ADBRITE, MAKING MONEY

ADBRITE, MAKING MONEY, I’ve mentioned AdBrite and Text-Link-Ads as options to make money from your website or to buy advertising to bring in traffic and raise your PageRank. A third option targeted specifically at the blogosphere is BlogAds.
BlogAds operates much like the other two services except they target only blogs and not general websites. This is a nice niche and as you can imagine makes for a powerful advertising method. Blogs in general have more sway with their audience because of the personal, human-to-human relationship bloggers enjoy with their readership. Generally if a blogger recommends a product or service, his or her audience will take the recommendation as word-of-mouth rather than perceive it as advertising, especially if the blogger has a reputation for honesty, integrity and experience in his or her chosen field. Placing an ad on a blog won’t quite have the same effect but it may enjoy more credibility than placing the same ad on a commercial website.

From the bloggers point of view BlogAds offers another method to monetise their audience. BlogAds won’t take just any blogs on board, there is a screening process and they will take a 30% cut of each advertising sale. BlogAds state that the average blogger makes $50 per month and the lucky few make as much as $5000 per month. The system offers a simple submission form hosted by BlogAds so you don’t have to do much once you are approved to join the network. You copy the “Your Ad Here” code onto your blog and any interested advertiser can click through and purchase an add. Delivery and payment are automatic and you can manually approve all advertiser applications. BlogAds also allows you to write your own sales copy that is displayed to potential advertisers which is a nice touch, allowing you to personalise the selling process and carefully pitch what your blog is about. If you are interested in trying this method on your blog you can view the submission details.

While not appearing nearly as professionally branded as AdBrite or Text-Link-Ads, BlogAds does have it’s appeal. It looks like a simple blog itself and feels more like a human being is running the show rather than a corporate entity, a no doubt important selling point to attract bloggers that value community over commercialism. BlogAds stresses the community nature of it’s network to potential advertisers and warns them that a standard advertisement like you would run on a site like MSNBC.com may not perform as well on blogs. Blog advertising rewards creative and savvy advertisers that can connect and empathise with the community they are trying to reach.

No doubt as more and more blogs are added to the BlogAds network it will become very appealing to advertisers to leverage this advertising method. I expect many bloggers will look to systems like this to form the bulk of their revenue strategy and hopefully over time it will reward popular blogs with enough funding that they can rely on it for a living. For the time being it offers small-time bloggers perhaps enough money to supplement hosting costs, but you certainly should not be thinking about quitting that day job just yet!

ADBRITE TIPS

ADBRITE TIPS, I’ve recently become impressed with the potential for making money from a website by selling text link ads. During May I generated over $250 USD from selling text links on my blogs just from the brokerage service provided by Text-Link-Ads.com. It’s not a huge amount of money but it’s cash I didn’t have before. If you are aiming to become a full time blogger then any extra sources of income helps, so you may want to try selling text links yourself.

John Webster from AdBrite Guide contacted me about his new website aimed at helping publishers and advertisers maximize their return from another text link broker, AdBrite.com. AdBrite offers a similar service to Text-Link-Ads.com, brokering deals between website publishers and advertisers. As a blog publisher this means you can leave the selling of your advertising inventory to companies like AdBrite while you just work on making the best blog you can. All you have to do is add your site to their system, place some code on your site, then watch the money roll in (theoritically at least!). Of course factors such as how much traffic you have, what industry your site is in, your site’s PageRank (What is PageRank?) and where you place the add code will determine how much you make, but as I said, anything is better than nothing, so it’s worth a try.

John kindly offered a list of tips for me to publish to help you get the most out of AdBrite as a publisher and an advertiser. I’m posting the tips for AdBrite publishers (those wanting to make money from text links) here. The AdBrite advertiser tips (those wanting to generate traffic from buying links) are posted on my other blog, Small Business Branding.

Tips To Maximize Your AdBrite Income
ADBRITE TIPS, Never start your pricing too high. It is better to error on the low side and get advertisers hooked, because then they will be willing to pay higher prices for your inventory when the pricing increases. Make sure your placement is worth buying, the popular sellers in the marketplace tend to be sites with the most premium inventory. Spend some time tagging your site and giving proper demographic information. In your site description provide ideas of advertisers that you think might convert well. You know your audience best. AdBrite is more successful if you sell a FEW premium placements as opposed to just MANY backfill placements.

Hard code all placements because of the concreteness of “your ad here”. Putting AdBrite in rotation doesn’t perform as well. Allow a ramping period. AdBrite is a tool to help sell your own inventory, and think of it as a virtual salesperson for you. Any salesperson needs some time to gain traction. Just like an auction, the beginning price is never the final price. Entice advertisers with specials. You have full control to set pricing so make occasional specials to entice advertisers. Enable AdBrite’s auto pricing which will raise automatically as inventory sells, and lower itself as vacant inventory sits unsold. You can find more AdBrite publishers tips and AdBrite advertisers tips at AdBriteGuide.com

ADBRITE

AdBrite
AdBrite, Inc. is an online advertising firm based in San Francisco, California. It was founded by Philip J. Kaplan and Gidon Wise. Kaplan is also the founder of the website Fucked Company.
AdBrite serves ads on more than 40,000 websites and is the 10th largest ad network on the Internet, according to Media Metrix. AdBrite was founded in 2004 and is backed by Sequoia Capital, having raised $12 million in two rounds of funding.

About Us
AdBrite powers the world's most trusted and transparent marketplace for digital advertising. AdBrite served ads on 988,698,347 pageviews, from 43,789 sites. These numbers reflect yesterday's activity. They may fluctuate up or down each day, as some sites become inactive (zero pageviews) and others become active. This fluctuation is normal, as long as the general trend is upward :)

History
AdBrite was started by Philip Kaplan and Gidon Wise in 2002. They were looking for an easy way to sell advertising on their websites and blogs, and decided to place a small "Your Ad Here" link on each site to connect advertisers to an order form. AdBrite's simplicity spread through word-of-mouth, and within the first two years, more than 1,000 sites were using AdBrite to sell ads. The duo officially incorporated the company in 2004 and teamed up with Sequoia Capital, who’d previously funded companies including Google, Yahoo, and Apple. Since then, thousands more advertisers and publishers (see real-time stats, above) have entrusted AdBrite to manage their online advertising needs.

What can AdBrite do for me?
Advertisers
-Reach millions of users across a whole lotta sites
-Target your ads by keyword, site, or geography
-Run text ads, or get guaranteed traffic and branding with our innovative Active Interstitial ads
-Enjoy full transparency—see the stats before you buy
-Optimize your campaign with our easy-to-use online tools and conversion tracking pixel

Publishers
-Monetize your site with complete control over your pricing
-Approve or reject ads
-Sell directly to your users with our "Your Ad Here" link, our dedicated page created just for your site, and our in-house sales team
-Customize your ads for seamless integration into your site's design
-AdBrite works great by itself, or alongside ads from other networks (Google, Yahoo, etc.) or your own sales team
-Through a small snippet of HTML placed on your site, we handle ad serving, billing, customer service, and sales

Want to get started?
Advertisers, start by creating your ad—choose from

keyword targeted text ads or active interstitials, or browse the marketplace to find your target site or sites.

ADSENSE HIGHER EARNIGS

Have you ever looked at your ad reports and noticed that your channel data and your aggregate data don't match, even for the same date range? You're not alone -- we often receive emails from publishers who are concerned about this issue, and we're happy to clarify what's going on. Depending on how you've set up your channels, you'll see a larger number of page impressions, clicks and earnings in your channel reports than your aggregate reports for any or all of the following reasons:
Your ads are being tracked on multiple URL channels.Let's say you've set up 2 URL channels - one to track example.com and to track www.example.com/page. The URL channel example.com will track clicks and impressions from all subdomains, subdirectories, and subpages of example.com. As a result, one click on www.example.com/page will be tracked on both of your URL channels, which means you'll see two clicks recorded in your channel reports. However, your aggregate reports will show you the correct number of clicks, one, with no data duplication. You can learn more about how URL channels will track specific pages in our Help Center.
Your ads are being tracked on both a URL and a custom channel.Now let's suppose you have a URL channel for example.com and a custom channel called Example Homepage, which you're using on the homepage of example.com. When you receive a click on the ad unit tagged with your Example Homepage custom channel, it will also be tracked on your example.com URL channel. Just like above, this means that you'll see two clicks logged in your channel reports, but only one in your aggregate reports.
Your ads are being tracked on multiple custom channels.So you've taken advantage of our new feature, and you're tracking each of your red leaderboards with 2 custom channels -- one called Red_ad_units and one called Leaderboards. One click on a red leaderboard will be tracked in both of your custom channels, so you'll see twice as much data when you compare your channel reports to your aggregate reports.Of course, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't set up multiple URL and custom channels to track specific pages and ad units. But if you'd like to view the overall performance of your account, visit your Advanced Reports page, select the Aggregate Data radio button, and click Display Report -- you'll then see your reports without any duplicate data.Now get tracking (correctly)!

ADSENSE COST REVENUE

It's an oft-seen question from publishers: Are we earning revenue for ad impressions or for ad clicks? The answer is that it depends on whether cost-per-impression (CPM) ads or cost-per-click (CPC) ads are appearing on your pages. By default, CPC ads will show on your site and you'll generate earnings for valid clicks on those ads. However, your ad units will display CPM ads when advertisers bid specifically on your site using site targeting, and for those ads you'll generate earnings with each valid impression. Please keep in mind that CPM earnings are not the same as the values you see in your eCPM column; your eCPM is only a reporting feature that can help you compare ad performance.To determine which type of ad you displayed on specific days, you can follow these instructions to generate a report. In your Advanced Reports, the ad type 'Site' refers to CPM ads, and 'Contextual' refers to CPC ads.Want to show more CPM ads on your site? It's not possible to request CPM ads, but you can help advertisers get interested in your site by customizing your Onsite Advertiser Sign-up landing page. Advertisers can then create campaigns targeted specifically at your site, directly from your site. And don't forget to focus on quality, placement, and size -- take a look at some important tips from the AdWords team on what advertisers look for in site targeting their CPM ads.Remember: keep publishing that high-quality content and the advertisers will come to you.

ADSENSE PIN NUMBER STEPS

As you may know, one of the steps to receiving your first payment is to verify a Personal Identification Number (PIN). We'll send this PIN via standard postal mail once your earnings have reached $50, and then you'll need to enter it into the PIN Information Page of your account.Many concerned publishers ask whether they'll need to complete the PIN process more than once -- such as before receiving every check, or every time they generate $50 in earnings. Fortunately, the answer is no. You'll only need to enter in a PIN once per account, and we'll send it to you the first time you reach $50 in earnings.If you've reached $50 in earnings and haven't yet entered in your PIN, you'll see a box at the top of your Payment History page labeled 'Required Action'. Click on the 'Please enter your PIN' link to review detailed information about the date your most recent PIN was generated, and when you can request a replacement should you need one. Once you've verified your PIN, you should no longer see this language on your Payment History page.If you have more questions about our PIN process, you may wish to review our PIN guide or visit our Help Center.

ADSENSE FORMULA TIPS

Google Adsense tips, as explained in Why are ads displayed on this site?, most of the pages on this site display text ads from Google's AdWords program. To display these ads, a site must join Google's AdSense program. Joining is free, but not all sites are eligible to join. Once you're accepted, however, it's very simple to place the ads on your pages and to start generating revenue for your site. AdSense will serve ads that are generally very relevant to the content of a particular page. Here are some tips based on my experiences so far with the AdSense program. Google

Adsense Tip #1: Don't put ads on empty pages.

When I reworked my site, I built a skeleton set of pages that had no content, just titles and some meta tags. I displayed ads on those pages, however. Although all you see are public service ads at first, the very act of displaying ads on a page causes the AdSense web crawler to quickly fetch that page for analysis. A page with good content will thus begin showing relevant paying ads fairly quickly. If you don't have any content, then, Google will have to guess as what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant. You'll have to wait until Google re-crawls the site for the ads to correct themselves. Here is what Google had to say when I asked them about how often the AdSense crawler updates a site.

Thank you for taking the time to update your site. New ads will start appearing on your site the next time our crawler re-indexes your site. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to control how often our crawlers index the content on your site. Crawling is done automatically by our bots. When new pages are added to your website or introduced to the AdSense program, our crawlers will usually get to them within 30 minutes. If you make changes to a page, however, it may take up to 2 or 3 weeks before the changes are reflected in our index. Until we are able to crawl your web pages, you may notice public service ads, for which you will not receive any earnings. It's better to flesh out the page before you start displaying ads on it.

Google Adsense Tip #2: Don't be afraid to ask questions. If you're wondering about something, don't be afraid to ask Google. So far, they've always responded to my questions within a working day. There are email addresses to use, depending on the type of question, homeopportunitybusiness@yahoo.com

Google Adsense Tip #3: Avoid non-English characters on English pages. This one is a bug, to be honest. My surname is French, and I prefer to write it out correctly with the accent grave on the first "e". Every page on my site would then include at least two accented letters, because my name shows up twice in the footer. On some pages my name shows up two or three more times. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue. But on some pages the presence of the accented characters is enough to cause AdSense to display non-relevant ads in French. This happens whether the browser indicates a preference for French or not. When I reported this to Google, this is the answer they gave me:

"Hello Eric,Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.We are currently working as quickly as we can to address this problem. As soon as we have more information for you, we will email you again.We appreciate your patience.Sincerely,The Google Team"

Until this is resolved, I've decided to strip out all accents except on the pages that are actually in French.

Tip #4: Check your keyword density. Although Google doesn't release exact details as to how they determine the ads to serve on a given page, they do tell us that it's the text content of the page that matters, not the meta tags. Before serving ads on a page, then, you might want to check its keyword density. A good, free tool for doing this is found here: http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.htmlThis lets you fine-tune the page before exposing it to the AdSense crawler.More AdSense TipsYou can find more AdSense tips in my Make Easy Money with Google blog. Here's the complete list so far:

AdSense Tip #5: Manage your own AdSense account

AdSense Tip #6: Carefully craft blog or forum pages

AdSense Tip #7: When NOT to use CSS

AdSense Tip #8: Access your console from alternate domains

AdSense Tip #9: Use section targeting to exclude stop/poison keywords from your content

AdSense Tip #10: Join the AdWords programAdSense Tip #11: Plumb AdWords for keywords

ADSENSE MULTIPLE AD UNITS

Multiple Ad Units, another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google’s TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.

Adsense in RSS, with the growth of blogs and RSS feeds you’re starting to see adsense included in the feeds now. IMHO this doesn’t work, and here’s why:

1. You only get to place one ad unit.

2. You have no control over finding the ’sweet spot’ for the ad unit.

3. The ads are usually poorly targeted (this is getting better).

4. People develop ‘banner blindness’.

I know people like being able to read full postings in their feed reader, and there are at least a dozen other reasons for full posts from pleasing your users to mobile offline computing, all of which are completely valid. However if your website depends on generating adsense revenue to survive, then bring them to the site and show them the ads there.

ADSENSE MANAGING URL'S

Managing URL’s and channels

Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:domain1.com - 728 bannerdomain1.com - 336 blockdomain1.com - text linkdomain2.com - 728 bannerdomain2.com - image bannerdomain2.com - 336 blockdomain3.com - 300 blockWhile this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total. Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail. TIP: At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.

Site Design and Integration Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

-336×280 large rectangle

-300×250 inline rectangle

-160×600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior. Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.

The one area where I’ve found blended ads don’t perform as well is forums, especially ones with a high volume of repeat members. Regular visitors develop banner blindness pretty quickly. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. As with any of the decisions about location, placement and color it’s a trade off. How much do you emphasize the ads without annoying your visitors. Remember it’s better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the adsense ads directly above or below the the first forum thread.

Using ImagesOne of the latest ’secrets’ to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being ‘over the line’ write to adsense and ask them to take a look. As far as using the images, I’ve done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples. TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.Added:I got a little criticizm for this and rightly so, as I wasn’t specific as I could have been. Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate

ADSENSE TIPS

General or NicheYou can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field. If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it’s currently zero).

Once you’ve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don’t try to run with the big dogs if you can’t keep up. If you have to ask if you’re a big dog, then chances are, you’re not. I have used a high dollar keywords report from cashkeywords.com and was pleased with my results (see cash keywords free offer recap).

New Sites, Files and MaintenanceWhen you’re building a new site don’t put adsense on it until it’s finished. In fact I’d go even farther and say don’t put adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with “lorem ipsum” dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically. I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it’s only one file I have to work with. TIP: I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.

GOOGLE PRODUCT

List of Google products
This page is a summary of services and tools provided by Google For other uses, see Google (disambiguation). This list of Google products includes all major standalone services and tools created or acquired by Google. They are either a gold release, in beta development, or part of the Google Labs initiative. This list also includes previous products, that have either been merged or discarded. Features of products, such as Web Search features, are not listed. Many of these products are made by individuals or small groups of Google Engineers. Each Google Engineer devotes a certain amount of time to develop a new application or technology.

Desktop applications

Standalone applications
Desktop [1] (Windows 2000 SP3+/XP/Vista)
Desktop search application, that indexes e-mails, documents, music, photos, chats, Web history and other files. It allows the installation of Google Gadgets.
Earth [2] (Linux, Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP)
Virtual globe that uses satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D globe.
Hello [3] (Windows 98/ME/2000/XP)
Allows users to send images across the Internet and publish them to blogs.
Gmail Notifier [4] (Windows 2000/XP)
Alerts the user of new messages in their Gmail account.
Notifier [5] (Mac OS X)
Alerts the user of new messages in Gmail and upcoming events in Google Calendar.
Pack [6] (Windows XP/Vista)
Collection of computer applications, including Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa, Google Talk and Mozilla Firefox.
Picasa [7] (Linux and Windows 2000/XP)
Photo organization and editing application, providing photo library options and simple effects.
Picasa Web Albums [8] (Mac OS X)
An application to help uploading images to the "Picasa Web Albums" service It consists of both an iPhoto plug-in and a stand-alone application.
SketchUp [9] (Mac OS X and Windows 2000/Windows XP)
Simple 3D sketching program with unique dragging interface and direct integration with Google Earth.
Talk [10] (Windows 2000/Windows XP/Server 2003)
Application for VoIP and instant messaging. It consists of both a service and a client used to connect to the service, which uses the Jabber protocol.
Video Player [11] (Mac OS X/Windows 2000/XP)
Video player to watch videos from Google Video, including unique resume and download features.
Web Accelerator [12] (Windows 2000 SP3+/XP)
Uses various caching technologies to increase download speed of web pages.

Desktop extensions
Blogger Web Comments [13] (Firefox extension)
Displays related comments from other Blogger users.
Browser Sync [14] (Firefox extension)
Saves browser settings for backup and use on other installations of Mozilla Firefox.
Dashboard Widgets for Mac [15] (Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets)
Collection of mini-applications including Gmail, Blogger and Search History.
Pinyin IME [16]
Input Method Editor that is used to convert Chinese Pinyin characters, which can be entered on Western-style keyboards, to Chinese characters.
Send to Phone [17] (Firefox extension)
Allows users to send text messages to their mobile phone (US only) about web content.
Toolbar [18] (Firefox and Internet Explorer extension)
Web browser toolbar with features such as a Google Search box, phishing protection, pop-up blocker as well as the ability for website owners to create buttons.

Web applications
These products are accessed via a Web browser.

Advertising
AdSense [19]
Advertisement program for Website owners. Adverts generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis, and are adverts shown are from AdWords users, depending on which adverts are relevant.

AdWords [20]
Google's flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads.
AdWords Website Optimizer [21]
Tool for testing different website content, in order to gain to the most successful advertising campaigns. It is fully integrated with AdWords, and is currently only available to selected beta testers.

Analytics [22]
Traffic statistics generator for defined websites, with strong AdWords integration. Webmasters can optimize their ad campaigns, based on the statistics that are given. Analytics is based on the Urchin program.
Audio Ads [23]
Radio advertising program for US businesses, available by contacting Google sales offices.
Click-to-Call [24]
Calling system so users can call advertisers for free at Google's expense from search results pages.
Grants [25]
Scheme for non-profit organizations to benefit from free Cost-Per-Click advertising on the AdWords network.
TV Ads [26]
CPM-driven television advertising scheme available on a trial basis, currently aimed towards professional advertisers, agencies and partners.

Aggregation
Personalized Homepage [27]
Customizable homepage, which can contain Web feeds and Google Gadgets. Tabs and themes can be created. It was launched in May 2005.
Reader [28]
Web-based news aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds. It allows the user to search, import and subscribe to feeds. The service also embeds audio enclosures in the page. Major revisions to Google Reader were made in October 2006.

Communication & Publishing
Apps [29]
Custom domain and service integration service for businesses, enterprise and education, featuring Gmail and other Google products.
Blogger [30]
Weblog publishing tool. Users can create a custom, hosted blogs with features such as photo publishing, comments, group blogs, blogger profiles and mobile-based posting with little technical knowledge.
Calendar [31]
Free online calendar. It includes a unique "quick add" function which allows users to insert events using natural language input. Other features include Gmail integration and calendar sharing. It is similar to those offered by Yahoo! and MSN.
Docs & Spreadsheets [32]
Collaborative spreadsheets and writer application, combining Google Spreadsheets and Writely into a single interface. It was released on October 11, 2006.
Dodgeball [33]
Social networking site built specifically for use on mobile phones. Users text their location to the service, which then notifies them of crushes, friends, friends' friends and interesting venues nearby.
Gmail [34] (Also known as Google Mail)
Free Webmail and POP e-mail service provided by Google, known for its abundant storage and advanced interface. It was first released in an invitation-only form on April 1, 2004. Mobile access and Google Talk integration is also featured.
Joga Bonito [35]
Soccer community site, similar to services such as MySpace, in that each member has a profile, and can join groups based on shared interests. The service allows a user to meet other fans, create games and clubs, access athletes from Nike, and watch and upload video clips and photos.
JotSpot [36]
Application wiki company that offers enterprise social software and was founded by Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, co-founders of Excite. The product is targeted mainly to small and medium-sized businesses. It was acquired by Google on October 31, 2006.
Measure Map [37]
Statistics for blog writers. It was launched on February 2, 2006.
Notebook [38]
Web clipping application for saving online research. The tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from pages while browsing, save them online, access them from any computer, and share them with others.
Orkut [39]
Social networking service, where users can list their personal and professional information, create relationships amongst friends and join communities of mutual interest. In November 2006, Google opened Orkut registration to everyone, instead of being invitation only.
Page Creator [40]
Webpage-publishing program, which can be used to create pages and to host them on Google's servers.
Picasa Web Albums [41]
Online photo sharing, with integration with the main Picasa program.
YouTube [42]
Popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. In October 2006, Google, Inc., announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion USD in Google's stock. The deal closed on 13 November 2006.

Development
Code [43]
Google's site for developers interested in Google-related development. The site contains Open Source code and lists of their API services.
Code Search [44]
Search engine for programming code found on the Internet.
Co-op [45]
Platform for users to expand and apply Google Search to specific sites and topics, using Custom Search Engine, Subscribed Links and Topics.
Related Links [46]
Script that places units for related Web content, including pages, searches and videos, on the owner's Website, through embedded code.
Webmaster Tools [47]
Collection of services, designed to assist Website owners with search ranking, indexing and general site maintenance. Previously known as Google Sitemaps.

Mapping
Maps [48]
Mapping service that indexes streets and satellite imagery, and provides driving directions and local search for the USA, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. It is also available as a mobile service in some countries.
Mars [49]
Imagery of Mars using the Google Maps interface. Elevation, visible imagery and infrared imagery can be shown. It was released on March 13, 2006, the anniversary of the birth of astronomer Percival Lowell.
Moon [50]
NASA imagery of the moon through the Google Maps interface. It was launched on July 20, 2005, in honor of the first manned Moon landing on July 20, 1969.
Ride Finder [51]
Taxi, limousine and shuttle search service, using real time position of vehicles in 14 US cities. Ride Finder uses the Google Maps interface and cooperates with any car service that wishes to participate.
Transit [52]
Public transport trip planning through the Google Maps interface. Google Transit was released on December 7, 2005, and is currently available in nine cities.

Search
Accessible Search [53]
Search engine for the blind and visually impaired. It prioritises usable and accessible web sites in the search results, so the user incurs minimal distractions when browsing.
Alerts [54]
E-mail notification service, which sends alerts based on chosen search terms, whenever the are new results. Alerts include web results, Groups results and news.
Base [55]
Google submission database, that enables content owners to submit content, have it hosted and make it searchable. Information within the database is organized using attributes.
Blog search [56]
Weblog search engine, with a continuously-updated search index. Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger. Results can be viewed and filtered by date.
Book Search [57]
Search engine for the full text of printed books. Google scans and stores in its digital database. The content that is displayed depends on the arrangement with the publishers, ranging from short extracts to entire books. Previous called Google Print.
Catalogs [58]
Search engine for over 6,600 print catalogs, which are acquired through Optical character recognition.
Checkout [59]
Online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. Webmasters can choose to implement Google Checkout as a form of payment.
Directory [60]
Collection of links arranged into hierarchical subcategories. The links and their categorization are from the Open Directory Project, but are sorted using PageRank.
Finance [61]
Searchable US business news, opinion, and financial data. Features include company-specific pages, blog search, interactive charts, executives information, discussion groups and a portfolio.
Froogle [62]
Price engine that searches online stores, including auctions, for products. It is also offered in Wireless Markup Language (WML) form as Froogle Mobile.
Groups [63]
Web and e-mail discussion service and Usenet archive. Users can join a group, make a group, publish posts, track their favorite topics, write a set of group web pages updatable by members and share group files. [64]. In January, 2007, version 3 of Google Groups was released. New features include the ability to create customised pages and share files.
Image Labeler [65]
Game that induces participants to submit valid descriptions (labels) of images in the web, in order to later improve Image Search.
Image Search [66]
Image search engine, with results based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image and text adjacent to the image. When searching, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed.
Mobile [67]
Collection of applications for mobile phoness and PDAs, including Gmail Mobile and Mobile Web Search.
Music Trends [68]
Music ranking of the songs played with iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player and Yahoo Music. Trends are generated by Google Talk's "share your music status" feature.
Language Tools [69]
Collection of linguistic applications, including one that allows users to translate text or web pages from one language to another, and another that allows searching in web pages located in a specific country or written in a specific language.
News [70]
Automated news compilation service and search engine for news. There are versions of the aggregator for more than 20 languages. While the selection of news stories is fully automated, the sites included are selected by human editors.
News Archive Search [71]
Feature within Google News, that allows users to browse articles from over 200 years ago.
Patent Search [72]
Search engine to search through millions of patents, each result with its own page, including drawings, claims and citations.
Rebang [73]
Google China's search trend site, similar to Google Zeitgeist. Currently part of Google Labs.
Scholar [74]
Search engine for the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online, except those published by Elsevier, the world's largest scientific publisher.
Search History [75]
Search tracking for Google Account holders, which records Web pages, images, videos, music ad more. Previously called Personalized Search, it also includes Bookmarks, search trends and item recommendations.
SearchMash [76]
Search engine that means to "test innovative user interfaces." Among its features are the ability to display image results on the same page as web results, feedback about features, and continuous scrolling results. Aside from its privacy policy and terms of service, there is no Google branding on the site.
Sets [77]
List of items generated when the user enters a few examples. For example, entering "Green, Purple, Red" produces the list "Green, Purple, Red, Blue, Black, White, Yellow, Orange, Brown.
SMS [78]
Mobile phone short message service offered by Google in several countries, including the USA, Japan, Canada, Germany, Spain and formerly the UK. It allows search queries to be sent as a text message. The results are sent as a reply, with no premium charge for the service.
Suggest [79]
Auto-completion in search results while typing to give popular searches.
Trends [80]
Graph plotting application for Web Search statistics, showing the popularity of particular search terms over time. Multiple terms can be shown at once. Results can also be displayed by city, region or language. Related news stories are also shown.
Video [81]
Video search engine and online store for clips internally submitted by companies and the general public. Google's main video partnerships include agreements with CBS, NHL and the NBA.
Web Search [82]
Web search engine, which is Google's core product. It was the company's first creation, coming out of beta on September 21, 1999, and remains their most popular and famous service. It receives 1 billion requests a day and is the most used search engine on the Internet.
University Search [83]
Listings for search engines for University websites.
U.S. Government Search [84]
Search engine and Personalized Homepage that exclusively draws from sites with a .gov TLD.
Voice Local Search [85]
Non-premium phone service for searching and contacting local businesses
Zeitgeist [86]
Collection of lists of the most frequent search queries. There are weekly, monthly and yearly lists, as well as topic and country specific lists.

Hardware products
Google Search Appliance [87]
Hardware device that can be hooked to corporate intranets for indexing/searching of company files.
Google Mini [88]
Reduced capacity and less expensive version of the Google Search Appliance

Previous products
Applications that have been discontinued by Google, either because of integration with other Google products, or through lack of support.
Answers [89]
Question and answer service, allowing users to pay researchers to answer questions. Google announced the closing of service on November 28, 2006. All past discussions have been publicly archived.
Local
Local listings service, before it was integrated with mapping. The merged service was then called Google Local, which was further renamed to Google Maps due to popular demand.
Public Service Search [90]
Non-commercial organization service, which included free SiteSearch, traffic reports and unlimited search queries. Discontinued in February 2007 and re-directed to Google Co-op.
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheet management application, before it was integrated with Writely to form Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It was announced on 6 June 2006.
Voice Search [91]
Automated voice system for searching the Web using the telephone
Writely
Web-based word processor created by software company Upstartle, who were acquired by Google on March 9, 2006. On October 10, 2006, Writely was merged into Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Google X
Re-designed Google search homepage, using a Mac OS style interface. It appeared in Google Labs, but was removed the day after.

ADSENSE CRITICISM

Abuse
Some webmasters create sites tailored to lure searchers from Google and other engines onto their AdSense site to make money from clicks. These "zombie" sites often contain nothing but a large amount of interconnected, automated content (e.g.: A directory with content from the Open Directory Project, or scraper sites relying on RSS feeds for content). Possibly the most popular form of such "AdSense farms" are splogs ("spam blogs"), which are centered around known high-paying keywords. Many of these sites use content from other web sites, such as Wikipedia, to attract visitors. These and related approaches are considered to be search engine spam and can be reported to Google. There have also been reports of Trojans engineered to produce fake Google ads that are formatted to look like legitimate ones. The Trojan Horse apparently downloads itself onto an unsuspecting computer through a web page and then replaces the original ads with its own set of malicious ads.

Criticism
Due to concerns about click fraud, Google AdSense has been criticized by some Search engine optimization firms as a large source of what Google calls "invalid clicks" in which one company clicks on a rival's search engine ads to drive up its costs. Some publishers have been blocked by Google, complaining that little justification or transparence was provided. To help prevent click fraud, publishers can choose from a number of click tracking programs. These programs will display detailed information about the visitors who click on the AdSense advertisements. Publishers can use that data to determine if they've been a victim of click fraud or not. There are a number of such commercial scripts available for purchase. An open source alternative is AdLogger.

Because AdSense adverts use non-xhtml compliant methods to display the advert blocks they will break xhtml strict pages. This is due to the use of the document.write method, which is deprecated in favour of DOM manipulation in xhtml, and the use of the iframe element, which is deprecated because it ties markup to presentation. This can be worked around by keeping the AdSense code in a separate html4 file served as text/html and including this in the application/xml+xhtml file using the object element.

Google has also come under fire for allowing AdWords advertisers to abuse trademarks. In 2004, Google started allowing advertisers to bid on any search terms, including the trademarks of their competitors. The payment terms for AdSense customers have also been criticized. Google withholds payment until an account reaches US$100, but many small content providers require a long time - years in many cases - to build up this much AdSense revenue. These pending payments are recorded on Google's balance sheet as "accrued revenue share". At the close of its 2006 fiscal year, the sum of all these small debts amounted to a little over US$370million - cash that Google is able to invest but which effectively belongs to its customer