When you login to Google through the AdSense login you can get to a<BR>page that contains a series of optimization tips. Although this is a<BR>useful page, it can take awhile to read through. So let me present you<BR>with a no nonsense quick overview of these tips.<BR><BR>The first thing that Google recommends is that you keep track of all<BR>changes and test the performance of your ads using channels. You can<BR>set up a number of channels using the Google statistics. This enables<BR>you to track the performance of, for example, different ad formats,<BR>different ad colors, different ad sizes and even different pages.<BR><BR>You can create channels that are specific to an ad format or you can<BR>create a channel that is specific to a page on your website. You<BR>definitely need to create channels because it is one of the best ways<BR>to continually tweak and improve your AdSense performance and boost<BR>your AdSense earnings.<BR><BR>Next it talks about where you should place ads on your pages and it<BR>includes what is called a heat map, showing you the hot spots on an<BR>average website. In general, it's common sense if you place ads<BR>towards the center or upper regions of a page as you're likely to get<BR>a better response. Placing ads on the right hand side, at the top<BR>right hand side or at the very bottom of a page leads to very low<BR>response rates.<BR><BR>Your best bet, in terms of getting the most click-throughs, is to try<BR>and make the ads become part of the content. Place the ads right in<BR>the middle of the content or place your content around the ads. Also,<BR>if you use ads that blend in with your site you'll get a far better<BR>click-through rate.<BR><BR>It then talks about using multiple ad units and whether or not you can<BR>do this effectively. My experience is that pages for forums, for<BR>example, perform particularly badly. I've yet to find a way to use<BR>AdSense on a forum and generate a significant amount of revenue<BR>without first annoying all of the forum's users.<BR><BR>Obviously, one of the biggest questions you need to ask yourself as an<BR>AdSense webmaster is which ad format to use. Google gives you a<BR>massive selection from skyscraper-sized ads to standard banner-sized<BR>ads and really it will come down to testing. The more you can test and<BR>the more you can judge by the results, the better your conversion<BR>ratio and click through ratio will be.<BR><BR>You may also want to experiment with link units. As opposed to<BR>straight-forward ads, link units contain a series of links through to<BR>further pages of actual ads. So for example, people may click on a<BR>link unit that says 'click here for ads about shopping'. You only get<BR>paid, not if people click on the first link, but if they click a<BR>second time on an actual website. Again, I've tried these and not<BR>found them to be amazingly successful. But I haven't tested them<BR>extensively; you will need to do that.<BR>