What are Google AdSense Recent Messages all about?

Boy, it's great to hear that you're doing well with AdSense. I have to say that if you would have told me a few years ago that I'd be making money selling advertising on my own sites, I would have laughed. I weathered the post dot-com storm and for years was convinced that outside of a few dozen high-traffic sites, everyone else was doomed to having their Web presence be a "cost center" [sorry, my MBA sneaks out in the worst times!]

Anyway, you're right, as reported in the must-read Inside AdSense Blog, they've added what they're calling the you've got mail feature so they can notify you of specific optimization tips that can help you get more revenue from your AdSense efforts.

I don't have any messages from AdSense in my account, but fortunately some of my friends have received messages so I can show you what it looks like. If you have a message, you'll see the following on your main report page (the page you get when you first log in to the AdSense system):

Click on it (though it doesn't look clickable!) and you'll get information like this:

Click on the tip itself and you're directed into the Google AdSense help system. In this case, here's the tip that my friend was sent:

Is this a useful tip? Well, I asked three AdSense advertisers who had received this tip and got three different answers!! One said it was useless as she only had competitive sites blocked, another said it was useful because he'd blocked advertisers with which he'd negotiated specific ad campaigns, but had forgotten to remove them from his block list when they chose not to re-up their campaign, and one who said it was useless because the only advertisers she blocked were advertisers she considered scammers and didn't want on her site. "I would almost certainly get more money by allowing them," she explained, "but that certainly isn't worth it to me."

Will this feature prove worthwhile in the long run? It's too soon to tell. What I find interesting, however, is that the message system notes the sender (see above, where it says "Optimization Team"). Does this indicate that we might see messages from other groups within the AdSense team, or even specific advertisers or ad partners? Hmmm....

If you have received a different message from AdSense through their message system, please do let us know about it, and indicate whether you found it useful or not too.

Also, my thanks to my pal Anne Mitchell, who just launched The Site For The Cure.com, for her thoughts on the new AdSense Messages feature.