Google Adsense Overview

To use Google Adsense on your website and to earn maximum revenue from it, you need to first know what is Adsense and how it works. Google Adsense is a program launched by Google - a leading search engine, for publishers, i.e. website owners. Non U.S. publishers are also accepted for the program.

When you type in a search term i.e. a keyword, in Google Search Engine, you will notice that Google displays several 'Sponsored Links' on the top and right. These links have been paid for, by certain advertisers on relevant search terms or keywords. The advertisers pay only when their ads are clicked upon - i.e., when they actually receive a visitor. This is called 'Pay-per-click' advertising. For e.g. a search for 'House Plans' brings up the following results from Google:

The ads circled in black are 'sponsored links' as you can see. Now Google devised a clever way to give their advertisers more exposure. They started the Google Adsense program for Publishers. Publishers were invited to apply for this program and they could serve similar 'sponsored links' by Google on their own websites. And if any of their website visitors clicked on one of these ads, they earned a share of the revenue that Google was earning from the advertiser. Thus, Google Adsense is a 'pay-per-click' ad program for website publishers.

What makes this program really unique is that Google automatically serves only extremely relevant links on each page of your website. Google will crawl through the page you have put the Adsense code on, and will display text and/or image ads that match your content. Continuing the above example of 'House Plans', this randomly selected webpage with content about house plans is serving Google Adsense. The ads displayed are extremely relevant - all related to House Plans. Similarly, EACH page on which the ads are displayed, will show extremely relevant ads.

Most other forms of advertising do not display such relevant and targeted ads. This type of 'contextual advertising' brings the publisher much more revenue than other traditional forms of advertising. When a website visitor is viewing a page about House plans, it means that he is interested in getting more information about them or even buying them. That visitor is more than likely to click on the 'House Plans' ads being displayed on the same page than any other un-related ad.

In addition to the text ads, Adsense also allows you to add 'Adsense Search' to your website. The search tool benefits you in two ways. First, you can choose 'site search' and your website will have your own Google-powered search tool for searches within your website. You visitors will be able to search for content within your website. The page where the search results. The second benefit is that every time a user searches for a keyword, Google's 'sponsored listings' are displayed along with the results (just as on Google's site as we saw earlier in this article) and if the user clicks on one of those, you again earn money.

Publishers can benefit immensely from Adsense and make almost any website, which has some original content, profitable. Payment is sent by checks in USD or other select currencies. How much you earn will depend upon 2 factors - how many clicks the ads receive, and how much you get for those particular ads (some ads are higher-paying than others). Therefore, even a personal website or hobby blog which receives 'interested' visitors can start earning income because Adsense does not care about your traffic. All the same, the more the traffic, the more clicks can be generated, but is an entirely different topic.

To learn how to use Adsense, read the next article on How to Start using Google Adsense or read more articles on Monetizing Your Website with Google's Adsense.