Using Adsense Allowed Sites to Track URL Usage

February 9, 2009 by

Not too very long ago, I was banging my head against the wall looking for a way to find what URL’s I had my Adsense ads showing on. It’s not hard to remember the URLs that you are currently doing upkeep and maintenance on, but the URLs of revenue share forums (forums.digitalpoint.com) and websites that you’ve left along the shoulder of the information superhighway can easily be forgotten. Especially if it/they are slow traffic and low impression URLs.

I had a couple impressions and clicks from a un-channeled AdSense unit.  If you don’t give the unit a channel or know the URL, AdSense gives you no easy way to find out where that impression is coming from.  And, while my impressions were not, some people have had impressions and clicks show up from non-compliant websites.  It’s a good way to get your Adsense account suspended.  Or get a competitors account suspended if you catch my drift.  Either way, I get just under 50% of my online income from Adsense on a good Adsense month, so I didn’t want to get the account suspended.  I needed to track those URLs!

After much searching, I found nothing.  There are a couple of *ahem* “services” that can give you the URLs, but they are all paid services.  Would be good for finding out what other sites your competitor is running his/her adsense on.  But, I didn’t want to pay for a service just to track the URLs that Adsense was showing on.  I have no other use for such a service, so it would be a bit of an overkill to pay for it.  Which leaves me with free services and products.  There are none.  At least, none that I could find.

What is my solution?  A feature of Adsense called “Allowed Sites”.  It does the opposite of what I wanted really.  Rather than just telling me what URLs were showing my ads, it also restricts the URLs that are allowed to show the ads.  Thus the name Allowed Sites.  If a URL isn’t on that list, it isn’t allowed to show your ads.  Not exactly the solution I had in mind, but with nothing else available, it’ll have to do.

Using Allowed Sites.  You have to turn it on.  It’s pretty simple really.  Log into your adsense account, click on adsense setup, and then click on allowed sites.  Check Yes, I want to use it and then the button.  Now, all you need is a list of your URLs that will be allowed to show your ads.  For some, like myself, with less that 20 or so domains, the list is pretty easy to put together.  But, the list has a max of a couple hundred, so any hard-core domainers or even adsense landing page creators would have a hard time using the service.  Luckily, my list is relatively short, and easily fits within the limits.

So, that takes care of the sites that I know/remember.  What about the sites that I’ve forgotten?  The sources of the mysterious non-channeled impressions?  Well, as those impressions and clicks come in, the URL that they appear on will show up in a list of non-allowed sites showing your ads.  If the site is one of yours, you simply need to add it to your list.  If it isn’t one of yours, you can leave it off the list and it won’t be able to show your ads.  Plus you get to see what whomever it is is working on. 😉

Allowed sites is not the perfect solution, but it will work for most people.  There are some noted exceptions that won’t be able to use it, but those folks will likely have another solution anyways.  If you’ve been hanging around the ‘net for a while, you might want to try turning this on for your adsense account.  You might find a few sites you forgot about!

Here’s the Googelymoogely’s help index on Allowed Sites.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , ,

Need to Track URLs that Adsense Shows Up On

January 1, 2009 by

So, I have a conundrum.  My adsense account is showing clicks that aren’t showing as views.  They don’t appear in my URL channels or any of my other defined channels.  On the one hand, I don’t mind a few extra clicks here and there, but it’s a fine line.  If, for instance, those clicks and views are from a URL that has nudity or violence on them, I would be in violation of the Adsense TOS.  If  they aren’t, then I could just let them go for ever and rack up the money.

I don’t know whether they are from old sites that are cached, or revenue share sites that I submitted my ID to, or if someone has jacked my Publisher ID for some odd reason.  And I’d like to find out.  Which is where the problem surfaces.  I can’t find a good way to find the URLs.  I could turn on the “Allowed” URL feature in adsense, but that feature has some limitations that I don’t really want to deal with.  The biggest being that it’s limited to only 100 allowed URLs.  I don’t have anywhere near 100 sites, but if you were to try and allow all the Google cache sites, you’d quickly surpass that limit and you’d be losing out on some very valid adsense impressions and possibly some clicks too.

I’ve tried to search via Google with my publisher ID, but since the code is in Javascript, I can’t find anything.  I found a site a few weeks ago that would somehow do it, but it was a paid site.  I’m cheap, so I passed it up.  Of course, I can’t remember what site it was either.  I’d still like to find a free way to do it.  If they can do it for a paid site, there has to be a way to do it, so what is it?

Anyone ever done anything like this?  I tried to ask Matt Cutts on Twitter (@mattcutts), but he didn’t respond.  Either he doesn’t know, he sicked the Google KGB on me for a shady question, or he missed the question, or he’s ignoring me.  Any way you crack it, it doesn’t help me.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , ,

Win a Google Android G1 from Chitika

December 12, 2008 by

Chitika is having a contest to see who is making the best use of their Chitika Premium ad blocks in tandem with Adsense.

Since one of the best ways to earn the most revenue is by using AdSense and Chitika | Premium together on the same page, we thought we would hold a contest to see who has the best AdSense + Chitika | Premium setup.

All you’ve got to do is get them the URL of the site where you’ve got both Chitika Premium and Adsense set up. You can submit it in the comments of the announcement post or via email (listed on that post).  Best placement combo wins.

The grand prize winner gets their choice of a Google/T-Mobile Android G1, Blackberry Storm, or an Apple iPhone 3G 8GB.  Also, two runners up will get a cash prize of $200.  That’s nearly enough to buy your own phone.

I must admit that I had abandoned the Chitika program for quite some time due to lack of performance, but I was convinced to give it another try and it’s paid great dividends since.  What used to be a $3-4 a month payout, is now coming in at $50-$70!

Now, go and submit your winning placement!


Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sales Tactics: …and More!

February 12, 2008 by

Before you get ahead of yourself and think that you don’t need to know how to sell, remember that one of the biggest parts of affiliate and online work is visitors buying items. It’s how you make your money. A visitor comes to your site, clicks on a link, and then buys the item. You, in turn, get paid a percentage of that sale. It’s the lifeblood of being an affiliate.

A certain amount of your affiliate links are, to be certain, just links. They have no copy to accompany them and are just “there”. Most of the time those links will do you very little good. What you need to do is sell the product.

There are many, many ways to sell a product and there are plenty of sales tactics that you can employ. Today, lets talk about the sales tactic that I like to call the “and More!” tactic. The “and More!” tactic is one of the more popular ones being used today. Why? Because it works. Buyers are attracted to the “and More!” that it implies. From infomercials by Kevin Trudeau pushing Debt Cures they don’t want you to know about to the many useful products out there, the “and More!” brings them in by the dozen.

How do you employ the “and More!” tactic? Simple.  Give the customer some extras.  Whether it’s something as simple as a little extra info in the form of an ebook or a little extra trinket on the side. Selling a book?  Add a informational CD on the subject with further research.  Give the customer “bonus” books.  You see it all the time on the sales pages of the many ebooks touting instant wealth through adsense.  When you pay for the ebook, you get three other great reports and ebooks valued at $XXX.XX along with it!

Whatever it is that your selling, the “and More!” tactic dictates that you at least make it seem like the customer is getting a great value.  Even better, give them a great value.  Just make sure you tell them about it!

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , ,
Next Page »