Google Power Tools Bible

Not many things are as much fun as reading reports about money that your Web site is making for you without any effort on your part. Log in to your AdSense account as many times as you like to see current reports.

Click the Reports tab if it does not appear by default after logging in. The first thing you see is Today’s Earnings followed by the amount of your earnings for the current day, displayed in the currency you selected when you set up your account. When you first click the Reports tab, you are viewing the Overview.

Overview

In the Overview, below Today’s Earnings, you find a link for viewing your payment history. Click the View payment history link to see all the payments for the date range you specify. Clicking this link takes you to the My Accounts tab. You need to click the Reports tab to continue viewing the report.

Select the period for which you want to see your earnings. You have these choices:

• today

• yesterday

• last 7 days

• this month (supply month name)

• last month (supply month name)

• all time (from the time you first signed up for AdSense, not from time of the Big Bang, which is currently in scientific dispute)

In the boxes below the period selection, you see the detail for each of the ad types, including AdSense for content, AdSense for search, and Referrals. Here, you can view how many page impressions, clicks CTR, your page’s eCPM (effective CPM), signups, conversions, and your earnings. These totals should adjust based on the period you choose to view.

In the Quick Reports section, you can view reports by clicking the link of the report description. There are four AdSense for content reports and three AdSense for search reports. Click the link, or click the small csv link to receive the report in comma-separated-value format suitable for uploading into spreadsheets and other reporting tools.

Advanced Reports

To create and view advanced AdSense reports, click the Advanced Reports link in the Reports tab. Creating a custom report simply requires you to answer a few questions about the report you want to create. Fill in the following form fields:

• Choose product: Select which AdSense product you want to report on - AdSense for content, AdSense for search, or Referrals.

• Choose a date range: Selecttoday, or specify begin and end dates.

• Show data by: Report by Web page, by ad unit type, or by individual ad.

• Show: Aggregate all the data together, or break it out by channel.

Click Show Report to view your custom report.

Report Manager

Manage all your custom reports in the Report Manager. The Report Manager link is found along the top bar of the Reports tab. Custom reports are created by saving advanced reports with a report name.

Select the custom report name from the list, and set its frequency. These are your choices for setting the frequency with which the report runs:

• Never: Never automatically run the report.

• Daily: Run the report every day.

• Send to: Send the report to the recipient whose e-mail address is listed here. You can click the edit addresses link to quickly add a new recipient address.

• Format: Choose from CSV or CSV–Excel format.

Click Save Changes, or choose to delete the selected report by clicking Delete checked reports.

Site Diagnostics

When you manage many Web sites and ad locations, you’ll want to use the Site Diagnostics tool. As Google crawls through Web sites in order to display relevant ads, it may find problems or issues and it may block your page. The crawl report includes the following information:

• The blocked URL

• The reason it was blocked

• The date of the last crawl attempt

• The number of failed attempts

Two of the biggest reasons for site blocking are when the crawler fails to find the URL and when a robots.txt file blocks the crawler. Fix either or both of these issues to correct your site’s problem.