(Ad)Word of the Day: Ad Variations

Did you know that we have an AdWords Glossary? It's a great resource for learning more about AdWords; so we're starting a new series here at Inside AdWords entitled (Ad)Word of the Day. Each post in the series will cover one term in the glossary and talk a little bit about it.For our inaugural post, we'll start with ad variations:
Ad variations are multiple versions of an ad for a single product or service, all based on the same set of keywords. Variations are a good way to test many versions of the same message to see which works best with potential customers.One advantage of using ad variations is that AdWords can automatically show the best performing ad. If you are not sure which message will work best with your potential customers, you can simply create multiple ads for an ad group. AdWords will automatically show the best performing ad more often over time.We hope you've enjoyed the first part of our new series. If you have suggestions for words you'd like to see, we're always listening at inside-adwords@google.com.Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew
Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 2:24 PM

Celebrating 50,000 of you

This week, the 50,000th person subscribed to the English AdSense Help Group. To mark this milestone, the AdSensePro Team would like to extend a special word of thanks to all the folks who use our forums, particularly everyone who takes the time to share their knowledge with other publishers. Thank you for providing useful help and advice, and for contributing to the AdSense community.

If you're not familiar with the Help Group, do check it out to share your AdSense experience. Members of the AdSensePro team will also be on hand to help answer questions, raise issues to our product and engineering teams, and collect your valuable feedback. And if you'd prefer to discuss AdSense in a language other than English, feel free to visit one of our international forums: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Turkish.

Keeping kids safe in a digital world

In the spirit of National Internet Safety Month, we welcomed Ernie Allen, co-founder and president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to the Googleplex last week to discuss child protection issues.

For those not familiar with it, NCMEC works closely with federal law enforcement across the U.S. to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation and to help find missing children. From serving as the clearinghouse for reports of online child pornography to issuing Amber Alerts when children go missing to reuniting families in the wake of Katrina, NCMEC is at the forefront of efforts to protect society's most vulnerable members.

In a policy talk called "Beyond Milk Cartons: Keeping kids safe in a digital world", Ernie provided an overview of NCMEC's work and chatted with Googlers about the ever-changing landscape of child protection challenges shared by parents, educators, advocacy organizations, and technology companies like Google as we work to help families make smart choices online. Watch Ernie's talk on YouTube.

Technology is an invaluable tool for addressing some of these challenges. In a recent example, a team of Google engineers dedicated their 20 percent time over the last year and a half to build cutting-edge software for NCMEC that uses image and video recognition technology to help NCMEC analysts more effectively sort and review incoming reports of child exploitation. NCMEC analysts sort through tens of millions of images in child sexual abuse investigations, and we've tried to leverage our expertise in organizing huge amounts of data to help make their important work more automated and efficient.

When it comes to keeping kids safe on the Internet, we believe that education for families, support for law enforcement, and empowering technology tools, like our SafeSearch filter and the NCMEC software, are all critical pieces of the puzzle.

Tackling online child safety issues is no small task, but we'll continue our collaboration with organizations like NCMEC, along with other partners in schools, government and industry, to take collective strides in the right direction.

The AdSense Pub(lisher) Crawl

As you may know, it's important to allow the AdSense crawler access to the pages that display your ads. If our crawler can't see the content of your pages, your ad targeting may suffer, and with it your earnings. It's also important that we hold all pages to the same policy standards, and we may eventually stop serving ads to pages that the crawler can't access. With this in mind, I'd like to ask you two questions highlighting potential roadblocks to a successful AdSense crawl and let you know what you can do to correct them.1. Are you using a robots.txt file on a site with Google ads?
If so, you might be inadvertently blocking the AdSense crawler from accessing parts of your site. If you aren't sure what a robots.txt file is, it's a text file that you include on your domain that allows you to block crawlers from accessing your site. You can find out if you're using a robots.txt file by going to example.com/robots.txt (replace 'example.com' with your own domain name) or by using Site Diagnostics. If you do use a robots.txt file to block certain crawlers from accessing your site, it's a good idea to add an explicit invitation to the AdSense crawler so it knows it's welcome to visit any page with AdSense code. Please keep in mind that the AdSense crawler is separate from the Google bot for our search index.To give the AdSense crawler access, add these two lines to your robots.txt file:User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*Disallow:You can use the Site Diagnostics link in your AdSense Reports tab to see whether we're having trouble crawling any pages on your sites. If you're concerned about the privacy of some pages on your site, keep in mind that we don't publish any of the information retrieved by the Mediapartners-Google crawler, also known as the AdSense crawler, in any index, and it will only crawl pages of your site which contain the AdSense code.2. Are your pages restricted by a login?
Our crawler will also get tripped up by any page that's only accessible to a logged-in user. If certain pages of your site are only available to users that have logged in, and you place ads on these pages, it's important to give the Mediapartners-Google crawler explicit access to view them too. In this case, the answer is site authentication, which you can find under your AdSense Setup tab. (Please note that you'll need to be migrated to Google Accounts to use this feature.) You can give our crawler access while continuing to prevent other users or bots from accessing the content on your site.While using the Site Diagnostics tool, you may notice sites that are blocked for other reasons -- please review our Help Center for more information about why your site may be showing up as blocked. By allowing our crawler access to pages hosting Google ads, you'll get the most targeted ads for your pages in return. I think we can all toast to that.

Add your business to Local Search in India

- Do you own a restaurant in Delhi and wish more people knew about your delicacies?- Are you an insurance agent seeking new clientele?- Would you like more tourists for your travel agency in Goa?- Are you a custom apparel merchandiser in Bangalore seeking to expand your customer base?Every day several lakhs of people search the Internet seeking firms like yours. It will help you to be listed in Google local search. It's really simple to add your business, and it's free. Call us at 1-800-419-4444 (in India only, for your Indian-based business), SMS "register" to 09900800000, or just add your listing.Spending a few minutes on this can make all the difference to your business - why not do it now?

Get outdoors with GO Georgia!

Our Atlanta office recently teamed up with the Parks, Recreation and Historic Sites Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to support an initiative called Get Outdoors Georgia (GO Georgia). An effort to help Georgians get outdoors, get fit and enjoy their diverse natural resources, the initiative focuses on family-friendly, nature-based, healthy outdoor recreation opportunities throughout the state. As a founding sponsor of the program, Google will offer consultation on products including AdWords, Analytics, Maps, Earth, Picasa, Gadgets and a branded YouTube channelAccording to a 2007 report from the Trust for America's Health, Georgia is one of the "heaviest" states in the union, ranking 14th for adult obesity and 12th for overweight children (16+ percent of its youth overweight or obese). We're pleased that our products will play a part in an historic effort to improve the health and well-being of all Georgians. And today, we're expanding our relationship with GO Georgia by spending a day in Panola Mountain State Park. Atlanta Googlers will help to restore the park and remove growth not indigenous to the area, improving the experience for Georgians and other visitors when they get out and visit the park.For more info on this forward-looking new program, visit the GO Georgia site.

Analytics integrated into Google Sites

Wouldn’t it be great to know how many people visit your site, what content is most popular, and if searches are getting people to the right places? Google Analytics is a free online service with stats, graphs, and reports that answer these questions and a number of other things you might like to know about how people use your site. Analytics offers sophisticated analytical tools that are simple and secure to use, and appeals to a wide range of users.Up until recently, Google Analytics wasn’t integrated with Google Sites, but now it is easy to get started (no coding required) with three steps:1. If you don’t have Google Analytics already, sign up for a free account2. Login to Google Analytics and find your tracking ID3. Login to Google sites to enable Google Analytics and enter your tracking ID in your Google Sites settingsIf you have any questions, check out our help center article on configuring Google Sites to use Google AnalyticsYou only have to set this up once to apply to all the existing and future pages in your Google Sites website. It works if your site is public or private. If you would also like to track search results on your site (good for knowing what people are looking for and whether they are finding it), this feature can also be enabled.Once you are set up, all you need to do is login to Google Analytics to check reports and see how people are using your site. Here are some of the cool things you can do.Posted by Jeanie Komarek, Software Engineer