Google Adsense Channels

Google Adsense Channels

Adsense channels allow you to track the performance of your Adsense effort. There are two types of channels :Custom Channels and URL Channels.

Custom Channels

Custom Channels require that you add channel-specific ad code into your HTML .They can be used to track the performance of individual pages or groups of pages. However there main use is to track performance for groups of pages.

The pages can be grouped using various criteria like page theme, Adsense positions, Adsense types, Adsense colours etc. For example if you wanted to see what ads performed best .. horizontal or vertical.

You would paste two ad channels called horizontal and vertical and generate the script for each ad type using the control panel. Then you ad the vertical script to the pages that will take the vertical ads and the horizontal script to the pages that will display the horizontal ad.

After a few days you should see the results.

The Problem with these type of channels is that to include a page in a channel you need to edit the page itself as each channel has a different channel code. I use them mainly for tracking the performance of sites.

Because you only require a single Adsense account regardless of the number of websites you have. I assign each site a unique Adsense channel. The screen shot below show how I monitor several sites using custom channels:

You can also see that my main site (build your own website- byo) is split into 3 channels:

1. byhohome - only on home page to monitor performance

2. byolu - channel for monitor link unit ads.

3. byo- channel for monitoring all other pages of site.

I have two channels for this site (money making websites) mmw-home for home page and mmw for all other pages. The niche and oehome are for two other websites.

How To Create Custom Channels?

When creating custom channels you should use descriptive names for each channel, so that they are easily identifiable in your reports. There are two steps to creating them:

1. Create of the custom channel name .......... and
2. Add the channel-specific code to your web pages.

To create a new custom channel name:

1. Log in to your account.
2. From the links below the AdSense for content or AdSense for search tab, click Channels
3. Scroll down to the Manage Custom Channels section
4. In the "Create New Channel' field, enter a channel name that will help you to identify this channel later e.g. horizontal or vertical.
5. Click Create new channel to add the new channel to the Active Channels list.

To add the channel-specific code to your page:

1. Click the appropriate product Adsense for content or Adsense for search tab
2. Select the add type and other selections as appropriate.
3. From the Channel drop-down list, select the appropriate channel for this code. The default is no channel channel.















4. Copy-and-paste the ad layout code into your web pages. Tip!
I always copy the code into a notepad file and label give the file a descriptive name like.. ga-250-white-mmw.txt. Where : 250 is the ad size, white is the colour scheme and mmw is the channel name. I can then reuse it when I need to.

URL Channels

URL Channels allow you to track the clickthrough performance of your pages without needing to modify any of your pages. By simply entering the URL of a domain, directory or specific page, you can start tracking groups of pages or individual pages in a matter of seconds.

URL channels can be used to track individual pages, or groups of pages.

To track a single page then enter the full path of the page in the channel setup. (see below):

e.g. mysite.com/test.htm

To track all pages below a specific directory : enter a partial URL in the channel setup. (see below):

e.g. mysite.com/subdirectory

To track only pages across a specific subdomain : enter the subdomain in the channel setup. (see below):
e.g. tests.mysite.com

To track all impressions and clicks across the domain (including any existing subdomains), enter the domain name without the 'www'.

e.g. mysite.com

To Track home page impressions enter the full url of the home page in the channel setup. (see below):

e.g. mysite.com/index.htm

To create a URL channel:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Click the Channels link below the AdSense for content tab.
3. In the URL text field, enter the URL that you would like to track (see above).
4. Click Create new channel .
5. The new URL channel will begin tracking data almost immediately.

Channel Numbers

Channels are available for both Adsense for content and Adsense for search.You are currently limited to 200 custom and 200 url channels i.e. total of 400 channels for content and the same number again for Search.