i got an email from google this morning that my account would not be approved due to insufficient content . i run a social networking site which does not have contents but more of users images e.t.c is adsense allowed on social networks or dating sites .. see email below
Your AdSense application status
As mentioned in our welcome email, we conduct a second review of your AdSense application once AdSense code is placed on your site(s). As a result of this review, we have disapproved your account for the following violation(s):
We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below
Insufficient content: To be approved for AdSense and show relevant ads on your site, your pages need to have enough text on them for our specialists to review and for our crawler to be able to determine what your pages are about.
To resolve this issue, please work through the following suggestions:
Make sure that your pages have sufficient text - websites that contain mostly images, videos or Flash animations will not be approved.
Your content should contain complete sentences and paragraphs, not only headlines.
Ensure that your website is fully built and launched before you apply for AdSense - do not apply while your site’s still in a beta or “under construction” phase or only consists of a website template.
Place the ad code on a live page of your website. It does not have to be the main page, but test pages that are empty except for the AdSense ad code will not be approved.
Provide a clear navigation system for your visitors so that they can easily find all of the sections and pages of your website.
If you’d like to monetize YouTube videos, please apply for the YouTube monetization program. Note that blogs and websites that contain only videos will not be approved.
No, you can't.
See tutorial : https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182?hl=en
My client has saved lot of Google Adsense javascripts in his db and displaying in his website.
Now he wants to display those javascripts ads in his IPhone application.
Is there a way to do it?
Since Google Adsense is mainly for websites I think the better way might be to implement a mobile version of your website. I am not sure how it is going to look as most of the adsense JavaScript is configured to be displayed on a website and not on mobile website.
I'm building a mobile version of my site for smart-phones
(iPhone/Blackberry/Android/WebOS)
and I want to redirect to the mobile version from my main site whenever the user agent is of one of the kinds listed above (my mobile site is on a different url than my Desktop site).
My mobile version is more like a WebApp and does not contain the same content as the Desktop site.
After reading This Post by Google I understand that the Googlebot expects smartphones to display the Desktop version of the site (Googlebot-Mobile is not used for smartphones)
I'm afraid that if I redirect to the mobile version for smartphones, Google will give me penalty for cloaking, How can I avoid this?
I know that including a link from the main site to the mobile version and vice versa helps a lot.
Any other advice/best practices on how to be google friendly when creating mobile versions of the site for smartphones?
From the article:
For Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile, it does not matter what the URL structure is as long as it returns exactly what a user sees too.
The key thing is you must be consistent in the content you give to the bot and the one you serve to the user.
Another interesting excerpt from the article:
For now, we expect smartphones to handle desktop experience content so there is no real need for mobile-specific effort from webmasters. However, for many websites it may still make sense for the content to be formatted differently for smartphones, and the decision to do so should be based on how you can best serve your users.
You can also serve a different page/content/styling based on the UA string, as stated in the article:
If you serve all types of content from www.example.com, i.e. serving desktop-optimized content or mobile-optimized content from the same URL depending on the User-agent, this will also lead to correct crawling by Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile. This is not considered cloaking by Google.
I think it all boils down how different the content/styling is. If it's only slightly different, I would probably go with the same url serving both. If it's dramatically different, I would use a different url for smartphones.
Hope this helps!
Updating this with current information. Google now crawls with a smartphone Googlebot-Mobile user agent. See: Google blog post
Google's SEO PDF explains how to avoid cloaking penalties. Specifically, see Page 27. See: SEO PDF
The gist is, the content you serve a desktop user can be different from the content you serve a mobile user, as long as Googlebot is always served the same content you serve to any desktop user, and Googlebot-Mobile is always served the same content you serve to any mobile user. To abide by this, it seems to me you should not configure your site to serve mobile content based on finding "Googlebot-Mobile" in the user agent. The bot will supply a typical smartphone user agent string as part of it's own user agent--that's the part to rely on, or else if a new device comes out that you do not yet account for, you'll serve desktop content to it, but mobile content to Googlebot-Mobile impersonating that device.
You could use subdomain for your mobile site and redirect google mobile bot there together with smartphones
I want to develop an online application and I am considering EITHER building a website with community features built in or building ONLY a facebook app. I was wondering if other people have had to make the same decision and what things I will need to consider.
The website I want to build will be an educational portal where people can make and take tests online
I disagree with some of the other answers here. There is a huge difference between a) trying to advertise a new place on the web and b) trying to advertise a new functionality of an existing place. Even if this new website would offer a very tight integration with Facebook and some other social platforms. Keep in mind: facebook users really don't like to leave facebook, no matter what the reason would be. That's why the click-through rate for the advertisements is so embarrassingly poor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Company
That said you can of course always do both: build a website and offer the same functionality through a facebook app. However my opinion here is that if you're application only offers its users a single functionality, you'll be better off just doing the latter.
What exactly is the advantage you expect by creating a Facebook-ONLY-App for that?
If it's only about taking tests you can still build a "normal" portal and include some of the Facebook-functionality through the JavaScript-SDK, like posting to the wall, Single-Sign-On, find your friends and so on. This way the user still has the choice if he wants to connect with Facebook or not. This way you also don't minimize your userbase to Facebook-users
(yeah I know, "everyone" has Facebook these days... ;) Still not everyone wants it to be connected to every single site he's using through Facebook)
Considering this comment:
Well I guess its easier for people to recommend my app if it is a facebook app, is the main reason I want to know if facebook is a good option – Zubair Mar 3 at 14:51
Build a website and then add the Facebook 'like' button. See: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/#plugins
You should put a Twitter button as well:
http://twitter.com/about/resources/tweetbutton
In my opinion you have to develop both. First develop you website. Although facebook is having millions of users But in my opinion you cannot implement every thing as freely as you can in your web application than facebook application. You should have a website and a page on facebook. You can integrate other facebook social plugins on your website to interact with facebook.
From monitization point of it is easy for new users on website than application on facebook. Other reason website especially related to educational purposes have a huge click through rate which you cannot find on facebook application advertiser.
What is the goal of the website?
If its to make money dont do a facebook app, you have far more control of your site by designing it entirely yourself.
If you want social networking features there are plenty of APIs you can tie in to which will provide you with functionality and allow you to link into facebook / twitter etc.
A website would look more professional, it would allow you to gather statistics on unique hits, revisits etc, having your own database of users means you can gather information and market your site more specifically ( which users took which tests).
A website also allows you to monetize it by adding advertisement if that is your goal, and you can gain search engine rankings.
If you want to get publicity for your website you can use facebook by creating a group / page for the site and promoting it that way.
Also your own website wont leave you vulnerable to changes in Facebook, what if you put in all this work and in a year the terms change and a portion of your app is now in violation of the terms. What if you want to add X feature and facebook wont allow it?
Basically your site = 100% in your controll, thats a big advantage to you. With facebook you loose that advantage but maybe gain a little in being able to use more of their features. Personally id always go for my own site.
You should go for the website first, then add the social elements in the website.
Like you can enable users to login using there facebook credentials. Like/share Button.
And later on, you can also go for the facebook app, when you want to shoot for much much more traffic. Therefore, whenever you think that you have figured out what exactly you want out of your application then only go for it, otherwise try your options with website. Because once your facebook app is up, you will get hell lot of traffic.
Let me know if you need help in creating facebook application or social elements enabled website. I have built an Facebook Easy API on top of all facebook features, which will enable you to easily access anything on facebook and meanwhile reducing your work effort.
You first build it like web app and use Graph API and FBConnect to use Facebook functionalities. Then you need to create a facebook app version also because getting facebook traffic is also required. People from facebook most like come to facebook app then to another web.
You will not need to convert it to facebook app, it will be just less in width and it would be a facebook iframe app. as I some where read that facebook is depreciating fbml and iframe app is recommended.
So now you can make both things, as I think , test app can have flexible layout so that you don't need to change width for facebook iframe. So you can both things by doing one.
thanks
i'm pretty sure many people will not agre with me, but IMHO you should focus on build a good Web-App that work well also on Mobile-Phones. keep it simple, intuitive, responsive, lightweight, cross-browser and straight to the point.
if your only concern is about "recommend your app to other people" make it SEO and Multi-Language too. google will do the rest.
then if you want make your app bold, slowly and planty of useless stuffs start to add all the facebook widget you want.
PS: i'm also on facebook, twitter,
flickr, google etc etc, i'm also
sharing photos, links and usefull
stuffs, my google rss reader is full
of links with tons of nice things, well i
have never had a minute to look at it, when i need something i just start searching google
I agree with most of the answers here—a native website is the way to go. Personally, I don't trust/like FB apps. Dunno what they do, and given the number of scammers out there and FB's lack of responsibility (IMO), I rarely if ever use an FB app.
Creating the website gives users choice about whether they want to share results/integrate with their FB wall/profile. Users don't like to be forced into something.
And in the spirit of adventure that is typical of SO, it's always more fun to build your own website than to build a template-based (sort of), boring and nearly irrelevant (drowning in a sea of other poorly made apps) FB app. But that's just my 2¢
In your case, I would do a hybrid. First, build your website, but integrate it with Facebook via connect. This way you can concentrate on building your value added services and let Facebook worry about the community.
I would also not ignore the Facebook app. Now, with iframes being fully supported on Facebook, you can adapt your existing site to work within Facebook with minimal effort, as long as you keep this requirement in mind when building your original application.
I am working on a facebook application a game and was wondering how to monetize it. I am new to FB and even the ad market place. What is my best bet to get ad revenue? I mean, which provider should I use? Can I use adsense? What are my options? Thanks for your suggestions.
In reaction to a little adverse privacy publicity (see: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/18/facebook_apps_privacy_breach/ ) Facebook tightened up their advertising policy around privacy and created an official approved ad provider list here: http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/ listing ad providers who have agreed to comply with Facebook's privacy policies.
I recently did some searches in the Facebook Developer forums and found that RockYou and LifeStreet Media seem to be the most frequently cited providers.
AdSense is not currently on this list, but many apps do use AdSense.
Currently there is Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) over whether using AdSense in a Facebook app will get your account closed by AdSense, and whether it will get your app banned by Facebook.
Those who believe AdSense might ban you frequently assert that AdSense prohibits ad placement in an iframe, which is the only way to do it as a Facebook app. I have read the AdSense terms and can find no reference to iframes being prohibited. AdSense does expect your page to have meaningful content, which would seem to preclude use in some games or other apps that lack text content (think pure flash apps)