100% Google AdSense: Tools, Tips and Resources

Google AdSense is a simple and low-risk way for publishers to quickly monetize their content. The pay-per-click ad system has created an opportunity for anyone to instantly have advertising on their website, without the hassle of having to actively sell ad space. AdSense makes up a good portion of the advertising revenue for many websites, and other websites may use AdSense to earn the bulk of their revenues. Either way, AdSense is an excellent system for monetizing your content.
In this post we present an ultimate collection of resources, tools and tips to help you make the most out of Google AdSense. Among other things, this post covers various Google AdSense tools, Firefox-extensions, WordPress-plugins and related resources.
Please feel free to suggest related tools in the comments to this post. You may also be interested in our post Google AdSense: Facts, FAQs and Tools that was published two years ago.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]

1. Google AdSense Tools

iPhone AdSense Statistics Application
SenseApp is a program that lets you track your Google Adsense earnings on your Apple iPhone.

AdSense Earnings Tool
Free and fast tool to monitor adsense earnings in realtime. This tool posts all the correct post fields to Googles universal Account Services login and collects information about your earnings. You’ll able to see today, yesterday, this month and since last payment earnings. You don’t need to log in to Google anymore.

Google AdSense Toolbox
Type any web page URL (e.g. cnn.com) or keywords (e.g. web development), select a country (optional) and hit Enter to see the latest Google Ads that are contextual and geo-targeted.
Google AdSense Preview Tool
an addition to the right-click menu for Windows Internet Explorer 6.x, allowing you to preview the ads that may show on any webpage. With just a few clicks, you can see what ads may appear on your new webpages, or make an educated decision on whether to add AdSense to your existing site pages.
Google Search-Based Keyword Tool
The search-based keyword tool allows you to find high-paying keywords to target, based on the domain name you specify.

Google Traffic Estimator
The Google Traffic Estimator is an easy way to determine the search volume of certain keywords, and it shows related keywords and their volumes as well.
SpyFu
SpyFu allows you to look up any website and see how much it is spending on AdSense, how it ranks for each keyword, and which keywords it buys. The tool is quite useful for researching competitors.

adsblacklist
Identify and block low-paying advertisers and increase ROI with AdSense.

2. Google AdSense Online Tools

Contextual Ads Preview/Comparison Tool
This comparison tools comes in handy when you compare AdSense ads to those of other advertisement services (Chitika, Yahoo). You also have the ability to customize the colors and view what ads a certain URL would be likely to display.

Google AdSense Calculator
This AdSense Calculator is designed to help you to predict changes in your earnings depending on improvement (or deterioration) of Page Impressions, Click Through Rate and Cost Per Click. You can download further calculators here.

WordTracker
During the search, people use different keywords. Using this tool, you can find the most effective words before deciding what content to include on your page. Not free, but the free trial is available.
Traffic Estimator Sandbox
To use this tool, you need an AdWords account. This traffic estimator helps you to figure out what keywords result in the highest paying AdSense ads (more details on uphook).

Pubmatic
While Pubmatic isn’t strictly an AdSense tool, it will definitely help you earn more money from your website by optimizing your ads. With each page view, Pubmatic determines whether showing an AdSense ad or an ad from a different network would be best, based on the CPM.

AlterNut Ad
Instead of earning nothing from the PSA ads that Google fills the page with when it has no ads to show, earn a set fee by giving AlterNut Ad your unused PSA ads.

3. Google AdSense Firefox Extensions

AdSense Notifier
This extension displays your AdSense earnings in the status bar.
AdSense Preview
Check what Google ads would be displayed if they were shown on a particular page with this preview tool.

Money Quake
Money Quake allows you to see your real-time earnings for many popular advertising programs, including AdSense.

GraphSense
GraphSense gives you a visual look at your AdSense reports by adding graphs to the interface. As of this post, the extension is still classified as “experimental,” so you’ll have to log in to Mozilla to install it.

4. Official AdSense Resources

Google has provided some official tools and resources to help publishers get started with AdSense.
Google AdSense Help Center
A database of questions and answers about the AdSense program.

Inside AdSense Blog
The official AdSense blog. Find news, tips and other features about the ad system here.
AdSense Community Forum
Have an AdSense question? Ask a community of publishers and the AdSense team.
Official Optimization Tips
A collection of tips provided by the AdSense team.
Official AdSense Channel on YouTube
Instructional videos and interviews by successful AdSense publishers.
Interest-based advertising with Google AdSense
Just recently Google announced the launch of interest-based advertising. This help section addresses the new mechanism and explains how you can benefit from it.

5. Getting Started with AdSense

Because of the popularity of AdSense, many so-called “experts” out there try to give “inside information” or sell their secrets in the form of ebooks. If you’re truly a beginner to AdSense, use the official AdSense help database that Google provides.
Here are some “getting started” articles by a few trusted authors.
Problogger’s AdSense Tips for Bloggers
Darren Rowse’s excellent eight-part series will get you well on your way to making money from AdSense.

The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Effective AdSense Link Units Optimization
A great rundown of the different types of link units and how they’re best used in a website layout.

Where Should I Place Google Ads on my Page?
The Google AdSense team has made a helpful map showing the different regions of a website layout where AdSense units perform the best.

6. Optimization Tips

Like any ad system, AdSense can be optimized to generate more clicks and revenue. Here are some tips to help boost AdSense performance.
Adsense Success Stories
Several examples of websites that increased their earnings significantly with Adsense. The success stories talk a lot about ad optimization, etc.
Google AdSense Tips
Google Blogscoped provides an excellent collection of AdSense tips based on its experience with implementing Google ads.

My top 5 tips for increasing adsense earnings (without increasing traffic)
Experiment with color and position, use different adverts for different dates, use content targeting, referrals and take care of the SEO.

Eye-Tracking Studies by Jakob Nielsen
Great eye-tracking examples that show where users’ eyes start and end up on a page.

Adsense Tips, Layout Optimization Tricks for Higher CTR
A collection of excellent do’s and don’ts for new publishers, as well as advice for more advanced AdSense users.
Rotate Google AdSense Ad Colors : Reduce Ad Blindness
One of the many enemies of publishers who rely on ads is banner blindness. Rotating ad colors is a good way to combat banner blindness, resulting in more clicks on ads.
Google AdSense Tips, Tricks and Secrets
Popular SEO blogger Michael Gray has an extensive post on various AdSense tips and performance boosters.

How to Display Ads Only to Search Visitors
Click-through ratios are much higher if you show your AdSense units only to visitors who were referred by search engines. Here’s an article on how to implement that functionality on your website.
Using the Competitive Ad Filter to Increase AdSense Earnings
Learn how to block made-for-AdSense websites as competitors, allowing only the best and most relevant ads to show on your units.
100 Google AdSense Tips
While this article is a few years old, it still has some very valuable tips on how to optimize Google AdSense. Perfect for the beginner.
20+ Practical and Ethical Tips to Earn More Revenue from Google AdSense
eTechBuzz shows us some useful and ethical AdSense tips.

Blogmitize!
The Official AdSense Blog has a post on how to make the most money from your blog layout.
Little Known ‘Boring’ Websites that Make Incredible Money with AdSense
An article highlighting that nearly anyone with a niche website can make money from AdSense.

7. AdSense WordPress Themes

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform, so it’s no surprise that a few themes come AdSense-ready, with ad placements already determined.
Pro Sense

Get Some!
CognoBlue

TechBlue

Elite Circle
Amazing Grace

Amazing

8. AdSense WordPress Plug-Ins

If you want to integrate AdSense in your existing website, here are some plug-ins to help display your ads.
AdSense Manager
The AdSense Manager widget allows for the automatic creation of AdSense ad zones on your WordPress blog. The plug-in also supports other ad networks, such as YPN, AdBrite and Commission Junction.

Easy AdSenser
Easy AdSenser is a feature-filled plug-in that allows you to easily insert AdSense into your posts and layout. It has an extremely user-friendly interface, with lots of features that make adding AdSense much easier than it is with other plug-ins.
AdSense Revenue Sharing
Share AdSense earnings with co-authors using the AdSense Revenue Sharing plug-in.

All in One AdSense and YPN
Use the All in One AdSense and YPN plug-in to automatically insert YPN and AdSense ads into your existing blog posts.
AdSense Under Image
If a post has an image, this plug-in automatically inserts an AdSense block under the image.
AdSense Deluxe 2
Another plug-in to automatically insert AdSense ad units into blog posts.

Google AdSense for Feeds
A simple plug-in that places AdSense in your blog’s feed.
Ozh’ Who Sees Ads
Determines what type of visitor will see ads on your website. This plug-in allows publishers to hide ads from regular visitors and show them only to search visitors.

9. AdSense Books

If you’re looking for an entire collection of tips and advice on making the most out of AdSense, you might want to try a print book instead. Plenty of excellent AdSense articles are available online, but on the whole, it is easier to find more accurate information in print media. Here are some of the most popular books on AdSense.

The Best Damn Google AdSense Book

Google Advertising Tools: Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords and the Google APIs
The AdSense Code
Google AdSense Secrets
The Google AdSense Millionaire

10. AdSense Forums and Communities

Webmaster World AdSense Forum
The WMW forum is by far the best forum for getting expert advice on AdSense. A member of the Google AdSense team actually reviews all the threads and answers questions, so the information is legitimate.

Digital Point AdSense Forum
Digital Point’s AdSense forum isn’t as strict as the Webmaster World forum, so there is a lot of engagement but less experienced users and less informed advice.

Jowl Comm’s AdSense Chat

SEOChat
SEOChat doesn’t have an entire forum dedicated to Google AdSense, but it does have a thriving forum for affiliate marketing in which many AdSense topics come up on a regular basis.

11. Those Against AdSense

It’s always a good practice to hear the other side of the story when rounding up resources on a topic, especially one as controversial as AdSense. Many experts argue that AdSense isn’t the best choice for publishers to monetize their content. Here are a few articles that criticize AdSense.
Dear AdSense, You Broke My Heart
Problogger Darren Rowse’s open letter to AdSense about why he was disappointed in its decision to change the referral policy for publishers outside the US.

10 Alternatives to Checking Your AdSense Earnings

It's a common problem among AdSense publishers, especially those with the AdSense Notifier installed in their browsers: the frequent and compulsive checking of AdSense earnings throughout the day. It can be a big time waster. But constant checking won't lead to more earnings — in fact, it could lead to the opposite! Here are ten things you could be doing instead to increase those earnings over the long term:

1. Write more content.

If you make time to check your earnings, you can make time to write some content. A blog posting, an article fragment, whatever you can do. It doesn't have to be immediately publishable — use your blog's draft mode, for example, to prepare some content ahead of time for later publication.

2. Read the AdSense Terms and Conditions.

It always surprises me how many people haven't read the AdSense Terms and Conditions and the accompanying Program Policies. (Note that the Program Policies are considered to be part of the Terms and Conditions.) This is where you discover important information like:

• No encouragements to click.
• Only label ads as “Sponsored Links” or “Advertisements”.
• No more than 3 ad units, 2 search boxes and 1 link unit per page. (As of this posting.)
• When Google says “Jump!” you say “How high?”

It's well worth the time to read it thoroughly.

3. Visit an AdSense forum.

My favorite AdSense forum is the Digital Point AdSense forum, which is heavy on the signal and less so on the noise. It's a great way to learn from other publishers' experiences.

4. Study the AdSense heat maps.

The AdSense heat maps (there are two: one for regular content pages and one for forum pages) give you great advice on where to position ads for maximum clickability. Are your ads in the right spot? If not, try moving them into the hot spots on a few pages and see what happens.

5. Research keywords.

Have you been wondering how hot a topic is? Some quick tests with Google Suggest, the Overture Keyword Selector Tool and the AdWords Keyword Tool (all free) can let you know fairly quickly if it's something you can pursue. If you have a bit longer to spare, you can also fire up a tool like Keyword Elite for more in-depth research. (Subscribe to my free profitable niche discovery course for more tips on keyword research.)

6. Create some channels.

Although tedious to manage, AdSense channels, particularly the custom channels, can provide some interesting and useful data. Combine these with an ad tracking script to really find out what ads are making you money and what you can do in terms of ad formats and ad placements to increase your earnings.

7. Create systems.

Serious AdSense publishers have multiple sites and/or blogs on the go at any given time. Creating and managing your sites and blogs is much simpler and more effective if you have systems in place to help you with different things. Like customizing WordPress for AdSense or using a templating framework for creating new sites.

8. Optimize your pages.

So much traffic depends on how well your pages rank in the search engines that it makes a lot of sense to devote some time to search engine optimization tasks. Most search engine optimization tasks have the beneficial side effect of improving the ad targeting.

9. Think like an advertiser.

That money you're making ultimately comes from the advertisers who are advertising with Google's AdWords program. Do you understand how AdWords works? Do you know how ads are chosen for display? You can get a lot of insight into AdSense by studying its “flip side”.

10. Spend time doing other things.

Go talk with your spouse. Play with your children. Read a good book. Watch a movie. Take some time off from AdSense by doing other things. Give your poor brain a break from all those thoughts about high-paying keywords, traffic strategies, search engine optimization, and related topics.

Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

I’ve been reading a few forums and blogs about Google Adsense tips lately, and thought it would be helpful to consolidate as many as possible in one place without the comments. I’ve also thrown in a few tips of my own. We start out with some of the basic general stuff and move to the more specific topics later on.

Build an Empire?

When you’re deciding to become a website publisher you will fall into one of two broad categories:

• Publish 100 websites that each earn $1 a day profit
• Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit

The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithm’s, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but you’ll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.

General or Niche

You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field.
If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it’s currently zero).
Once you’ve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don’t try to run with the big dogs if you can’t keep up. If you have to ask if you’re a big dog, then chances are, you’re not. I have used a high dollar keywords report from cashkeywords.com and was pleased with my results (see cash keywords free offer recap).

New Sites, Files and Maintenance

When you’re building a new site don’t put adsense on it until it’s finished. In fact I’d go even farther and say don’t put adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with “lorem ipsum” dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically.
I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it’s only one file I have to work with. TIP: I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.

Managing URL’s and channels

Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:

• domain1.com – 728 banner
• domain1.com – 336 block
• domain1.com – text link
• domain2.com – 728 banner
• domain2.com – image banner
• domain2.com – 336 block
• domain3.com – 300 block

While this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total. Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail. TIP: At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.

Site Design and Integration

Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.
Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

• 336×280 large rectangle
• 300×250 inline rectangle
• 160×600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior.
Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.
The one area where I’ve found blended ads don’t perform as well is forums, especially ones with a high volume of repeat members. Regular visitors develop banner blindness pretty quickly. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. As with any of the decisions about location, placement and color it’s a trade off. How much do you emphasize the ads without annoying your visitors. Remember it’s better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the adsense ads directly above or below the the first forum thread.

Using Images

One of the latest ‘secrets’ to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being ‘over the line’ write to adsense and ask them to take a look.
As far as using the images, I’ve done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples. TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.
Added:
I got a little criticizm for this and rightly so, as I wasn’t specific as I could have been. Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate.

Multiple Ad Units

Another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google’s TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.

Adsense in RSS

With the growth of blogs and RSS feeds you’re starting to see adsense included in the feeds now. IMHO this doesn’t work, and here’s why:

• You only get to place one ad unit.
• You have no control over finding the ‘sweet spot’ for the ad unit.
• The ads are usually poorly targeted (this is getting better).
• People develop ‘banner blindness’.

I know people like being able to read full postings in their feed reader, and there are at least a dozen other reasons for full posts from pleasing your users to mobile offline computing, all of which are completely valid. However if your website depends on generating adsense revenue to survive, then bring them to the site and show them the ads there.

Affiliate Sites

Placing Adsense on affiliate sites is tricky. Are you giving up a $10, $20, or $30 sale for a $1 click? This is something you have to test on your own to figure out. If you aren’t converting now it’s definitely worth a try. I like to use adsense on my article pages. For example let’s say you had an affiliate website where you sold shoes. You’re going to need some related articles to ‘flesh out’ the site. Things like ‘getting a shoe shine’ or ‘finding a shoe repair shop’ these are excellent spots for adsense. While you won’t get rich, they will usually provide a small steady income and cover things like hosting costs.TIP: If you find you have pages getting more than 50 clicks per month add more pages about this topic, and link the pages together. Mine you logs for the search terms used.

PPC Arbitrage

This is a dicey subject so I’m going to steer clear of precise examples. Basically you bid on low volume uber niche terms at a very low cost. You set up landing page that contains high payout ads for the related general topic. You are looking for terms with a large gap between the price you are bidding on adwords and the price you are getting on Adsense. If you pay $0.10 a click and get $1.00 a click you make $0.90 each click. To get your adsense ad approved you will need to ‘add some value’ along the way. You can make a killing or get taken to the cleaners with this one, so make sure you know what you are doing before you try it.
Have any other adsense tips, tricks or secrets? Drop me an email and let me know, I’ll give you credit.
Added
728 leaderboard works very well if it is just above the end of the
“above the fold” area on what would be considered your viewers average
resolution/browser window size if there are few other enticing links
above the fold. Makes for an interesting layout but if you’re building
a site for AdSense it may be worth it. We consistently receive very
high CTRs from doing this.
Try to build sites that allow you to quickly try any and all of
those locations outlined in the heatmap guide or at least allow you a
wide degree of freedom to easily change ad/content locations.

SITE MAP

Google AdSense Tips

Many of the pages on this site display text ads from Google's AdWords program. To display these ads, a site must join Google's AdSense program. Joining is free, but not all sites are eligible to join. Once you're accepted, however, it's very simple to place the ads on your pages and to start generating revenue for your site. AdSense will serve ads that are generally very relevant to the content of a particular page. Here are some tips based on my experiences so far with the AdSense program.

Tip #1: Don't put ads on empty pages.

When I reworked my site, I built a skeleton set of pages that had no content, just titles and some meta tags. I displayed ads on those pages, however. Although all you see are public service ads at first, the very act of displaying ads on a page causes the AdSense web crawler to quickly fetch that page for analysis. A page with good content will thus begin showing relevant paying ads fairly quickly.
If you don't have any content, then, Google will have to guess as what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant. You'll have to wait until Google re-crawls the site for the ads to correct themselves. Here is what Google had to say when I asked them about how often the AdSense crawler updates a site:

Thank you for taking the time to update your site. New ads will start appearing on your site the next time our crawler re-indexes your site. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to control how often our crawlers index the content on your site. Crawling is done automatically by our bots. When new pages are added to your website or introduced to the AdSense program, our crawlers will usually get to them within 30 minutes. If you make changes to a page, however, it may take up to 2 or 3 weeks before the changes are reflected in our index. Until we are able to crawl your web pages, you may notice public service ads, for which you will not receive any earnings.

It's better to flesh out the page before you start displaying ads on it.

Tip #2: Don't be afraid to ask questions

If you're wondering about something, don't be afraid to ask Google. So far, they've always responded to my questions within a working day. There are two email addresses to use, depending on the type of question:

Please feel free to email us at adsense-tech@google.com if you have additional technical questions or concerns. For general program or account questions, please email adsense-support@google.com.

Their responses are always very polite, and they appreciate getting problem reports and suggestions.

Tip #3: Avoid non-English characters on English pages

This one is a bug, to be honest. My surname is French, and I prefer to write it out correctly with the accent grave on the first "e". Every page on my site would then include at least two accented letters, because my name shows up twice in the footer. On some pages my name shows up two or three more times.
Normally, this wouldn't be an issue. But on some pages the presence of the accented characters is enough to cause AdSense to display non-relevant ads in French. This happens whether the browser indicates a preference for French or not. When I reported this to Google, this is the answer they gave me:

Hello Eric, Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We are currently working as quickly as we can to address this problem. As soon as we have more information for you, we will email you again. We appreciate your patience. Sincerely, The Google Team

Until this is resolved, I've decided to strip out all accents except on the pages that are actually in French.

Tip #4: Check your keyword density

Although Google doesn't release exact details as to how they determine the ads to serve on a given page, they do tell us that it's the text content of the page that matters, not the meta tags. Before serving ads on a page, then, you might want to check its keyword density. A good, free tool for doing this is found here:

http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

This lets you fine-tune the page before exposing it to the AdSense crawler.