Google AdSense is an ad serving program that has been run by Google since 2003. Prior to that, it was run by a company that Google bought out, Oingo/Applied Semantics. The purpose of Google AdSense is to use Google's comprehensive search and keyword technology to serve up relevant ads on websites. The ads are based on the content of the website, the geographical location of visitors, and other factors that Google does not always disclose.
Google AdSense is free for website owners who wish to make a few hassle-free bucks to use, and requires only the inclusion of a snippet of Javascript based code in order to function. Earnings are based on a per-click or per-thousand-impressions setup. Advertisers who would like to use Google AdSense to drive traffic to their own websites can do so by signing up with Google's AdWords program. Google manages the ads, and website owners have control over the style and display of their ads, including how many, and what type (text, image or video).
In addition to Google Adsense ads for websites, Google also administrates AdSense for search, where website owners can include Google search boxes on their website, and earn a portion of any ad revenue that Google receives from searches done directly from that search box.
The downside of using Google AdSense is that its Javascript based code does not always function properly in older browsers, or those browsers where security settings have been manually adjusted. Furthermore, the Google AdSense code and Adsense search box code are not XHTML compliant. Website owners who following strict XHTML standards may find themselves having to manually tweak the code in order to not break XHTML compliance.
While Google AdSense can be a wonderful opportunity for webmasters to make money and for advertisers to generate a quality stream of traffic to their websites, there is always the potential for abuse. There are unscrupulous individuals who create websites that contain nothing more than filler text and Google Adsense blocks. Then there are the AdSense farm sites: spam blogs that contain filler text with crucial, relevant keywords that Google and the AdSense structure pick up on. Fortunately, Google does frown upon these practices, refers to them as search engine spam, and has options for individuals to report these types of websites to them for review and possibly removal from the Google AdSense program, and possibly from Google itself.
Google AdSense receives both positive and negative feedback. On one hand, AdSense generates income for webmasters without requiring them to do anything other than place code on their site, and the relevant ad generation means that visitors to AdSense participating websites are shown ads that are of interest to them. But on the other hand, Google AdSense is open to click fraud and invalid clicks. Google responds to these criticisms by being rather overzealous with the monitoring of participating websites, and has been known to unjustly ban websites and webmasters who aren't guilty of invalid clicks.
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