Who took my FireFox ads?

grrrr indeed!

[Hobbs]

I'm suddenly seeing a gaping hole on my front page where a FireFox referral banner used to live, although there are FF ads still being displayed on many of the inside pages that I have checked.

Also today FF conversions are generating half their historical average per conversion.

This is turning into a series, here's the who took my Picasa [webmasterworld.com] thread.

Coming soon: Who took my ad units!

[tim222]

Maybe Google is starting to realize that by featuring an ad blocker on their list of Recommended Add-ons, Firefox is like the dog that bites the hand who feeds him.

Based on recent thread topics, I imagine that another installment in this series will be "Who took my eCPM?"

[jomaxx]

What country are you located in? What country or region do you have the referral link targeted to?

[Hobbs]

Jomaxx, FF ads are available to publishers from all countries, and so is my traffic, what I'm saying is that they've become intermittent.

[jomaxx]

Given the changes in referrals that are underway, that information seems relevant. I mean, nobody but you cares about your site in particular; the only reason for having these threads is that many others could be experiencing the same thing, maybe without even being aware of it.

If you don't want to give up that info, that's your business, but the AdSense blog is telling publishers to make sure their FF referral targeting you select is aimed at one of the regions that are still valid.

[bumpski]

Hobbs

Could it be that perhaps another defective referral product ad is showing in place of your Firefox referral ad? Google is showing other referral products and there appears to be no way to absolutely control what's displayed. One of these other products (perhaps with a defective ad) could be taking the place of your Firefox referral ads.

You must be seeing data that proves other referral ads are showing. All the Adsense referral ads I display intermittently show other products. Perhaps in your case the system is stuck displaying another defective ad in place of the standard Picasa, Firefox, & Adsense referrals.

If you select "For ALL products" in the reports surely you see data for many other products, perhaps you'll find a high impression rate for something other than Firefox.

[Leva]

I have a site that is likely one of the more effective ones for Firefox referrals, and so far, my stats are normal. That means precisely nothing, however, because there are longstanding historic issues with google referral buttons going awol at random intervals. Google fixes it, eventually, and until I hear otherwise I assume that if my buttons go away it's a system issue on Google's end. (Pack was gone for a few days last week, frex.)

Text links will sometimes work when buttons don't. A big fat honking text link in a bright color will sometimes convert as well as the buttons, FWIW.

That said, referral buttons will go away if you have more than three referrals on a page. Also, I've suspected buttons of pulling a disappearing act due to stop words (the same ones that make ads turn into PSAs) though I can't completely prove this. Maybe one of our friendly neighborhood Google employees could confirm this?

You might proof your content to make sure there's nothing there that's causing an issue.

-- Leva

[Hobbs]

the AdSense blog is telling publishers to make sure their FF referral targeting you select is aimed at one of the regions that are still valid

Do you have a link for that Jomaxx?
AFAIK this change is only related to AdSense Referral not FireFox, except for China where FireFox is affected.

Interesting information about non Google Referral ads appearing in place of FireFox, and stop words too? Is that a know bug or a documented "feature"?

[jomaxx]

It's on the front page of the blog at adsense.blogspot.com. You have to scroll about 2/3 of the way down.

However it's not clear to me whether the "targeted countries" option impacts only on "Google AdSense" referrals or AdSense Firefox referrals as well. In the online interface, it's all on the same page.