I have seen many adult blogs using Adsense ads on their sites. Most of them don’t care whether it is legal or illegal. Recently one of my friends asked me if it would be a good idea to start an adult blog. No doubt, it would get popular sooner & with lesser efforts than ordinary blogs & then he can add Adsense ads to earn revenue. I told him that Adsense doesn’t allow adult content. He pointed me that many blogs with mature content are using Adsense & he was too lazy to find the words from Google Adsense TOS. So, for those idle guys like my friend, here is what Adsense has to say about putting any kind of adult content with Adsense ads:
Sites with Google ads may not include or link to:
- Pornography, adult or mature content
Here is the link that can tell you more about the site content that is not allowed with Adsense. You may keep using Adsense with your adult site, but there is every chance that Google will find it out & ban you. Then you have only yourself to blame.
By the way, don’t ask me why do you visit many adult blogs. There is not only a single answer always 
Category filtering feature has been extended to public beta in many English speaking countries including Australia, Canada, USA, Ireland, UK, and India. If you haven’t heard of this feature, let me give you a quick note. It gives you the ability to block ads that fall under some specific categories. You can see a list of categories & can block ads up to 5 categories. The categories are usual, as you see in some online directories like Religion, Get Reach Quick, Dating etc.
Besides it will help you to monitor your ads better. You can see a “Recent Ad Impressions” column that shows the percent of ads served from each category. On the previous column you will find percentage of average earnings from each category. All the data is calculated based on last 30 days. So you get quite accurate result. And if you want to have a better understanding of which ads fall under which category, you can check the Show category details link in that page.
As you can see you have to go to AdSense Setup> Ad Review Center to check if this feature is available in your location. You can have an overview from the image below 
Google Adsense has introduced a feature to change font size in your ad disply units. Current default is small. You can change the size to medium or large. To change it for all the ad units go to My Account> Account Settings> Ad Display Preference. Or if you want to change it for an individual account, go to Manage Ads under Adsense Setup.
By the way, in order to fit the text properly actual font size will vary for different format sizes, font faces & settings on user side like operating systems & browsers. Font size application will however vary depending on space available in the ad unit. Here is how the three font size may look in 336×250 rectangle:
Another thing Google will do soon. They will change the default size to medium as they received feedback over it from the publishers.
Google Adsense has added an image ad at the bottom of the Link Unit page. As you know when a user clicks a link in the Link Unit he is shown a full page of related ads. That page will have an image ad at the bottom from now on. This image ad will also be contextually targeted. If Google doesn’t find a suitable image ad on the same topic, it will show only the original text ads. So there is no chance of the link page looking bad with some extra blank space or irrelevant PSA. Advertisers can bid on the image ads on CPM or CPC basis meaning extra revenue for you. Have a look at the below screenshot to get a feel how it looks:
Particularly, I don’t like Link Units. A bunch of links seems odd to me. And as a reader I never bother to have a look at those units in a site. But I know many of you are using it. And obviously Google has implemented this new feature after quite a bit of testing. Their testing has shown revenue improvement for many publishers. So good luck with this new feature if you are using Link Units
Today I received an email from Adsense about their new feature interest-based advertising. It sounds pretty cool. They are trying to serve ads on the basis of user interest. But how are they going to track individual interest? They will drop a cookie on the user’s browser when he clicks or views an Adsense ad in a site. This cookie will track his visits to that site & other sites. So it will know the trend of user & figure out a corresponding category to show ads that may interest the user. It’s pretty simple. you don’t have to change your ad code or account settings or anything. I am looking forward to it.
But as this DoubleClick DART cookie will store information from user, it requires a privacy policy to be implemented by the publisher.
By the way, you may opt out from showing ads that are based on user interest categories. Still Google will use user’s previous interaction with the advertiser to show ads. But I doubt if it is a good idea not to try this new feature.
Here is more from Google about interest-based advertising. And check this out for information that you need to use in your privacy policy. Update privacy policy by April 8, 2009.
Google has launched Adsense for Mobile Search Beta few days ago. Mobile network operators & mobile website owners can easily embed this google search box in their mobile portals or sites & share the revenue generated by these searches.
Mobile users can access this Google search that includes comprehensive web search, image, local & news results- all formatted for mobile phones. The search is Google-hosted. But you can add your own logos & linkback to your sites as you can see from the screenshot:
It is in private beta now. So you have to apply through this form to test the program. Remember submitting application doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be accepted.
Amazon has recently launched Blogs Widget. It can be used to show recent posts of any 8 blogs that write about stuffs that Amazon sells. You can choose your niche & embed the widget in your own site or blog using few lines of code. If you are a Amazon Associate you can earn referral fees when someone clicks on a link in the widget & consequently buys a product. The widget is quite flexible & you can choose different layouts & sizes.
Those who use FeedBurner probably already know that Google is planning to transfer all FeedBurner feeds to their own server by February 29. As you will migrate, your feed will be assigned a new url like http://feeds2.feedburner.com/YourFeeds instead of current http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeeds. The good thing is that Google will provide a redirection service for the old feed url as long as possible. So you don’t have to be afraid of loosing your current subscribers.
But as your url change is inevitable, then why don’t you try Adsense for feeds now? Because you don’t have to think whether you should change your feed url or not to show ads. Besides the ad integration is made easy. Go to your Adsense account & click Adsense for Feeds. There you can automatically choose ad integration with a few clicks. There are quite a few options than ad placement & size. So why not experiment a bit? Remember not to put too many ads to annoy your readers.
I have tested it personally with Adbrite & it worked. So thought it worth mentioning. Find the below lines of code in nph-proxy.cgi:
$table_close
</center>
</form>
EOF
Put your ad code in between
</form> & EOF. There are two instances of the code in the page & you have to add your ad code in both the places.
That is all. Your ad will get displayed in proxified pages from now on.
If you are a newbie then you might be using some traffic exchange programs to get initial traffic. But remember not to use Adsense in your site then. It is against Google Adsense TOS:
Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest. Any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions on your Google ads is strictly prohibited. These prohibited methods include but are not limited to repeated manual clicks or impressions, using robots, automated click and impression generating tools, third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software. Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited. Failure to comply with this policy may lead to your account being disabled.
Doesn’t it say all? Traffic exchange programs can easily be used to increase impressions artificially. Obviously Adsense will try to block this. If they find anything unusual like too much traffic or too many clicks from the same ip, they manually check the stats & sites in your account. They are very strict in it. Remember this if you don’t want to get the termination email.
