Well, I’ve resisted for quite a while, but I’ve decided to add Google AdSense to my site.
What will this mean? If you are familiar with AdSense, what I’ll be doing is setting things up so that Google will place some relevant links on my page. “Relevant” is based on Google’s analysis of the words and context on my site- in my experience, its reasonably accurate.
Does this mean I’m selling out, and desperate for some extra income? Heck no. I’d be surprised if AdSense generates more than a buck or two a month for me. Mostly, I’m doing it because:
- I’m curious how it works
- I’ve used AdSense on other sites, and found it useful as a site visitor
That latter point, “useful for the site visitor”, is very much in the eye of the beholder. An example: I might mention the game “F.E.A.R” on my site, and a Google AdSense link might point me to some company selling the game on the net. As a site visitor, I might find clicking that link to be handy. The nice thing for me (again, your mileage may vary) is that Google AdSense is pretty unobtrusive: no pop overs/unders, no animated flash images. Just some basic text that you can click on.
If I or my favorite visitors really don’t like the whole AdSense experience, I’ll shut it down in a flash. I expect to be hooking things up in the next week or so, depending on whether Google accepts my application.
Please note: I’ve recently started using Technorati tags on my posts- this has nothing to do with AdSense. Technorati tags are no benefit to me whatsoever- they just give you a link to click that shows you other blogs that might be talking about related subjects.
Edited to change AdWords to AdSense…AdWords is what Google calls the service they charge advertisers for…AdSense is what webmasters like myself put on their websites to display targeted advertising
Technorati Tags: Google, Technorati tags, AdSense
Be prepared to see some irrelevant ads when the program first goes live. Also, it’s worth setting up an alternate ad on your site if you’d rather show something other than public service ads. Good luck!
Greetings, Ed, and welcome to my blog!
The relevance of the adverts seems to be reasonably good right out of the box, but then I’ve been using Google’s Sitemap for some time on the theory that that will help keep their indexes of my site current. That said, I did notice a pretty significant improvement in relevance even within the first few days- now AdSense is showing ads for cold remedies on my main page in response to my “I’ve got a cold” post 🙂
I like your advice regarding setting up an alternate ad- maybe something in my left or right nav. But I think I’ll let things settle for a bit and become more familiar with how the program works before I get too crazy about optimizing.
By the way- I hope you don’t mind, but I edited your post to correct the link to your website (http://www.technologyevangelist.com/). YOu missed an “e” in there originally.
Okay, I’ve noticed over the last few days that the google ads seem to be hung up on “bad breath” adverts on your home page… I’m not quite sure what it is that makes google think that visitors to your site have killer halitosis?
Heheh 🙂 I was curious about that too, but I do mention being short of breath in several places in my post about the CT scan.
I think that the ads on the main page reflect the most recently indexed entries on that page. And I find that the best (most suitable) adds show up on the individual posting pages, presumably because then only the contents of a single post (topic) are used to generate the related advert.
Mind you, I currently find it humourous that my ads are all about bad breath 😉
“And I find that the best (most suitable) adds show up on the individual posting pages,”
Hmmm, when I go to your “previous entries” it has a Teresa Noreen post at the top of the page … and 3 google ads offering to find hotels right above her picture….
Reminds me of when we were playing with the voice input on your cars GPS! 😀
On the plus side, at least the adverts on the main page have moved away from the bad breath theme- now its radiology and “Did Einstein make a mistake? You be the judge!” or something like that 😉
Pingback: Kelly’s World- A View into the mind of Uber Geek, Kelly Adams » Blog Archive » A year with Google AdSense…and $19 richer!
Pingback: Kelly’s World- A View into the mind of Uber Geek, Kelly Adams » Blog Archive » Google Adsense year three… still not rich