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Google AdSense gives you the option to block competitors ads on your Blog using their Competitive Ad Filter, part of Google AdSense. Google allows you to enter upto 200URLs in here. If you don’t publish ads through Google Adwords, you might be under the impression that hey, I don’t need to use this filter. But you are definitely missing out on additional revenue. Have you ever checked your Google AdSense account and see ad impressions that resulted in a revenue of 1 cent to you? I certainly have. What happens is that you end up losing a valuable visitor to your blog for 1 cent and that too , the ad they click on isn’t of much use because they most likely just clicked on a Made For AdSense (MFA) site ad.

What is a Made for AdSense site?

Have you ever been to a site where there is absolutely no content and all you see are ads, Google AdSense Ads, Yahoo ads, ads ads and more ads. These sites contribute a lot to the internet junkyard and provide no value except to get web visitors to click on advertisements. These MFA sites offer a low CPC rate which takes brings them traffic at a very lost cost. Then these sites make money off the visitor to your blog by serving ads with a higher return.

Implementing the Competitive Ad Filter in your Google AdSense Account

You can prevent these MFA sites from serving ads on your blog or website by using Competitive Ad Filter in your Google AdSense account. When you block these sites, you end up with higher paying ads on your blog.

To get the URL of the site you wish to block, you can use the Google AdSense Preview tool. The Google AdSense Preview Tool is a better option as it prevents you from accidentally clicking on the ads. You can use a different method to find the URL of Flash based ads as the AdSense Preview tool does not work for such ads.

Another excellent site is Ads Black List. This site will generate a list of sites which you can use to filter. However this is a paid service. My firm is responsible for managing many sites.

Here is a list of 200 URLs which I have refined over time and which you can copy and paste into your competitive ad filter.

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My firm is in charge of managing my forums, some of them very successful both financially and performance wise. This combination is very hard to achieve and even if we managed to do this, we might be flirting with some Google AdSense rules.

For any successful Forum, there are two things to keep in mind, Ad optimization and keeping the user experience at a high level. Because of the very nature of a forum where the topics discussed are broad, it becomes hard to achieve good ad targeting. Based on our experience and with suggestions from Google, these are the five tips you need to follow in order to achieve AdSense Nirvana. If you have a website or a blog instead of a forum, you might want to check out these AdSense optimization tips for a website or a blog.

Before I offer my insight, let us check out the Six Adsense optimization tips for forums from Google. These six tips are:

1. Format is important for multiple ad units

2. Display your ad units where repeat users will notice them

3. Place a leaderboard immediately after the last post

4. Use horizontal link units

5. Opt-in to image ads

6. Be sensitive to your forum community

Besides the above mentioned tips, Google also gives us a heatmap they use to visualize effective ad layout on forums.

These are all great tips. However, we will analyze some of these in more depth besides providing you with additional insights to help make a better decision on optimizing the ads on your forum.For any successful Forum, there are two things to keep in mind, Ad optimization and keeping the user experience at a high level. Because of the very nature of a forum where the topics discussed are broad, it becomes hard to achieve good ad targeting. Based on our experience and with suggestions from Google, these are the five tips you need to follow in order to achieve AdSense Nirvana. If you have a website or a blog instead of a forum, you might want to check out these AdSense optimization tips for a website or a blog.

Ad Placement Tips for Forums 

Eye tracking studies like the ones cited here have shown that people tend to look at the top left or top center of a site first, then track to the right and down the right side, slanting back up across the page to just below the upper-left corner and down the left side … all in an instant.

Based on these eye tracking results, suggestions from Google and my own personal experience, I will tell you the five best spots to place your Google AdSense ads on a forum. The list shown below is not necessarily in order of importance. Again, each forum is unique. Experiment , experiment and experiment but keep the suggestions below in mind.

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While Google offers broad access to a variety of content in the search index, publishers in the AdSense program may only place Google ads on sites that adhere to Google content guidelines and program policies, and ads must not be displayed on any page with content primarily in an unsupported language.

Sites displaying Google ads may not include:

• Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization
• Pornography, adult, or mature content
• Hacking/cracking content
• Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
• Excessive profanity
• Gambling or casino-related content
• Content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking on ads or offers, performing searches, surfing websites, or reading emails

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Popularity: 11% [?]

Google AdSense supports publishers in several different languages. Applications for participation in the program can be for sites with content primarily in:

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AdSense offers a number of ad formats and advertising options for you. While you are encouraged to experiment with those units, Google does place some restrictions on how many ads you can display on a single page. Be aware of the rules below and learn how to optimize your website for Google AdSense

1. AdSense for Content - Ad Units 

Display Ads that are targetted to your site’s unique content. Ad units contain either text ads, image ads, or both. The ads are targeted to the content of your page using contextual and site targeting.

You can display a maximum of three ad units per page.

2. AdSense for Content - Link Units

Each link unit displays a list of topics that are relevant to your page. When users click a topic, they’re brought to a page of related ads. You can place a maximum of one link unit per page.

3. AdSense for Search:

Offer your users web search while earning revenue from ads relevant to their search terms. You can display two Google AdSense for search boxes on each page.

If you are customizing AdSense for search, you can only show one ad link unit in addition to the ads which Google serves with the search results. No other ads may be displayed on your search results page.
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Popularity: 10% [?]

Google offers a great feature for your Blog or Website called Section Targeting. Using Section Targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text or HTML content that you would like Google to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content. Using Section Targeting allows you to improve your Ad targeting and display more relevant ads on your blog thereby providing more useful links to your blog visitors besides increasing your click ratio earning you more $$$.

Consider this scenario. Say your Blog is about Soccer. However, in your previous post, you blogged about celebrating your pet Doberman’s birthday. In your comments section, there are links to a Mother’s day post or maybe a comment spam with links to Viagra or something else. So when the GoogleBot comes to your site, how does it know that you want it to focus and display relevant ads for soccer on that post which only constututes say 40% of the real estate on your blog. Well… Google Adsense Section Targeting is here to rescue you.

How do I implement Section Targeting for my Blog?

To implement section targeting, you need to add a set of special HTML comment tags to your code. These tags will mark the beginning and end of whatever sections you would like to emphasize for ad targeting.

Point your cursor to the beginning of your article and insert the following line to begin section targeting

<!– google_ad_section_start –>

Then if you wish to end section targeting at the end of your story, insert the following HTML

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Popularity: 12% [?]

Google AdSense remains the most popular and the best options for web admins or blog owners to display advertisements on their blog or website. However, if you are not a United States resident, you can still sign up for Google AdSense and

Three Main Categories of Google AdSense Publishers

1. U.S Business: If you are based in and pay taxes in the United States

2. Non- U.S Business: If your operations are based entirely outside of the U.S and you do not pay taxes in the United States.

Note: If you own a web server or use a hosting service based in the U.S such as using a hosting service such as 1&1 or GoDaddy, then you do NOT come under this category. Even if you have employees in the U.S who are involved in either setting up a web server, hosting service or website or developing content for your website, or provide marketing for your site, maintaining your site or providing telephone support for your site, then also you do NOT qualify for this category.

3. Non U.S Business with U.S Activities: If you or your business is located outside of the United States, but have U.S activities which may involve some as mentioned above, then you come under this category.

Note: Utilizing an unrelated third-part U.S web hosting service to host your website, rent web servers that are located in the U.S from an unrelated third party, having your payments sent to a U.S Post Office Box or Mail forwarding address, do not constitute U.S Activities.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

To find the URL of an Ad being served on your website, you can either use the Google AdSense Preview Tool or use the method as shown below. The Google AdSense Preview Tool is a better option as it prevents you from accidentally clicking on the ads. Another reason is that the method shown below does not work on Flash based Ads.

Find the URL of an Advertisement

Step # 1: Right click on the title of the ad for which you wish to view the URL and then select Copy Shortcut(for Internet Explorer) or Copy Link Location (for Firefox).

CAUTION: Please make sure you don’t left click. If you are not sure, please use the Google AdSense Preview Tool

Step # 2: Open notepad or any text editor and paste your selection. You can either right click and select Paste or select Paste from your text editor’s edit menu

Step # 3: The destination URL of the ad is the text between ‘adurl=’ and ‘&’.

For example

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What is the Google Adsense Preview Tool?

The Google AdSense preview tool allows you to preview the ads that may show up on your webpage. This is a very useful tool for website admins who are displaying Google Adsense ads on their website. You can even click on the ads being shown here as the ads are in a test state, so you don’t have to worry about Google penalizing you by banning your Adsense account. You can preview ad formats and colors where you can select a new border or background or text colors. You can also view ads which visitors to your site say from Australia or U.K or India or China or from any other country might be seeing when they visit your website.

You can download the AdSense Preview Tool which is part of the Google Toolbar. The Google Toolbar comes bundled with Mozilla Firefox, an excellent and the most secure browser allowing you to  . You can also  which includes the Google Toolbar 

Find the URL of an Advertisement using Google AdSense Preview Tool

Step # 1: Browse to the page containing the Ads or Ad for which you wish to view the URL

Step # 2: Right click anywhere on that page. From the right click menu that appears, choose Google AdSense Preview Tool. You can set up the Google AdSense Preview Tool for both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

Step # 3: Select the checkbox beside the ad for which you wish to view the URL and click Show Selected URL. The destination URL of the selected Ad or Ads will appear.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Google AdSense gives publishers and blog administrators the option to block specific ads from appearing on your website by using the Competitive Ad Filter. Why would you want to block certain ads from showing up on your website? Although Google Ads are highly targeted to the content of the page on which you are serving ads, there are situations where you don’t want a particular advertisement from showing up. An example could be that you wish to block ads from your competitors.

Important TIP: The Competitive Ad Filter works by blocking ads that link to specific URLs. When you plug in a website you wish to block, leave of the ‘www’ off of URLs in your filter list as this allows for broader filtering. For example, entering www.blockthis.com will block ads to www.blockthis.com but not to ads.blockthis.com or blockthis.com.

Set up your AdSense Competitive Ad Filter

Step # 1: Log into your AdSense account at https://www.google.com/adsense. If you are new to Google AdSense, you can sign up to

Step # 2: Click the AdSense Setup tab. Beneath the tabs that appear, click Competitive Ad Filter. If you are setting up the filter for the first time, the text box will be empty.

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Popularity: 12% [?]