Best practices for reviewing products you've received for free

As a form of online marketing, some companies today will send bloggers free products to review or give away in return for a mention in a blogpost. Whether you’re the company supplying the product or the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both useful to users and compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

1. Use the nofollow tag where appropriate

Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against Google guidelines on link schemes. Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to:

    a. the company’s site    b. the company’s social media accounts    c. an online merchant’s page that sells the product    d. a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product    e. the company’s mobile app on an app store

Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (i.e., the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a free good or service in exchange for a link). Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding bloggers to use nofollow on these links.

2. Disclose the relationship

Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory. A disclosure can appear anywhere in the post; however, the most useful placement is at the top in case users don’t read the entire post.

3. Create compelling, unique content

The most successful blogs offer their visitors a compelling reason to come back. If you're a blogger you might try to become the go-to source of information in your topic area, cover a useful niche that few others are looking at, or provide exclusive content that only you can create due to your unique expertise or resources.

For more information, please drop by our Google Webmaster Central Help Forum. Posted by the Google Webspam Team

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Viewability Spotlight for Sellers: 3 loading methods that can optimize your viewability

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Our latest infographic puts a spotlight on viewability by sharing a dozen technical best practices for improving viewability based on insights from Active View, Google's MRC-accredited viewable impression measurement technology. On this blog, we're breaking down the best practices into small, approachable chunks. Already, we've focused on 2 tips for enabling viewability measurement, 3 speedy ways to improve viewability, and 4 ways to improve ad layouts for better viewability. In this post you'll learn 3 content and ad loading methods that can optimize your viewability rates. Here is today's recommendation:

We hope these recommendations are improving your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran 

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Viewability Spotlight for Sellers: 4 ways to improve ad layouts for better viewability

Tuesday, March 08, 2016

Our latest infographic puts a spotlight on viewability by sharing a dozen technical best practices for improving viewability based on insights from Active View, Google's MRC-accredited viewable impression measurement technology. On this blog, we're breaking down the best practices into small, approachable chunks. Already, we've focused on 2 tips for enabling viewability measurement, and 3 speedy ways to improve viewability. In this post you'll learn tips for laying out ads on a webpage or scrollable page in an app in order to improve viewability rates. Here is today's recommendation:

We hope these recommendations are improving your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below. In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 3 content and ad loading methods that can improve viewability.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran 

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Why are my earnings down right now?

Friday, March 04, 2016

Four things to explore if your AdSense earnings take a dip

Today we'd like to share some insights about why AdSense earnings sometimes go down -- and look at how to troubleshoot what's going on when that happens. Google has a variety of tools and reports that will help you see what might be causing a decline and how you can respond to optimize your earnings.

One of the first things to consider is: have your overall page views gone down, or are other issues causing the drop? There are many factors that affect revenue, but the key ones to look at include:

• Clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Page revenue per thousand impressions (page RPM)
• Page views

You can view all these metrics on the Performance reports tab in your AdSense account. Here are a few tips on how to address issues you may discover. 1. My page views have decreased When troubleshooting changes in page views, it's a good idea to extend the date range of your reports out to 30 days or more to help identify trends or specific issues. A drop in page views could simply be seasonal; retailers, for instance, tend to see a traffic drop after the holiday season. But a decrease can also be due to a change in your content. If your traffic has dropped, here are some ways you might increase it:

• Promote your site with other major sites that cover the same topics.
• Promote your site through social media, and create a group of interested people who regularly visit your site.
• Use Google Search Console to make sure your site is being correctly crawled and indexed.
• Update your site regularly to encourage repeat visitors. You might also want to send out an email or a newsletter about your updates.

2. My cost per click has decreased CPC is market-driven and depends on factors like advertiser bids on keywords and the CPC values they're willing to pay. For example, CPC can fall at the beginning of each quarter when marketers are shifting budget. When looking at changes in CPC, it's a good practice to extend the date range of your reports out to a year. Then:

• See if you're using the best-performing ad sizes. Generally, our most successful sizes for CPC and CTR are 720x90, 336x280, 160x600, and the 320x100 mobile banner. Learn more about the most successful ad sizes.
• Make sure you're not blocking ads you don't need to. Blocks on too many advertisers, ad networks, general or sensitive categories will often decrease CPC because there are fewer advertisers in the auction bidding on your inventory. The more inventory your site has access to, the greater the chance that auction pressure will drive up your CPC.
• Look at how seasonality can affect your advertisers' bids. For instance, swimsuit advertisers often increase their bids in the early weeks of summer. But if your site caters only to students, you should expect traffic to fall in the summer. Learn more about how the ad auction works for a clearer understanding of how these kinds of changes can impact your earnings.

3. My search rank has dropped Deeper investigation may show you that your page is not ranked as highly in search results as it once was. The Webmaster Troubleshooter is designed to help you resolve common issues with your site in Google Search and the Google Search Console. 4. My CTR or page RPM has decreased A drop in CTR or page RPM can be caused by confusing site design or poor targeting. Visitors who see your ads might not click on them because they find them irrelevant, or perhaps they don't see your ads at all. And that leads to lower earnings. Here are some best practices to help drive up your CTR and page RPM:

• Blend, complement, and contrast: use these techniques to design ad styles that will be successful for your site.
• Maximize ad space with multiple ad units: be sure to see if three ad units is right for your site; it's also our policy limit.
• Use the best-performing ad sizes: As noted in the CPC section above, our most successful ad sizes are 720x90, 336x280, 160x600, and the 320x100 mobile banner.