I did not plan on adding on to my previous Google AdSense competitive filter post but I encountered some weird bugs that everyone should know of, including Mr Google.

How To Accidentally Destroy Your Competitive Ad Filter List

You may run the risk of wiping out your entire competitive ad filter list when you REFRESH your browser in the event you see a screen like this:

In the mini screen shot above, I encountered a blank page while I was adding new links to the competitive list. I thought Google was having some problems with their server so I clicked on the refresh button to reload the page. BIG MISTAKE! Do not refresh your browser when you see the screen above. Click on the back button instead! I have alerted Google about this bug but I doubt they can recover my list.

How To Create a Competitive Ad Filter List the Right Way

Google recommends using the c from an Internet Explorer browser. Once you have installed it, you will see a new menu item titled “Google AdSense Preview Tool” when you right click on an empty space on any web site.

This is a sample of the AdSense Preview Tool. What you need to do is check on the ads you don’t want and click on the “Show Selected URLs” link. The default geographic location is set to “Auto”. If you want a more thorough list of ads to block from your web sites, try selecting ALL the countries available to generate loads of unrelated URLs.

Instead of copying and pasting the URLs directly into Google AdSense, I recommend that you create a backup copy of the URLs in a text file in case your list gets wiped out like mine.

I like to use EditPlus to create text files because it has a nice sort feature that helps me sort my URLs according to their alphabetical order and remove duplicates. I usually remove the “http://www.” text from the URLs and include only the domain name in my list. Some web sites have subdomains and you may want to include the subdomain if you plan to allow other ads from it’s domain.

How Google Contradicts Their Own Policies

Google allows you to filter their ads but they do not guarantee that the ads in your filter list will be blocked from your web sites. This Google AdSense FAQ says, “Please note that Google does not commit that all ads for the websites that you add to your competitive ad filter list or ads containing objectionable content will be prevented from display on your site”. This doesn’t make sense to me at all!

My Open Letter To Google AdSense

Please consider these new features in your next Google AdSense update to allow Google and all your wonderful customers to make more money together.

• Integrate Google Webmaster Tools with Google AdSense to verify ownership of our web sites so that we may block ads for a specific channel, web site, URL.
• The competitive ad filter list should be unlimited instead of the current 200 limit.
• The crazy bug that wipes out the competitive ad filter list should be eradicated.
• Google AdSense should allow their webmasters to define tags that related to their web site and tags that do not relate to their web site to improve the relevance of the Google AdSense ads.

If more and more people bug them about these changes, they might relent and implement them soon. So please do your part and tell Google AdSense to listen to their customers and make a change.

Tagged As: Competitive-Ad-Filter, EditPlus, Google AdSense, Google-Webmaster-Tools

Categories: Google AdSense | 3 Comments »

If the Google AdSense sites that appear on your web sites are very well targeted for the content of your site, you won’t need to use the competitive ad filter. However, if you have web sites that do not get the right bunch of ads, you should use the competitive ad filter to block those untargeted ads from your web site to increase the chances of getting a more targeted ad.

The big problem with Google AdSense is they consider ads you wish to block as “competition”. Personally, I do not think of them as competition but annoyances. Once you enter a domain name into the competitive filter list, it will get blocked throughout your account. All of your web sites will not be able to display these ads.

As you can see from my competitive ad filter list, I have disabled some useless “Oasis spa” ads and other holiday related ads. If I create a web site about holiday topics, I will not be able to have these ads on my holiday sites even though they are targeted to my site’s content. Heaven knows why Google can’t create a “site specific ad filter” instead of the current filter system.

There used to a method of disabling advertisers on your sites based on the estimated bids the advertisers are paying. When the Overture Bid Tool was still working, some webmasters used to run a check on their Google AdSense ads’ advertisers on Overture and disable the lower paying advertisers. This would increase the chances of the higher paying ads to get displayed on your sites. Too bad, we can’t do this now…

Tagged As: Competitive-Ad-Filter, CTR, Google AdSense

Categories: Google AdSense | 2 Comments »

According to Google AdSense’s Blog Opimization tips, this is how you should layout your blog for best results with Google AdSense…

I followed the second example and moved the link unit up to the top of the page above all the blog entries and just below my menu. I tried the link unit on the just like the first example and it did not work very well for me so i removed them. Through my Google AdSense AdLogger logs. I highly recommend AdLogger for your Google AdSense tracking needs. It is free and open source. I bet some of the paid Google AdSense trackers are modified versions of AdLogger.

I might try the 120 x 600 pixel skyscraper ad on the right hand side of this blog. Google allows a maximum of 3 ads on your web sites. I do have 1 more ad to place on my site if I choose to. Some people recommend putting 3 Google AdSense ads on your web site while others do not. Whatever you have read about optmizing your sites for Google AdSense still requires testing to verify if it works positively or negatively on your web site.

Tagged As: google+adsense, google+adsense+optimization, google+adsense+tracker

Categories: Blog Updates, Google AdSense | 2 Comments »

I have been using Site5.com for over 1 year. I used to have nothing but good things to say about them but in the past 3-4 days my opinion of their service changed dramatically. I have removed the Site5 link in my footer because I no longer endorse them.

They quietly shutdown my web sites without telling me in advance because they were taking up too much resources. I am using a mid-range plan at their web site that allows me to host an unlimited number of domains. I use Site Uptime to check if Site5’s servers down and they were not down in the past 3-4 days. In fact their servers rarely go down. Therefore I don’t think I can claim anything for the “downtime guarantee” even though my web sites appear “blank” in my browser.

If I did not check my web sites manually by entering the URL into my browser, I would have missed this problem and they would continue to treat me as a fool. Their support took over 12 hours to reply to my query and they told me my scripts are using too many “httpd” request and they want me to fix it. I told them I can fix it but not in a day because I need to upload and run them in the browser and since I cannot even access my web sites, I cannot do update my scripts.

This experience has taught me a good lesson in hosting content sites. Get a VPS web hosting plan! That is the minimum plan you need to get to host a hundreds of domains. It will cost about $45 - $50 per month to get a decent VPS web host. I actually have 3 VPS accounts right now and I was planning to move my web sites from Site5 to my new VPS accounts slowly. I need to move out right now to prevent myself from losing more money from Google AdSense.

Here’s some common sense tips before you get your next web host…

1. Search the internet for “company name + reviews” to check out what other people say about the company.
2. Search the forums of the company name to see if there are any complaints and whether they remove the complaints from the forums.
3. Search the internt for “company name + complaints” to check if a lot of people are complaining about the company.
4. Email the technical support staff and not the sales staff to ask them what is their company policy if your web sites grows larger and takes up more resources than you are supposed to use. Do they simple shutdown your web site without notice or give you an advanced warning? The reason why I ask the technical support is get a feel of how their technical support staff. The sales team’s performance can be misleading because they will try to sell you on their service so they might have very fast response times but that does not mean the technical support will be as fast.
5. Email the sales staff to ask them what happens if you decide to cancel your service AFTER the guarantee period. Do they refund you your remaining credit or do they pocket your money?

When I started my first community site, I used a shared hosting plan till my site got too big for them. I switched a couple of web hosts and added a few web hosts to my personal black list because of the way they handle sites that use up too much of their server resources. They are Lunar Pages, HostRocket, HostGator, Site5, and ResellerZoom. You may be using one or more of these services above. If so, you have been warned because they do not seem to have the decency to tell you that your site is using too much resources BEFORE they shut you down. They only tell you that AFTER they shut you down. That to me is plain rude and lousy customer service.

My personal “gold list” of web hosts are ServInt and MadRooster. These people are different, they’ve got class. They will tell you your sites are growing too big for them politely. Their customer support is fast and helpful unlike the others.

Tagged As: madrooster, servint, site5, vps, web+host, web+hosting

Categories: Blog Updates, Google AdSense, Internet Marketing | 9 Comments »

I didn’t realise I have not been posting to my blog for over a month. At the end of last month, I discovered Domain Dashboard, a wonderful software to help you automate the mundane tasks of adding domains to your web host and the tracking of your web sites’ statistics.

Check out my Domain Dashboard review to find out why I give this software 2 thumbs up.

Tagged As: control-panel, cpanel, domain, domain+dashboard, google+adsense, internet+marketing, search+engine+optimization, seo, web+domain, whm

Categories: Google AdSense, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

If you missed my previous post on my Major Blog Renovation, please take a look at the “before photos” to see how my blog used to before today. After watching Michael Cheney’s AdSense Videos (AdSense Videos review coming soon), I realised I wasn’t maximizing my blog’s Google AdSense earning potential. Therefore I made the following changes to my Google AdSense ads:

1. I dumped the leaderboard ad at the top of the blog

I wonder why I put this up there in the first place. I guess it was convenient to do so at that time. The clickthrough rates for this type of ad sucks pretty bad because it looks too much like an ad.

What I have right now is the 336 x 280 large rectangle ad you see on the top left of every screen below the post titles. I embedded the ad seamlessly into the content without using any HTML tables. You can resize your browser window and the text around will “wrap” perfectly around the ad. I suggest you view the source code of this page to see how it is done with a simple “div” tag around your Google AdSense code. It’s much easier than using a HTML table and it looks prettier as well.

I had to do a little bit of PHP programming to show this ad only on the the first post of the page to prevent it from displaying an ad at every single blog entry. If you’re interested to know how it’s done, contact me and I will send you the WordPress template source code. You can’t tell by looking at the HTML source code.

2. I removed the Google AdSense affiliate ads

I used to have these square Google AdSense ads at the bottom right of my blog. If someone registers after clicking on my ads and makes $100, I get $100 from Google AdSense too. I also randomly shuffle between this Firefox with Google Toolbar ad and I get $1 when someone installs Firefox with Google Toolbar.

The earnings from the Firefox ad was too pathetic to justify taking up space over there. Furthermore, I haven’t seen any of my sub affiliates make over $100 yet.

I replaced the ads with a tiny 160 x 90 link unit. Check out the “Vincent Rich’s Network” box and you will see the ads over there.

3. I am finally tracking my Google AdSense ads

I didn’t want to pay money to get a Google AdSense ad tracker so I didn’t track my ads for a long time. Then I stumbled on the open source AdLogger script while I was browsing some Google AdSense related forum. I bet some of the paid scripts are actually AdLogger modifications.

I can now track how many clicks were made on my site and which ad they clicked on. The default Google AdSense tracking ability can only track how much money you made on your web site but it doesn’t track which ad or which page the click came from. You can even prevent click fraud by limiting the number of clicks on your ads. If the number of clicks exceeds your desired number of clicks, your ads will automatically disappear to that click fraudster.

The road ahead…

I will have to monitor my Google AdSense earnings and my AdLogger logs to see if my current setup is actually more profitable than the previous one. I am confident the large rectangle will work better than the leaderboard but I have doubts about the adlink unit ad. Only time will tell….

Tagged As: Blogging, google+adsense, internet+marketing, make+money, vincent+rich

Categories: Blog Updates, Blogging, Google AdSense | 3 Comments »

I have decided to give my Google AdSense ads a little reshuffle. This will probably be the last post with the “old” Google AdSense ad layout. I’m going to make some changes and you will be able to spot the difference with my “before photos” below.

Moreover, I need to keep my blog up to date with the latest blogging technologies. I’m going to add stuff like FeedBurner RSS feeds to replace the existing blog feeds I generate with my WordPress blogs, social boomarking to let people bookmark pages of my blogs, and tagging on sites like Technorati.com.

I will cover these topics in greater detail when the my new blog layout is up and explain the reasons for doing so. I am very excited about this new blog update because it could potentially drive a lot more traffic to my blog.

Tagged As: Blogging, google+adsense, internet+marketing, make+money, vincent+rich

Categories: Blog Updates, Blogging, Google AdSense | 2 Comments »

I have been using Keyword Elite for over a week now and it has been a bittersweet story. I am very impressed with Brad Callen’s customer support and his commitment to making this software the best keyword research tool in the world. Keyword Elite has been updated several times since I purchased it so reviewing it has been difficult because of the bug fixes and new features added in.

I purchased version 34 and now Brad Callen has updated it to version 63. Keyword Elite has been useful for me in the following ways:

1. Research the top 10 competitors of Google.com for a keyword phrase that does not have a lot of big time competitors so that I can target a less competitive keyword phrase for my web site. I used to have to do this manually by going to Google.com and copy down the PR rank of each top 10 result and note down if they used my target keyword phrase in the HTML. Now I can do all this in less than a minute.
2. Create a huge list of keywords that my top competitors bid on. I do not find the huge chunk of keywords returned by Keyword Elite to be very useful because it is a such a pain to sort them out when you have 40000 + keyword phrases. I simply research who my top affiliate competitors are in my target market and spy on them to see which one of my 40000 + keyword phrases they are bidding on over a period of time.
3. Create a larger list of related keywords for Google AdSense related web sites. Sometimes my other keyword tools only return me a small list of keywords because they all use Overture as their keyword source. With Keyword Elite I am able to expand that small list to a slightly bigger list.

Learning how to use Keyword Elite to make money can be a bit challenging. You have in your hands a very powerful tool with an instruction manual on how to use the tool but not how to make money with the tool.

This post is not a full review of Keyword Elite. I am testing version 63 and discovering new things about the software. Even though I feel Keyword Elite needs a lot of upgrading to make it work more intuitively, I still believe this is one of the best advancements in the keyword research software and you should get a copy as soon as possible before the retail prices goes up to $297 in the future.

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing, Google AdSense, Pay Per Click Search Engines, Search Engine Optimization | 7 Comments »

I’ve been using RegisterFly for quite some time now. I like their cheap $6.99 - $7.99 .com and $1.79 - $1.99 .info domain prices with free privacy protection of my personal information.

But lately I have been experiencing some problems with their registration system. It seems like whenever a domain registration is unsuccessful, my credit card still gets charged. In fact, this month I had 5 error charges to my credit card for domain name purchases that screwed up.

It takes a lot of time to report this to the support staff to get this rectified. Sometimes their web site takes a long time to load and in some cases in doesn’t load at all. RegisterFly is now an ICANN accredited registrar and it is registering domains on its own credentials. I think that is why their system is pretty screwed up now. 5 error charges in February 2006 is something new.

I usually purchase .info domains to create landing pages / redirection pages for promoting affiliate programs with Google AdWords. I also have a bunch of .info domains for the building of Google AdSense web sites. The best thing about RegisterFly is that once I purchase my domain name, I can literally use it straight away. Other domain registrars I used in the past made me wait at least 1 - 2 days.

What that means is I could research a particular niche to promote an affiliate program or build a Google AdSense site, research keywords, purchase a domain name, and upload my files to the web host within the same day.
I will continue to use them until I find another domain registrar with the same prices and registration turnaround time as RegisterFly. I really hope they clean up this mess as soon as possible.

Categories: Google AdSense, Pay Per Click Search Engines, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Last year I struggled with the blog and ping method. Check out my blog and ping posts of 2005. I purchased a couple of ebooks on “how to make money with Google AdSense” but none of them addressed this blog and ping issue.

Google got smart and if you are doing blog and ping the old way, chances are its not going to get you anywhere. The old way was using a blog and ping automation software and blasting links of your desired web site a blogspot.com blog. You have 1 blog with 100s of links to 1 web site. I believe Google discovered this disturbing trend of “spam blogs” on their network and they refused to follow the links on the blogs. Therefore, blog and ping using this method couldn’t work anymore.

I spent some time doing more research. I lurked around some internet marketing forums hoping to get some ideas on how to make this blog and ping method work again. Without blogging and pinging, all the Google AdSense systems that teach you to use “content generation software” can’t really work because you don’t have enough pages indexed.

Yes you can exchange links, purchase links, create press releases etc but it takes an awful amount of time and/or money. Furthermore, who would want to link to junk site and publish a press release about your junk site?

I found a solution to this blog and ping problem…

Check out Rick Butt’s software burner tutorial. This was what I was trying to do last year. Rick actually did one more thing I didn’t think of.

This is probably a more polite way of using blogspot.com for blogging and pinging. Let’s get real. Blog and ping is just a nice term for blog spamming. In my next post, I will introduce you guys a new tool that can automate the blog and ping process to the next level.

Categories: Google AdSense, Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »