Global Spotlight: The untapped potential for content in Hindi

More and more users from all over the world are gaining access to information online. For current AdSense publishers, this presents an opportunity to grow your audience globally. Our  Global Spotlight series is designed to help educate, inspire, and provide you with insights into how you can grow your business and share your content in emerging markets.

We’re happy to continue our Global Spotlight and bring you to India, a nation with the second largest population in the world and a large percentage of the population coming online for the first time.

Think with Google published a thought provoking article titled Why Hindi Matters in the Digital Age and left us with a key takeaway:

“With nearly 500M Hindi speakers in India and around the world, businesses that invest in Hindi content today stand to gain a whole new set of consumers tomorrow.”

Today we’ll look at the untapped potential for original content that’s created in Hindi for a Hindi audience. This graphic, from the article Why Hindi Matters in the Digital Age accurately represents the opportunity to create Hindi content for Hindi speaking users.

So if you have a large user base in India or if you’re looking to grow in this strategic emerging market, catering your content to Hindi speakers is key. Check out this infographic to learn more:

Keen to start creating? Here’s three things you can do to start publishing Hindi content online:

1. Create Hindi content that is unique and provides value to your users.You know the importance of doing your research to better understand the market, so use those same tools (Google Trends in Search and YouTube) to identify trending content for Hindi speakers: Entertainment, News, Jobs/Education, Sports esp. Kabbadi & Wrestling!. You can also see a selection of high quality Hindi content from fellow publishers at hindiweb.com.

2. Get a professional translation, or have a native speaker review content.If you plan to translate your site for Hindi speakers, ensure you provide high quality and accurate translations. Avoid auto-translation as it risks a low quality user experience. Check out these Webmaster Quality Guidelines to learn more.

3. Use Devanagari script. Access up to 40 free, beautiful fonts for publishing your Hindi content and benefit from better indexing of your site. Select Devanagari script at Google Fonts to add fonts to your collection.

Learn more about this opportunity and many others by joining our live Hangout on Air session on November 17th, 2016. We’ll talk through best practices and share ways for you to grow your business. Be sure to register here. If you’re new to monetizing your content in India, start turning your #PassionIntoProfit today by signing up for Google AdSense.

In our next few blog posts, we’ll be sharing with you a 3-step strategy to start expanding your business to India, or building a new site for an Indian audience. In the meantime, check out the other posts from our Global Spotlight series.

Posted by: Jatin Nagpal, from the AdSense team

Best Practices to avoid policy violations

We’re dedicated to providing additional transparency into our policy processes and hope that the recent blog posts have helped you understand specific policy triggers and the actions to take if you’ve violated a policy.  To further help you stay policy compliant, here’re 8 best practices to help avoid policy violations and keep your account in good standing.

1. Don’t click on your own ads

Don’t click your own ads, or ask others to click them. These kinds of clicks won’t count toward revenue and may get you suspended. Even if you’re interested in an ad or looking for its destination URL, clicking on your own ads is prohibited. Instead, use the Google Publisher Toolbar.

2. Think like a user 

Make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. Follow the Webmaster Guidelines to provide content that’s useful, interesting, and adds value. Immerse yourself into the user experience however you can. Try to discover the emotions that guide users’ behaviors and try to uncover their needs. 

3. Keep it family-friendly and legal Review our guidelines about prohibited content and be sure you understand them. If you wouldn’t want a child or grandparent to see it, don’t put it on your site. We’ve made a commitment to our users, advertisers and publishers to keep the AdSense network family-safe. A general rule of thumb when it comes to our policies is: if you wouldn’t want to share this content at a family dinner, or view it at your boss’s office, you shouldn’t place AdSense code on it.

4. Maximize content, not ads per page Create new, relevant, interesting content, and update it regularly. Also, be sure to maintain a good balance between ads and editorial content as it’s important to ensure that there’s always more content than ads on a page.

5. Avoid deceptive layoutsKeep ads away from games, slideshows, and other click-heavy content and don’t place them near images. Publishers may not use deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. This includes, but is not limited to: placing images next to individual ads, placing ads in a floating box script, formatting ads so that they become indistinguishable from other content on the page, formatting content so that it is difficult to distinguish it from ads and placing misleading labels above Google ad units.

6. Create unique content Your content needs to create added value for your users. Focus on making content great – not duplicating it across pages. Unique and valuable content is what keeps users coming back to publisher sites. Everything you do as a publisher should be user focused, which primarily includes developing great content.

7. Track your traffic Your traffic should be organic. Set up alerts using Google Analytics to quickly identify unusual traffic patterns. Many potential traffic quality problems can be addressed quickly by monitoring your own traffic. Traffic anomalies are often indicators of potential invalid traffic activity.

8. Follow the Code of Implementation GuideAlways follow the Code Implementation Guide and don’t try to modify the AdSense code. If you run into a problem, visit the Troubleshooting page or contact publisher support.

Thanks for taking the time to learn about Google ad network policy, processes, and best practices. Together, we can continue to make the web and advertising experience great.

Posted by: Anastasia Almiasheva from the AdSense team

Do more with Ads on AMP

Cross-posted from the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Blog

Over a year has passed since the AMP Project first launched with the vision of making mobile web experiences faster and better for everybody. From the very beginning, we’ve maintained that the AMP project would support publishers’ existing business models while creating new monetization opportunities. With regards to advertising, this meant giving publishers the flexibility to use the current technology and systems they’re used to, and evolving user-first mobile web initiatives like AMP for Ads (A4A).

With a growing number of publishers embracing the speed of AMP, today we’re addressing some of the ways in which we’re helping you do more with ads on AMP.

Serve ads from more than 70+ ad tech providers

Keeping with the open source nature of the project, more than 70+ advertising technology providers have already integrated with AMP. And that list is only growing. Existing tags that are delivered via a supported ad server also work in AMP. So, you can serve ads from both directly-sold campaigns as well as third-party ad networks and exchanges so long as they have support for AMP.

Keep 100% of the ad revenue

AMP is an open source project. It does not take a revenue share. AMP is not an advertising service provider or intermediary, and publishers can monetize AMP pages the same way you monetize HTML pages, keeping 100% of the revenue you earn based on negotiated rates with ad providers.

Choose the advertising experience on your pages

You can choose to serve any number of ads per page to serve in locations that works best for your content, including the first viewport. Just remember that regular ads in AMP load after the primary content. So, unless you’re loading the lightning fast A4A ads, we recommend placing the first ad below the first viewpoint to optimize for viewability and user experience.

Take advantage of video ad support

AMP currently supports 13 different video players, ranging from Brightcove to Teads, all of which can serve video ads. If you want to use a video player that is not currently supported in AMP, place the video player inside amp-iframe. Learn more.

Differentiate yourself with rich and custom ad formats

AMP accommodates a large variety of ad formats by default, ranging from publisher custom ad units to IAB standard outstream video and in-feed native ads. We value publisher choice and support efforts to create proprietary ad formats. For example, with responsive layouts in AMP, you can offer advertisers custom ads that can dynamically span the entire width of the mobile device. Learn more about how you can adapt your ads strategy for AMP.

Maximize revenue with interchangeable ad slots

In September 2016, both YieldMo and DoubleClick announced support for multi-size ad requests on AMP pages. With this launch, you can optimize yield by allowing multiple ad creative sizes to compete for each ad slot, capturing the most advertiser demand possible on AMP pages while still protecting the user’s experience.

Plan ahead with a view into AMP’s roadmap

Transparency is important to the success of any open source project and is a key value for AMP. Accordingly, we started publishing the AMP roadmap publicly nearly 6 months ago, including milestones for ads. These roadmaps are accompanied with bi-quarterly status updates and you can also see all AMP releases here.

Over 700,000 domains have published AMP pages and a good many are monetizing them with ads. Early studies suggest that ads on AMP are more viewable and engaging than ads on non-AMP mobile pages. That’s because with AMP, you don’t have to choose between good user experiences and monetization opportunities. When balanced and optimized, you can have both.

Reach out -- we’re eager to hear your suggestions and feedback to make sure that AMP pays off for everyone.

Posted by Vamsee Jasti, Product Manager, AMP Project

Did You Receive A Policy Violation Warning?

Have you received an email from adsense-adclicks-noreply@google.com with a warning that you’ve violated the AdSense policies? These warnings are usually issued in instances of mild violations that we believe can be fixed quickly.

In addition to an email, you’ll receive a notification in your AdSense account under the “Status” tab. Both the email and notification will explain where your violation occurred and how to fix it and by clicking the link provided, you’ll be sent to the page where the violation has occurred. To resolve the issue, you can either fix the content that violates AdSense policies across your site or remove the AdSense code.

Remember, your site must be compliant in order to participate in the AdSense program. When you’ve made all the necessary changes to your site, check “Resolved” on the site level violation notification in the “Status” tab of your AdSense account. You don’t need to notify us when you’ve fixed the violation; however, you do need to resolve it in a timely manner. 

There are cases where ads stop appearing on your site altogether. This can happen when a publisher fails to respond to policy violation warnings, receives multiple warnings, or displays egregious violations across their site(s). Violations are categorized as egregious when we believe they can cause significant harm to advertisers, Google, users, or the overall ads ecosystem. 

In these cases you’ll receive an email and a notification in your AdSense account under the “Status” tab to notify you of this change. A link will also be included to show you where the violation appears. You can resolve it by either removing the content in question or by removing the AdSense code from the affected page. It’s important to note that a very small percentage of sites have their ads disabled after receiving a policy violation warning. 

Once you’ve corrected the violations across your entire site, you can submit an appeal from the “Status” tab in your AdSense account or by using the AdSense policy troubleshooter. Please bear in mind that we can only review appeals from sites that have AdSense code enabled.

Stay tuned for some best practices to help you avoid a policy violation.

Posted by: Anastasia Almiasheva from the AdSense team

The AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement is Now Available in More Languages!

Thank you for your feedback on our recently launched The AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement and letting us know how it has helped you grow your online business. Now you can download the guide in 2 additional languages: Portuguese and Spanish.

Download the guide today, and like thousands of other AdSense publishers, learn how to engage with your users like never before. The guide contains useful advice and best practices that will help you drive engagement on your site, including:

1. Tips to help your audience become familiar with your brand 
2. Best practices to design delightful user journeys 
3. Ideas on how to develop content that resonates with your audience 
4. Ways to make your content easy to consume 
5. Reasons why you should share the love with other sites by referring to good sources.

Ready? Download your free copy of the #AdSenseGuide now in any of the following languages:

Guia do Google AdSense para engajamento com o público-alvo

La guía de AdSense para interactuar con la audiencia

Enjoy the guide and we’d love to hear your feedback on Google+ and Twitter using #AdSenseGuide.

Posted by: Jay Castro from the AdSense team

Share your feedback on AdSense and other Google publisher solutions

It’s time to share your feedback! To improve our product and services, we send out a survey to a group of publishers every six months.

Your feedback and comments are important to us, and we really do read and consider everything you write. Thanks to previous suggestions, we’ve launched a number of new features to improve our services and help you grow your earnings. These include a new Optimization tab that provides tips on increasing your revenue, an improved AdSense interface for easier user navigation, and more transparency on our policies.

You may have received a survey by email over the last few weeks, if so please take the time to respond to it as we value your input.

To make sure that you're eligible to receive the next survey email, please:

• Update your contact details
• Update your email preferences to receive ‘occasional survey’ messages

Whether you’ve completed this survey before or you’re providing feedback for the first time, we’d like to thank you for sharing your valuable thoughts. We’re looking forward to feedback!

Posted by Susie Reinecke - AdSense Publisher Happiness Team

Learn the top triggers of policy violation warnings

Today we’ll highlight some of the top triggers of policy violation warnings to help you avoid common pitfalls. If you haven’t already, download the All-In-One Policy Compliance Guide to help you understand the what's and why's of our policy processes so you can always stay one step ahead.

As a general guideline to building a strong policy compliant foundation, ensure that the pages within your site offer a unique value for users and comply with AdSense policies. Let’s get started.

1. Copyrighted Material

Google ads cannot be placed on pages that infringe on copyrighted materials. Don’t try to monetize content that isn’t yours or you don’t have permission to use. 

 

2. Deceptive Layout

Because users come to your site for the content, it should then be easy for users of your site to distinguish ads from content at all times. Ads that blend in or that are situated too close to content and navigational icons can cause invalid clicks. AdSense will deduct clicks that are determined to be invalid and, where possible, reimburse advertisers.

3. Explicit Text

Text descriptions that include excessive use of profanity or erotic stories, jokes, or discussions are violations of AdSense policies.

 

4. Mislabeling

Placing ads under misleading headings like “Resources” is a policy violation. Users should not be mislead or asked to click on ads. Acceptable headers are “Advertisements or “Sponsored Links”.

 

5. Sexual Content

Content that’s sexually explicit – or suggestive without being explicit, such as lingerie – isn’t allowed. If you wouldn't show it in polite company, we don’t want AdSense advertisements appearing there.

 

6. Unnatural Attention

Drawing unnatural attention to ads by using visuals, call-outs or placements that call too much attention to ads aren’t permitted either.

7. Violent Content

Content that features bloodshed, fight scenes, and gruesome or freak accidents is not permitted by the AdSense policy.

 

8. Webmaster Guidelines

Webmaster Guidelines require publishers to make sure their content is original, adds value, and is intended primarily for users, not for search engines. Failure to adhere to these adds up to a violation of AdSense policy.

There you have it: eight common triggers for a potential policy violation warning. We recommend that you refer back to this blog post and use Google Search to identify if you have any violations in your content as you review your site and upcoming content. 

Coming up next – what to do if you receive a policy violation warning.

Posted by: Anastasia Almiasheva from the AdSense team

Have you experienced an unauthorized access issue with your AdSense Account?

Unfortunately, even for AdSense publishers, there’s always the risk of an unauthorized source compromising your secure login credentials. In these instances, you might be locked out of your AdSense account. Here’s what you can do to recover your account and avoid the same issue in the future:

For starters, these triggers can help you identify if your account has been compromised.  

• You’ve noticed suspicious account activity (for example: there are new users that you haven’t granted access to; the payment details have changed without your permission; your security settings have been updated; and your email notification settings have changed).
• You cannot login to your AdSense account.

 If you’ve found that your account has been compromised, follow these steps to resolve the issue:

1. Run a malware scan on your devices
2. Visit our Login Troubleshooter. If you’re locked out of your account, the troubleshooter will help you recover your Google Account. Once you’ve recovered your Google Account: 
• Change your password to something unique and unused. Here’s tips on how to create strong password.
• Visit myaccount.google.com to review your security settings
• Enable 2-Step-Verification.  
3. Then, the troubleshooter will take you to the Account login issues form, which will direct you to an AdSense account issues specialists.  
• The specialist will start an investigation and communicate next steps (including the investigation report and reimbursement options). 
• For a speedy resolution, be sure to include the following with the form as accurately as possible: 
• Proof of your identity and address using acceptable documents.
• Proof of a recent AdSense payment, such as a copy of a check, Western Union receipt or bank statement clearly showing a recent AdSense EFT deposit.
• The URL of a test page of your website. This is to prove that you own and manage the domain listed in your account.

It’s important to note that the Account login issues form cannot be used to report disputes between authorized users. The administrator of the account is responsible for all user permissions. In general, it’s a best practice to remove former employees and inactive users from your account to help prevent unauthorized changes.  

Unfortunately, in some cases with ongoing security concerns, account reinstatement may not be possible. The AdSense specialist team will let you know if this is the case. 

We understand that compromised login credentials may be a huge problem for you and your business. Bookmark these valuable help resources to help retrieve a hijacked account:

• Can't log in? Here's how to solve the five most common issues
• What can I do if I think my Google Account has been compromised?
• Login issues
• Login troubleshooter

If you have questions about this topic, join us on Twitter or Google+ for one of our #AskAdSense office hour sessions. 

Posted by: Hievda Ugur, from the AdSense Team

Increase the speed of your mobile site with this toolkit

Cross-Posted from the DoubleClick for Publishers blog

Last month we released a new study, "The need for mobile speed", highlighting the impact of mobile latency on publisher revenue. Simply having your site load on a mobile device is no longer enough: Mobile sites have to be fast and relevant. The study analyzed 10,000+ mobile web domains, and from the results we gained several insights about the impact of mobile latency on user experience.

Critically, the study also revealed strong correlations between page speed and the following key performance indicators:

1. Revenue
2. Bounce rate
3. Session duration
4. Viewability

It’s clear mobile speed matters to the success of publisher sites, but making mobile load times a priority doesn’t always make achieving speed easy. To help you build a faster mobile web experience, we’ve created a mobile web speed toolkit. It outlines a 4-step process to diagnose and fix mobile speed issues:

1. Measure your site’s performance.
2. Assess the different components impacting speed.
3. Prioritize the order your site loads.
4. Test, remeasure and repeat to improve your site speed.

The mobile web speed toolkit offers tactical recommendations to begin achieving mobile speed. 

The relationship between page speed and publisher revenue is clearer than ever before. Small improvements to your mobile site may yield big gains for your mobile revenue, so get your copy of the mobile web speed toolkit and start making changes today. 

#SpeedMatters

Posted by: Jay Castro
AdSense team

Infographic: Get the free All-In-One Policy Compliance Guide

We’ve shared that high quality content and consistency are key ingredients to earning and maintaining the trust of online users. What about maintaining the trust of your ad networks so that you can continue to earn revenue? For AdSense, it’s important to protect the interests of everyone in the online ecosystem, including our users, our advertisers, and our publishers. This focus on maintaining a healthy balance is the reason we set strict policies about AdSense for everyone in the ecosystem to follow.

Your feedback helped us realize that some publishers may be confused by some of our policies, which is why we’re launching a series of blog posts, infographics, new notifications, access to customer support, and #AskAdSense office hours to help increase transparency about AdSense policy processes. We hope that these insights can help turn your #PassionIntoProfit and grow your business as you focus on your users and provide unique content.

We have found that there are two types of publishers who receive AdSense policy violations. The first are publishers who unintentionally violate AdSense policies. For those, we hope that increased transparency into our policy processes can decrease these unintentional violations and help our publishers play by the rules. The second are publishers who intentionally bypass our rules, ending up with a variety of violations. That’s why we work hard to maintain a policy compliant ecosystem for our publishers, advertisers, and users. In short, if you play by the rules, AdSense is here to help you grow your business.

Policy compliant sites with unique content attract advertisers who are willing to spend more money and allow users to enjoy friendly web experiences. So without further ado, here’s your All-In-One Policy Compliance Guide. Download it, print it out, and hang it at your desk for reference. In the coming weeks, we’ll dive into policy topics to provide additional context and insights.

• Part 1: Top triggers of policy violation warnings
• Part 2: Did you receive a policy violation warning?
• Part 3: Best practices for keeping your account in good standing

As always, we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback and invite you to join the conversation with us on Twitter and Google+.

Posted by: Anastasia Almiasheva from the AdSense team

[Get the high resolution version here]

3 tips to make your content easy to consume

Over the last month we’ve taken a look at what makes strong content including topics, length, and shareability. But telling a good story is only half of the process. You also have to present it in an easy-to-digest format for today’s distracted audience.

According to a Think With Google study, “67% of users will switch [to another site or app] if it takes too many steps to purchase or get desired information.” Different forms of media can greatly improve your content’s appeal, if it’s used strategically. With people giving less and less time to the things they read online, it’s up to you to keep visitors engaged and entertained. The following tips will help give your content a stronger impact.

1. Share your content visually

Whether it’s lists, infographics, images, gifs, or video, adding in dynamic elements to your story telling will keep things fresh and memorable. Visuals highlight your key points, and leave a greater impact on both loyal and new visitors alike. In fact, sites with video have been proven to encourage an extra 2 minutes of time on page compared to sites that don’t.

2. Break things up

Images can be a great way to break up long text. Unbroken, continuous text is time-consuming to read and can make visitors “check out” prematurely; no matter how interesting the topic is. By breaking up a longer content piece with related imagery, you can increase the chances of you audience staying to read more, and hopefully, fulfill a desired action on your site.

3. Make it Social

Seeing how “liked” or “shared” an article is naturally prompts visitors to share their opinion on it, too. Social proof is a powerful influencer when it comes to users engaging with your content. Ways to gain social proof include providing like actions, sharing actions, and even custom actions such as testimonials and reviews.

  

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Posted by Jay Castro
Audience Development Specialist
@jayciro