Inside Adsense Blog

• Keeping your account secure

  We understand how important your AdSense account is to you. You need to sign into your account to generate ad code, manage the appearance of your ads, view your reports and check the status of your payments. However, keep in mind that your AdSense account is actually part of your Google Account. This means that you may have several Google products, such as AdSense, Gmail, AdWords, Blogger, etc, all tied to a single sign-in. We take account access issues very seriously and would like to take some time to provide a few simple tips to help you protect your Google Account. If you're having trouble signing in to your Google Account, usually resetting your password will do the trick. To add additional security to your account, you should update your alternate address, choose a strong security question (if you have Gmail), and add a mobile number to your account so Google can text you a recovery code if you ever forget your password. Also, if you have a Gmail address, we recommend providing a current secondary email address where you can receive our password-assistance email. If you don't have any of these set up, it will be difficult for us to verify your identify and reset your password, so please take some time to update your security options. If resetting your password doesn't work, you can try filling out our account recovery form. We can usually restore access in a few hours if you're able to provide the necessary information to prove ownership. Here are some additional tips to ensure that only you have access to your account: Create a strong password and security question. Your password shouldn't be something that someone else can easily guess. The same goes for your security question. If someone that knows you can answer your security question, then it's probably not a good question. Review these tips for suggestions. Don't share your account password with anyone. It may be tempting to share your password with your friends or family, but don't do it, especially if it's your personal account. If you need to create an account that is accessed my several people, make sure that the account is not tied to any products that contain personal information. Don't respond to messages asking for your username or password. Google will never send you an email, IM, or any other communication asking for your sign-in information, so don't respond to any messages asking for it. Be cautious of fake sign-in pages. Always look for www.google.com/adsense in the URL. If the URL is different, don't sign in on the page. If you think you may have signed in using a fake sign-in page for AdSense or any other Google product, please reset your password as soon as possible to prevent abuse of your Google services by a third party.You can find more tips in the Google Accounts Help Center. Posted by Diane Velasco - AdSense Policy Team

• More Google Web Elements for you

  We've posted a few times about Google Web Elements and how they can benefit you as a publisher. Today, we're excited to announce new features for Google Web Elements, including the addition of 3 three new elements for Google Translate, Reader, and Orkut. For publishers, this means 3 new options for engaging your users and making your website more interactive. To read more about the new features and how to get started, hop on over to the Google Code Blog. Posted by Christine Tsai - Web Elements Team

• A note about a messaging change in your AdSense account

  Today we're changing some messaging in the AdSense interface concerning your earnings, and we wanted to give you some more information on why we're making this change. In order to be more transparent about how our system calculates earnings, we've added the words "Estimated" and "Finalized" next to "Earnings" throughout your account. Rest assured these terminology changes don't reflect a change to the way your finalized earnings are calculated. It's simply intended to give you a clearer idea of what's our estimation of your earnings and what's finalized. As you may have noticed in the past, the earnings on the Overview and Advanced Reports pages may sometimes differ from the earnings listed on your Payment History page. This is because earnings on your Overview and Advanced Reports pages reflect initial estimations based on our records. We aren't able to provide finalized earnings on these pages because they still need to be verified for accuracy, a process that takes place a few days after the end of every month. The finalized sum is then posted on your Payment History page by the 10th of the next month. While we can't say how much these amounts would differ for any one publisher, most publishers will not see a significant difference. Again, please keep in mind that this is only a display change, and that your finalized earnings will continue to be calculated and credited to you in the same way as before. Updated to include screenshots and Help Center links Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Payments Team

• Search for ads in the Ad Review Center

  When we announced the new AdSense interface a few weeks ago, we mentioned how we've been working on building more functionality into the Ad Review Center to make it easier for you to find and manage your ads. Today, we'd like to let you know that we're introducing the ability to search for ads in the Ad Review Center. This option is currently available to a limited number of publishers using the new AdSense interface, but we're working on rolling this out more widely as we invite more publishers to test the new interface. The search feature has been designed to improve your efficiency when finding ads to review. You'll be able to search for ads by keyword, display URL, or destination URL. For example, you can now search for all ads that have been placement targeted to your site with the destination URL of one of your competitors' websites. In addition, you can search across multiple AdSense products, like AdSense for mobile content and AdSense for feeds, and also specify whether you'd like to view allowed, blocked, or new ads. Although we aren't able to add more publishers to the test at this time, we wanted to give you a glimpse into one of the ways we're working to make the Ad Review Center easier to use. We'll be collecting feedback from the first group of publishers testing this feature, and plan to improve it and then expand to additional publishers in the coming months. Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense team

• Connect with AdSense via online webinars

  We often hear publishers ask for more information about using AdSense most effectively, and so in response, we've initiated a number of free, online webinars. If you haven't yet participated in a webinar, they focus on specific topics such as increasing your revenue with the AdSense program and taking advantage of new features. At the end of each webinar, you can also ask your questions live to our AdSense specialists. There are still a number of upcoming webinars in 2009, and we encourage you to sign up soon. We've also created a short video about webinars featuring a few members of our Dublin-based team. Posted by Kamil Tavas - AdSense Optimization Team