You surely have seen many websites that have the words "Ads by Google" displayed on different sections of the page. The website owner is participating in the Google Adsense program and has agreed to display advertisements on their website. Google Adsense is program that delivers targeted advertisements to participating websites and provides a source of income for website owners.



The ads are relevant to the content contained on the pages of your website. The great part about the program is that someone browsing a website about dieting, for instance, will not be exposed to advertisements about horses or another unrelated topic. Instead, they will be exposed to advertisements that can take them to other websites that contain more dieting information or dieting related products and services.

The Google Adsense program is completely free to join and requires very little effort on your part. You copy and paste code provided to you by Google Adsense to add to each of the pages of your website that you desire. You have complete control over the number of ads displayed and the location on the page where you will place the ads.

The entire process is automated and the Google Adsense software searches for keywords and key phrases on your web page to determine what type of ads it will deliver. The ads that actually get displayed by the Google Adsense program are determined by the availability of current advertisers in the program, the bid price, relevance of the keyword, and the best click through rate. The ads with the best combination of these will be displayed first.

When a Google ad is clicked on, Google will pay you a portion of the bid price that is paid by the advertiser for a particular keyword. This is a very effective way for you to monetize your website. Monetizing your website refers to the methods you have chosen to produce revenue from your website. For example, say you have 1000 visitors and 20% of them click on your adsense ads. The price you will be paid per click will vary greatly but for ease of explanation, let's say the average click pays 25 cents. You would have made $50 on that day. If you can consistently achieve those results, your website can bring you an additional $1500 per month.

Google Adsense has very clearly defined rules to participate in the program. Do not be tempted to do anything that will result in invalid clicks such as clicking on your own ads or asking a friend to. Google will swiftly and immediately terminate your account and ban you from any future participation in the program. Google employs advanced methods to detect invalid clicks or suspicious activity.

You may be thinking why would you want to lead a visitor away from your website with a Google ad. The visitor is eventually going to leave your website. This is just the nature of surfing the web. You might as well be paid when the visitor leaves your website. If you focus on providing high quality content for your visitors, chances are they will return for additional visits, so you need not worry too much. However, if your website is designed to sell a product and you want the visitor totally focused on your sales copy then it would not be a good idea to participate in Google Adsense anyway for this type of website. Just use your best judgement.