New languages and categories in general category blocking feature

We know that being able to control the ads that appear on your pages is important to you, which is why we're excited to share some new enhancements to general category blocking. This feature is already available in English, French and German and from now on, publishers in Spanish-, Portuguese-, Italian-, and Japanese-speaking countries will be able to use it as well. What’s more, we’ve just added 88 new categories to the list of topics that can be blocked from your sites, including apparel, business, family and sports.

If you’re not familiar with the general category blocking feature, it gives you additional control over the ads that are shown on your sites. You have the ability to scalably block categories of ads that you might not find suitable for your audience.

You can block up to 50 categories in your account, and your choices will be applied to ads of all targeting types and formats in the seven supported languages, regardless of the language of the site where they’re showing. Before blocking a general category, please keep in mind that blocking ads can have a negative impact on your potential earnings, as it removes eligible ads from competing in the ad auction. To help you make informed decisions and understand the impact of any blocking choices on your ad performance, we show you the revenue and ad impressions for every category from the last 30 days.

We hope that these extended options help you quickly and easily control the ads on your sites, and we look forward to continuing to enhance these controls in the future.

Posted by Gavri Smith -- AdSense Engineering

The power of Search Ads, now available on your mobile site

Recently on the Official Google Blog, we talked about the momentum we’re seeing in mobile search advertising. We also announced a new mobile search ad product: Custom Search Ads for Mobile Sites. We wanted to give some more details about this new format and how you can begin using it to grow your business on mobile.

As increasing numbers of users access websites using their mobile phones, more and more desktop publishers are bringing their businesses to the mobile web. You may have seen our recent initiative, ‘GoMo’, which is designed to help publishers and businesses take their site mobile.

Currently, publishers can monetize their mobile sites using AdSense for Mobile Content. We wanted to also help mobile web publishers earn from their search traffic, and so with Custom Search Ads for Mobile Sites, we're bringing the power of search ads to the world of the mobile web.

Mobile websites that provide a search option will be able to show ads related to search queries. Users will see ads relevant to what they're searching for, and publishers will open up a new revenue stream from their mobile properties.

Many mobile websites contain custom search functions that ask users to search within a variety of specific parameters. With Custom Search Ads for Mobile Sites, these parameters are taken into account to help determine what ad is shown and deliver the most relevant ad for a user's query. For example, in the image below you can see that someone using Trulia, a real estate search engine, is searching for properties in Washington, DC, and the ads match this query.

Trulia.com implemented Custom Search Ads on their mobile site. When a user scrolls through their search results (in this case, for property in Washington, DC), they are served both search results and Custom Search Ads relevant to their query.

Moreover, mobile web publishers can customize the look and feel of the ads to complement their site’s design and layout. Some of the customization options include changing the font size, background color and gradient. Custom Search ads can also be integrated into mobile apps with the same customization features and options.

We're currently accepting applications from publishers to use Custom Search Ads for Mobile Sites. If you're a mobile publisher or app developer interested in this product, apply now on the Custom Search Ads page.

Posted by Chris Monkman, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

Set up a crawler login for increased ad relevancy on pages behind a login

This is the second post in our two-part AdSense Crawler Errors series.

Recently we discussed ways to improve ad targeting and relevancy by making sure that the AdSense crawler can view all pages that have AdSense code on them. Sometimes though, it can become problematic when a publisher has a members only site that requires the user to log in to view the site’s content. In cases like this, the AdSense ads that are located behind the login aren’t as relevant and targeted as they could be.

If you’re a publisher with content behind a login page, be sure to set up an AdSense crawler login so that your ads are as well-targeted as possible. Doing so will give the AdSense crawler the ability to scan content on these pages, resulting in more relevant, targeted ads that can potentially increase your CTRs and revenue. Please note that adding a crawler login will only help to deliver better, more relevant ads to pages with AdSense code already on them, and will not have any effect on which pages of your site Google Search will index.

To grant the AdSense crawler access, log in to your AdSense account and click on ‘Account settings.’ From there, scroll down to the ‘Access and authorization’ section and click on ‘edit logins’ next to crawler logins.

Then click on ‘Add a Login.’ You’ll be prompted to fill in pertinent information that the AdSense crawler will use to log in to your site and crawl your content.

After that, you’ll need to log in to Webmaster Tools to verify your website, if you haven’t already done so. Once verified, the crawler will be able to log in successfully and scan your content to deliver more targeted ads.

For additional information, take a look at our help center article regarding displaying ads on login-protected pages.

Posted by Andrew Boni - Inside AdSense Team