine click behaviours, reaching the performance level of simulating genuine human visitor behavior. What makes them even harder to detectis their capability of destroying all identifying reference. from impacting your internet marketing campaigns

Exposing click fraud.
The amount of exposure click fraud had received has increased dramatically over the last year. This is largely due to the increase in pay per click search engines, and greater advertiser savvy. Although it is hard to measure the full extent of click fraud, it is said to play a huge role in internet marketing campaigns with industry leaders such as Google and Overture. People are looking into the problem of pay per click fraud as the cost of internet search marketing goes up. Exposing click fraud is not an easy task, and it demonstrates a fundamental weakness in the internet marketing industry.

What is click fraud and how does it happen?
Click fraud is the practice of illegitimately clicking on a text ad in a search engine such as Google, in order to force the advertiser to pay for the click. Some companies who perpetrate this fraudulent activity employ low-cost workers from Asian countries to click on text links and other advertisements. Other companies use internet robots that are programmed to click on links that are listed in search queries and results. Yet another form of pay per click fraud takes place when companies click on their competitors' ads with the intention of depleting their marketing budgets and skewing their search results. All of these forms of fraud can cost online advertisers a lot of money.

Be careful on Click Fraud

I can tell you from personal experience that running ads on Google's search network is all fine and good. In fact, traffic simply can't BE any more targeted -- provided that you, the advertiser, are bidding on keywords that are targeted to what you're offering.

However, "turning on the Content Network" usually results in a SHARP spike in click-throughs and a STEEP decline in conversions. It's because of all those "AdSense" template sites and click-fraud artists out there make "turning on the Content Network" a decision that MOST if not ALL Google advertisers live to regret. Hey: at least you live, but it might as well be "deadly" -- it often is to your advertising budget and confidence...and sometimes your business.

Seriously: all over the world -- and particularly in countries where the US Dollar that Google pays AdSense publishers with goes a long way -- individuals create networks of sites running Google AdSense feeds and then set up computerized, automated routines that click on ad links, simply to generate the webmasters income from AdSense.

Now, Google and other ad networks merely pay lip-service to the idea of putting a stop to click-fraud. Why? Because THEY make money off of it too. Oh sure, they act all "baffled" like they don't have the faintest clue how to put a stop to it, but adsXposed DOES put a stop to it.