Google’s made some tweaks to AdSense recently, and to Google Analytics. Meanwhile, SEOers are developing better ways to track links.
You Can’t Advertise on This Site Anymore
Well, you can, you’ll just have to use placement targeting. Google’s AdSense feature that prompts advertisers to “Advertise on this site” is no more. Ben Ewing, of AdSense Publisher Support, says the feature didn’t do as well as expected:
“Our recent findings indicate that the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature, which allowed advertisers to sign up for AdWords campaigns on your site, hasn’t been performing as well as we had hoped. We’ve elected to gracefully retire this feature and focus our efforts on developing and supporting features that drive better monetization results for you. Call it time management, call it ROI, call it our unwavering commitment to our publishers. We want you to earn more revenue, and sometimes that means “sunsetting” certain features we created.”
It also means Onsite Advertiser Sign-up pages will redirect to the main AdWords page.
Google Slides In New AdSense Feature
A few bloggers have noticed that Google is testing a new feature, dubbed by the bloggers as “sliding” ads. Alex Weidmann has screen shots of both horizontal and vertical ad listings where visitors can scroll through to see more ads:
“This is a another huge feature for Google AdSense because it will allow readers to find even more relevant information, which will ultimately make the publisher more money. I am yet to see the sliders on any ad type other than horizontal ads so far, but I can only assume Google will have an answer for the other ad types soon.”
Google Quietly Updates Analytics
MarketingPilgrim’s Andy Beal snagged a shot of a new feature on Google Analytics that allows users to compare specific data points like visits, pageviews, pages per visit, average time on site, bounce rate, and percent of new visits.
It’s All About The Links
SEOers are buzzing about Dutch webmaster Joost de Valk’s new Firefox extension for SEO link analysis. The straightforwardly-named SEO Link Analysis extension pulls together link information from Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Microsoft Webmaster Central.
