Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Currently I am changing the layout of my site, partly for adsense. Mainly so it fits in better and doesnt distract as much as it does now.
Obviously by the title I use frontpage. Every time I start messing with pages in frontpage I notice my clicks have gone up. All within normal click range to be sure but I am worried if I am generating them somehow by using frontpage.
It might be the new layout, it is a huge step ahead from the past one. I dont know is the point. Can it be something I am doing in frontpage?
Before anyone even asks, I do not click my ads, I dont ask friends and family to click my ads. I dont talk to people about my ads.
Any suggestions?
Do you mean that whilst you are working on the pages locally the stats seem to increase, or once you've uploaded mew pages the stats go up?
Usually whilst you are working on the localhost to construct web pages PSA's are visible (or that's been my experience anyway). I only tend to see ads once uploaded.
If you are sure it's most deffinitely not you that's producing extra clicks, it might be part coincidence, and part paranoia through reading all the "I've been banned" threads here. I don't see how it's anything to do with FrontPage
I am betting it has more to do with people seeing new stuff vs the same old stuff. Can you tell how worried I am, I have been sitting here waiting for a reply..
I told him to give frontpage his worst competitor as a gift.
This is really starting to bother me. I might only get 70 people to my front page a day and the site is pretty specific to a small group. Can my old layout be so bad than that the new one helps out that much?
I need to cut down on the caffeine I think..
I guess frontpage is ok for those who dont know html (me) or cant or wont take the time to learn it (me) but I know what you mean about it sucking. Some people do wonders with it though, I am not one of them.,..
I gave up handcoding in 1996. Handcoding is great if you're paid by the hour, but for those of us who earn our livings from content, programs like FrontPage allow far greater productivity.
Still, I suppose there are people who like manual HTML coding, just as there are people who'd rather harvest grain with a scythe than with a combine. The joys and tribulations of productivity tools vs. handcoding tools can be discussed in Webmaster World's WYSIWYG and Text Code Editors Forum at:
[webmasterworld.com...]
god forbid I would have to learn something else in addition to SEO, AW & AS :-)
What version are you using?
Are you checking your Hyperlinks before you publish? "Reports" "Unverified Hyperlinks"?
Is it possible the Front Page extensions provided by your host could be involved?
I do see lots of hits in my webhost logs when I publish. Certainly Front page reads all your page headers before publishing. I have never seen any effect in Adsense clicks though.
Perhaps you could add or remove Adunits and look for a correlated change in the click count.
You could also add Adsense URL channels to all your pages, perhaps it's a specific page or two.
Also add a custom channel to each Adunit to see if it's a specific Adunit.
Hopefully it is just coincidence
I also see more hits when I publish but I lately I have been more active in message boards with my sig at the bottom (Boards I go to normally, just haven’t posted in a while.) I also picked up links from about 5 sites also.
I am pretty sure it is the new layout. Yesterday I got 4 times the average clicks that my site usually gets. I also moved the adsense for search which people almost never used, maybe once a day if that. I put it up top on the right and now it's like a tar baby. People just want to search according to the numbers.
What’s weirder still is I am not really following the Google "heat map". I use the ad links in the left side where my navigation blocks are. I throw a 120x600 on the right side above the fold with the content in the middle (3 columns). Depending on the content I put another 120x600 on the right or a 300x250 in the middle of the content and a 728x90 at the bottom in the footer.
So far the link unit and right side ad seem to do the best..
Now that I have written a book here I need to take my dog outside before she leaves me a surprise in house..
Before you are using the "Verify Hyperlinks" feature of the program, remove your AS code.
Like a putz, I was checking hyperlinks all over my site one day. Also, as usual, checking my AS Stats which were going through the roof for CTR.
Anyway, it occurred to me that the "Verify Hyperlinks" feature was also clicking on all my AS ads.
I emailed G immediately and explained what I had done.
it occurred to me that the "Verify Hyperlinks" feature was also clicking on all my AS ads
Can anyone validate this?
The reason I question the idea is my assumption that the MS FP link checking is limited to checking links to files that rely on the website's base URL, extended or truncated.
If MS FrontPage's URL checking extended beyond link checking of the website's directory structure that would transform the program into a global outbound link checker, if I follow your idea about what you think is going on.
Interesting no matter what. "What woulda thunk!"
Anyway, it occurred to me that the "Verify Hyperlinks" feature was also clicking on all my AS ads.
That hasn't been my experience.
The Recalculate Hyperlinks command does the following:"Repairs all hyperlinks on your web"
"Updates informaton for all FrontPage based components, including shared borders and navigation bars
"Synchronizes web data, database information and categories"
I also imbedded a couple of bogus outbound links on the site to see if "anything was reported". As I expected, nothing was "reported".
Certainly, I don't have the definitive answer on this issue but, based upon my understanding of what the Recalculate Hyperlinks utility is supposed to accomplish - checking for breaks in the internal site navigation structure IF you use MS FP's navigation bars or shared borders utility - I don't see MS FP as being the trigger for invalid clicks.
Indeed, pausing to think about this idea - if it were indeed true - I'd have to think that the operative effect of what you're describing would/should/could account for 100s of webmasters getting banned for invalid clicks that they never even knew they caused.
I gave up handcoding in 1996. Handcoding is great if you're paid by the hour, but for those of us who earn our livings from content, programs like FrontPage allow far greater productivity.
Amen brother!
I was wondering is there was another sane human on Webmaster World that hadn't swallowed the W3C hand coding kool-aid yet, but I digress.
Before you are using the "Verify Hyperlinks" feature of the program, remove your AS code.
Does the "Verify Hyperlinks" render a complete page with Javascript processed and everything or just check the hyperlinks in your raw HTML? If it doesn't render complete web pages for that process then AdSense ads wouldn't be included.
I've been using FrontPage and DreamWeaver for years and FrontPage has never clicked my ads so it's probably safe to continue using FrontPage unless you find empirical evidence that indicates anything to the contrary. I would suspect it's like others have stated that as you improve your web site the visitors click on things.
IF the answer to #1 is "yes" then:
Question 2: Since AdSense ads are only "called" on page load (versus file transfer) where in the upload or Recalculate Hyperlinks process are the links supposed to be "being loaded" and therefore checked?
Regarding ads rendering during use of the preview tool I don't see how that changes any of my inferences about FP "doing the clicking". AdSense isn't part of the navigational structure and therefore the links should not be "recalculated", i.e., "touched by the program".
I don't use FP, but when I first started editing pages with Adsense on them, I noticed this phenomenon as well - that the page impressions and clicks went up on that day. I also suspected the link-verification software.
However, there are psychological processes that can convince you of patterns that aren't actually there. The only way to check for certain is to look at the report of the links that are checked, or to keep stats for days you edit and days you don't, and then perform a statistical test (probably chi-square would be best).
When I checked my link-verification report, it wasn't clicking on the ads. The perception was caused by my paranoia about invalid clicks!
That, of course, also assumes that anyone at G on the receiving end of a "Sorry, but I didn't do it. MS FP did it" email has an idea of what the sender is saying. ;0)
* * * *
Hypothetical conversation in AdSense support room:
"Hey, did you know that MS FP can trigger invalid clicks?"
"Yeah, seems to be a common problem. I've gotten a number of email explanations from publishers saying that."
* * * *
Microsoft does, in fact, rewrite the newest release of MS FP so that it does, in fact, click AdSense ads automatically - resulting in publishers getting the boot - BUT somehow . . . mysteriously . . MS FP users start receiving unsolicited emails inviting them to become members of the new MSN contextual advertising program . . .
To quote one of my favorite female comediennes: "It could happen . . ."
Thus an urban legend is aborning . . .
Question 1: Is it possible to incorporate the AdSense code - and therefore force text + hotlinks - into MS FP's "shared borders" and "navigation bars"?
I definitely use the shared border on all my sites to include an AdLinks box + one small ad block.
When you look at view source for the page it shows the page as one unit not the page + the common border.
I get great relevancy on each page.
Verify Hyperlinks is different than Recalculate.
Verify Hyperlinks will check every link on your website, both onsite and OFF if you ask it to. It is a pretty good tool, but can and does get fooled sometimes. I don't think it executes any scripts though, just checks all href's. It shows you all the links it will check and you can select and deselect any or all links. Of course it gives you a sortable list of passing and failing links, click on the failing link(s) and the page(s) opens for editing.
One big question I didn't ask; I never edit "online".
I always edit and publish a copy from my home machine. I don't know what editing online would do, might cause problems. Editing online never seemed like a good idea to me.
Occasionally I see people open my site online with Frontpage. This is easy to do by accident. It's a great way to look at someone's website design, you see all the tables and formatting etc. Of course they can't write anything to my site. They could probably verify hyperlinks though, now that would be weird. Open up a scraper site and verify links, hmm.
View-->Reports-->Problems-->Broken Hyperlinks
I believe it should simply be checking links hard coded into the html of the files as they exist "on the server" or in the local web.
Still, it's interesting that this hasn't come up before.
If not MS FP do other link checking scripts pose a risk?
If you submitted a page with multiple links - plus AdSense code - to a "free link checking" site could that trigger a problem?
Since automation of link checking appears to be the efficient M.O. is there some chance of "imbedded hazard" OR is the checking always and only executed via a scan of the hard coded HTML that makes up a webpage?
Hopefully they are not following AS links?
Can anyone verify this?
Better yet why don't I drop them an e-mail.
