Adsense Help

Welcome to the AdSense Help Forum! We hope this forum will become an important part of the AdSense community, and provide another outlet for you to search for answers, ask questions about AdSense, find tips to optimize your account, and make good use of your own AdSense expertise to assist others.
While this forum is intended as a place for AdSense users to assist one another, from time to time a Google representative, nicknamed AdSensePro, will post tips and clarifications. AdSensePro is the only Google representative that posts to the Group.
Please read on for some guidelines and tips for making the most of your experience here.
Discussion Etiquette:
1. Keep it clean and appropriate. This Group is for users of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds, so please do your part to encourage appropriate language and discussion. And let's aim for an upbeat Group too, while we're at it.
2. Make sure to keep AdSense program policies (http://www.google.com/adsense/policies) in mind when posting to the group, particularly the section on 'Incentives'.
3. Keep it safe. Remember, your posts may be widely read - so don't make the mistake of posting personal information of any kind. Especially, do not post your AdSense account ID or password, your mailing address, your phone number, or your credit card numbers. No Google representative will ever ask for this information in Group postings.
4. Keep it on topic. You may not get an answer to your payments question if you post it in a thread about optimization - and you might even annoy other users who are trying to follow the conversation.
5. Be nice to newbies. Many new AdSense publishers come here for advice. Please be patient and courteous with all users seeking assistance, and especially those who are just getting started with AdSense. It can be tough to be a beginner. So, let's make it painless in our community.
AdSense Help Tips:
1. Before you post a new question, please search or browse for the answer in the Group's archive, and/or in the AdSense Help Center at https://google.com/adsense/help. Your question may well have been asked and brilliantly answered before.
2. We think signatures are counter-productive when posting to Groups, as they can become repetitive and make the thread hard to read. If you must use a signature, please keep it short and sweet - and avoid using it as a means of promoting yourself, or your services.
3. In the same spirit, please keep the quoting of previous posts to a minimum. Wading through multiple copies of the same post within a thread has been known to strain many a nerve.
4. Need help using Google Groups? Click the 'Help' link at the top of any page.
A Few Last Words:
1. Please be certain to read the Google Groups Beta Terms of Service, available at http://groups.google.com/intl/en/googlegroups/terms_of_service.html , as these are the guidelines under which AdSense Help will run.
2. We believe that this diverse group of people with a strong common interest will naturally build a safe and productive community, without the need for formal moderation.
However, should you see a post in the forum which you feel is counter to the health of your community, please be aware of how you may take action, as outlined on this page: http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7900
3. Enjoy yourself, build a great community, have your AdSense questions answered, be helpful in turn - and become an even more successful AdSense publisher!

Adsense

AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis. Google is also currently beta-testing a cost-per-action based service.
Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website.
It currently uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating site. If it is included on a site which has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, it will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes known as public service announcements (PSAs). (Note that the Mediabot is a separate crawler from the Googlebot that maintains Google's search index.)
Many sites use AdSense to monetize their content and some webmasters work hard to maximize their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:
They use a wide range of traffic generating techniques including but not limited to online advertising.
They build valuable content on their sites which attracts AdSense ads which pay out the most when they get clicked.
They use copy on their websites that encourage clicks on ads. Note that Google prohibits people from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. Phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".
The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction, in that it commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.