Content, Or Search, Or Both?

Monday, September 29, 2008

AdSense for Content relates to what we’ve spoken of thus far. What
we didn’t mention was that the ads that Google will display on
your site are related to the content on the page. This means that
depending on the content on your Web site, the ads that are dis-
played will change. For example, if your Web site has content about
music, AdSense displays ads about artists, audio devices, and such.
Google claims that AdSense can grasp the context of your con-
tent and thus deliver relevant ads to your page. Sometimes, howev-
er, you may get ads that are completely unrelated to the content of
your page. These are rare, though, and Google does its job well for
the most part. You can also choose to block certain types of ads from
your site. For example, if your page has content about music or
entertainment, you can choose to block ads related to, say, real
estate. You can also choose to show only one category of ads if you’re
not happy with blocking tons of categories.
Google also lets you customise the ads on your page in such a
way that they can merge with the template of your site. It offers a
colour palette so you can choose the border and font colours that
would best match your site’s template. It does this for Blogger
automatically, that is, the colours used by the ads are automati-
cally configured to match those that you use on your blog.
AdSense for Search involves the addition of a Google search
box to your page, that is, you put a search box on your page that is
“powered by Google.” The way it works is, you put the Google
search box on your site, and every time someone uses it to either
search the Web or your site, AdSense brings up sponsored links as
search results in addition to the regular search results—it’s quite
ike searching via www.google.com. The money comes in when
people click on the ads in their search results.