Shoot for the stars: 6 principles to optimize app quality

As an app developer, you know that improving your app�s rating to 4 stars or more could increase discoverability and convince more users to download it. Google Play research also shows that higher rated apps earn more revenue:

* Revenue includes all app business model on Play: IAP, paid app, ads advertising

But how can you achieve that 4+ star score? Once you have set up your regular cycle of collecting, reviewing and actioning feedback from user reviews and ratings, the next key strategy is to optimize the quality of your app.

6 principles to improve app quality

1. Stability: no crashes. Read user error reports often, and take action quickly to help you improve stability and eliminate bugs.

2. Responsiveness: speed matters. Minimizing the complexity of your layouts is a simple way to improve your app speed.

3. Usability: be thumb friendly. Two common, easy-to-fix problems are addressing small tap targets and fonts that are too small. Make sure links are easy to tap.

4. Appearance and aesthetics. If you don't have the luxury to work with a designer, try using Photoshop, GIMP and other image editing tools to make your app look better.

5. Less is more: launch the right features. Listen to your users by collecting and responding to feature requests, but remember, you don�t always need to build every suggestion.

6. Integrate with the system and third-party apps: make users happy by including system features like Home screen widgets, rich notifications, global search integration, and Quick Contacts; or leveraging other apps� functionality.

Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Google+ page and Twitter page.

Posted by Amelia Walkley
Marketing Communications Specialist, AdMob

Explore AdSense help resources and support options

As a business owner, content creator, or webmaster, you can have many questions, e.g., when you will be paid, how you can earn more or how you can build a multi-screen website. We've improved our resources and support options to help you find the answers to your questions.

Most of the answers to your questions are available in the AdSense Help Center and in the Troubleshooting section. In addition, you can find answers and exchange ideas with other publishers in the AdSense Help Forum.

To provide a more simplified and personalized support experience, we�ve launched a new Contact us flow in the AdSense Help Center. Publishers consistently earning more than $25 per week (or local equivalent) are eligible to sign up for email consultations with AdSense support (available in 36 languages). If you can't see the �Contact Us� button, you can still reach us via the issue-based troubleshooters in the AdSense Help Center.

For all questions about your AdSense account, don�t forget to explore the AdSense help resources below:

• AdSense Help Center
• AdSense Troubleshooting
• AdSense Help Forum
• AdSense Academy
• Optimizing AdSense
• AdSense YouTube Channel

To hear more about new features and opportunities, subscribe to the Inside AdSense blog, follow our Google+ and Twitter channels, and opt in to receiving emails from us.

Posted by Saurav Roy - AdSense Support Team
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Online Indexes for Birth and Marriage Records (USA) - Latest Additions and Updates

Links to the items listed below were recently added to: Online Birth and Marriage Records Indexes or its supplementary state webpages.

Alabama
- Alabama: County Marriages, 1809-1950 at FamilySearch (not yet fully indexed)

Arkansas
- Carroll County Marriage Indexes

California
- California: County Marriages, 1850-1952 at FamilySearch
See: Online California Vital Records Indexes

Colorado
- Colorado Marriage Records Index 1859-1939, and Divorce Index 1861-1941 (from the Denver Public Library)
- Colorado Statewide Marriage Index 1853-2006 at FamilySearch (update: more years added)
- Denver Marriage Records Index 1940-1974 (from the Denver Public Library)
- El Paso County Marriage Licenses and Marriage/Civil Union Records Index Search, 1940-current
- Larimer County Marriage Index, 1858-1910
See: Colorado Genealogy Records and Indexes on the Internet

Florida
- Florida Marriages, 1830-1993 at FamilySearch
See: Online Florida Vital Records Indexes

Illinois
- Illinois: County Marriages, 1810-1934 at FamilySearch (coverage varies by county; does not include all counties)

Indiana
- Indiana Marriage Records Index 1811-1959 from FamilySearch; assorted counties (update: more counties added)
- Indiana Marriage Index 1958-2012 from the Indiana State Library (update: more years added)
- Floyd County Marriage License Search (includes PDF copies of the marriage licenses)
- Howard County Marriage Record Books 1844-1945
See: Online Indiana Vital Records Indexes for Birth, Marriage & Death Records

Kansas
- Harvey County Marriage License Index 1872-April 1913

Kentucky
- Morgan County Marriage Index 1823-1950

Maryland
- Maryland Marriage References Index (some of these were extracted from the Hodges Marriage References Index, 1674-1851)
- Maryland Marriage Licenses and Records Index, 1649-1886

Michigan
- Michigan Marriage Records, 1867-1952 (at Ancestry/requires payment) includes digitized images of the marriage certificates or registers
- Genesee County Marriage Index, 1867-1934 and Birth Index, 1878-1907 (works in progress from the Flint Genealogical Society)
- Jackson County Online Marriage Records Search 1800s to Present

Minnesota
- Yellow Medicine County Birth Records 1870-1910 (large Excel file)
See: Minnesota Vital Records Indexes on the Internet

Missouri
- Missouri Marriage Records Indexes - 6 Counties (for Crawford, Franklin, Jefferson, Iron, St. Francois, and Washington Counties; circa early 1800s to early 1900s; coverage varies by county)
See: Online Missouri Vital Records Indexes for Birth, Marriage & Death Records

Nebraska
- Greater Omaha Genealogy Society Marriage Indexes -- has some marriage indexes for Brown County, Cass County, Dodge County, Douglas County (Omaha), Hall County, Rock County, Sarpy County, Thurston County, and Wayne County; also has indexes for Omaha Births and Omaha Obituaries

Nevada
- Carson City Marriage Records Index

New York
- New York State: County Marriages, 1847-1848; 1908-1936 at FamilySearch (coverage varies by county; some counties not included; does not include New York City)
- Ulster County Marriage Record Index Search 1908-1935; and Ulster County Town Clerk Returns of Birth, Deaths and Marriages c.(1847-1850, 1873-1884)
See: New York Vital Records Indexes & Genealogy Records on the Internet

North Carolina
- North Carolina Marriage Records 1741-2011 (at Ancestry/requires payment) includes images of the marriage registers or records; for 87 North Carolina counties (of 100); coverage varies by county
- North Carolina County Records Finding Aids (includes indexes for: Caldwell County Marriage Licenses, 1878-1882; Haywood County Marriage Licences, 1857-1925; Lenoir County Divorces 1880-1914, 1922-1969; and many other items
See: North Carolina Vital Records Indexes on the Internet

North Dakota
- Stutsman County Marriage Index July 1, 1884 to 1925

Oklahoma
- Hughes County Marriage Index 1907-1968

Oregon
- Oregon Marriage Records Search (indexes marriage records for various years for the following counties: Columbia, Coos, Crook, Douglas, Jackson, Jefferson, Josephine, Lake, Lane, Polk, Tillamook, Umpqua and Washington; coverage varies by county)

Pennsylvania
- Pennsylvania Birth Indexes, 1906-1909 (update: year 1909 added)
- Pennsylvania Birth Records, 1906-1908 (at Ancestry/requires payment) includes digitized copies of the birth certificates
See: Online Pennsylvania Vital Records Indexes for Birth, Marriage & Death Records

South Dakota
- South Dakota Marriages, 1905-2013 (at Ancestry/requires payment) (update: more years added)

Tennessee
- Hamilton County Marriage License Index Search (includes Chattanooga; covers 1857-1927 and 1979-present) update: more years added

Wyoming
- Laramie County Marriage Indexes before 1985

For links to the above items see: Online Birth and Marriage Records Indexes

Introducing Matched content: a new way to help your visitors discover content on your site

Today we're introducing Matched content, a free content recommendation tool for AdSense publishers that promotes your content to your site visitors. Matched content generates contextually relevant and personalized article recommendations from the pages on your website.

With Matched content, your visitors can:

• Discover relevant articles on your site
• Spend more time on your pages
• Engage more with your content

This new feature can help you increase your site's page views and ad impressions, and could increase your ad revenue by making it easy for your visitors to find your content. To provide a great experience for you and your site visitors, Matched content is available for sites with multiple pages and high volumes of traffic. Have a look at the site management settings in your AdSense account to see if your sites are eligible to run Matched content.

Adding Matched content units to your site now could help you to grow the number of page views on your site and increase user engagement. You can get the most out of this new tool by checking the best practices in the AdSense Help Center.

We'd love to hear your thoughts about this new feature in the comments section below this post.

Posted by Tobias Maurer, Matched Content Product Manager
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3 steps to earn higher user ratings

Need to raise your app�s ratings and increase downloads? Gimmicks and hacks to get higher ratings and more reviews won�t get your app meaningful long-term growth. Instead, the best way to get better ratings is to build authentic relationships with your users�truly listening and responding to their feedback. This leads to a better product experience, loyal users, and ultimately sustainable growth.

Here are three steps to use reviews and ratings to improve your app and increase user engagement.

Step 1: Read and address ratings comments

• Book an hour in your calendar each week to read through ratings comments.
• Reply to user reviews to help address their concern or gather more detailed feedback. 
• Pay extra attention to those who gave you 1 or 2-star ratings as their comments will give you more insights for improvement.

Step 2: Create user friendly opportunities to collect feedback

• To make sure you�re getting feedback from the most appropriate users, define the signals that prompt your target audience like �reached Level 10�, �completed the first booking�, or �opened 3+ times in a week�
• Choose a placement in your app where you don�t interrupt user experience. Unexpected pop-up messages asking for a rating can bother users. Instead, place the review request after a user has had a positive interaction with your app, like successfully completing a task or level.
• Ask about the user�s happiness level first. Depending on their happiness level, provide different channels to escalate their feedback:

Step 3: Analyze and act on user feedback

• Apply filters to see feedback by rating, written language, app version, and/or device.
• Understand your user better by interpreting comments against user-related metrics such as download sources, retention rates, and in-app behavior. 
• Update your app with users� feature requests and fix issues they have raised. Be sure to respond to the comment directly in the Play Store, sharing the positive changes you�ve made.

The hard work of building relationships and responding to user�s concern won�t pay off instantly, but it can lead to longer term success. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Google+ page.

Posted by Amelia Walkley
Marketing Communications Specialist, AdMob

Nursed to success: online education for nurses

Nursingcrib.com provides extra study materials for student nurses, an idea that came to Michelle Bartolome in 2007 when she got frustrated with textbooks and in-person lessons. She and her husband, Deric, thought the Internet must have a better solution, and it did. The Bartolomes created Nursingcrib.com, implemented AdSense, and today the site receives visitors from across the globe. With the ad revenue from Nursingcrib, Deric and Michelle have been able to build their dream home, support their family, and work full time on their website. We asked them to share their tips for other entrepreneurs.

How they got started:

Michelle: The concept of Nursingcrib.com came from me. I happened to take up Nursing as a second course from 2004 to 2006. At that time, Nursing was an in-demand course. Almost 90% of college students were taking it up. First, I just wanted to have a blog where I could share my notes with other aspiring nurses like me. I uploaded several care plans, modules, and diagrams, and instantly it became a hit. It became even more popular when I published the names of nursing board passers, which happens twice a year.



What were their main challenges:

Michelle: It was back in November 2007 when we first hit the $100 minimum AdSense payout. Deric and I were so happy because the dream of having another source of income opened up. By 2008, we were earning enough so that Deric could quit his call center job and go full time with our websites. People thought we were unemployed because we were always at home in front of the computer. They said we could not do it because we were young. They said it was impossible because we were not working abroad. Well, all I can say is that they were all wrong.

How to push through obstacles:

Deric: The biggest challenge was getting the site recognized. At first, I thought it would be easy. But with the Internet being so big, you have to compete with established websites. Learning how to market our new site was the key to overcome every obstacle that came our way. Online business requires fewer people, but it�s still not easy. The main lesson we've learned is that success doesn't happen overnight, it takes time and effort to build your dreams.

Posted by Michelle and Deric Bartolome, co-founders of Nursingcrib.com

Sign up for Google AdSense now and make the web work for you. If you have an AdSense success story, please share it with us.

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Is your website ready for mobile-friendly Google search results?

Recently, we announced that Google Search will be using mobile-friendliness as a search ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in Google Search results. Make sure your website is ready for this search change. Here are some frequently asked questions that can help you.

How can I check if my site is mobile-friendly? 

You can check your site by testing your pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test tool. This tool shows how Google Search sees your pages. To get a list of mobile usability issues across your sites, log in to your Webmaster Tools account and use the Mobile Usability Report.

How can I make my site mobile-friendly?

Get started with the guide to mobile-friendly sites to build your mobile-friendly site. If you need more customized advice for publishers, you can check out the AdSense Multi-Screen Starter Guide.  

My website is already mobile-friendly. Do I need to take any action?

If you already have a mobile-friendly site:

• Double-check your site�s pages using the Mobile-Friendly Test tool and see how Google Search sees your pages.
• Check out the AdSense Multi-screen Implementation Guide to learn about growing audience and revenue from your site.
• Use the Mobile Search Engine Optimization guide to help your site show up in search results.

Go mobile today to provide your visitors a good user experience and to make most of your mobile traffic.

Posted by Inside AdSense Team
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Demystifying AdSense policies with John Brown, Head of Publisher Policy Communications (Part 1)

Editor�s note: Today�s guest author is John Brown, the Head of Publisher Policy Communications. He�ll be sharing valuable insights about Google AdSense program policies with us.

We know that many of you have a steady income from AdSense to support your business. We also know that you are working hard to keep your account in good standing and we want to help you stay compliant with our policies while you publish your content the way you want.

We�ve defined AdSense program policies to ensure we all preserve a healthy digital ecosystem for the benefit of all users, advertisers, and publishers. We've gotten a lot of feedback from you that there's more we could be doing to make our policies clearer. To demystify any uncertainties or questions that you may have, I�d like to share more details on AdSense policies over the next few months.

To start with, I�d like to introduce myself. My name is John Brown, I�m the Head of Publisher Policy Communications at Google. I�ve spent more than 14 years in digital advertising in various leadership roles in business development, marketing, and product development. I understand the challenges faced by you every day and I�m passionate about building and growing relationships, protecting advertisers, and helping you develop sustainable solutions. We all strive to win your trust and prove the value of working with AdSense.

For today, let�s start by reviewing AdSense program policies at a high level:

• Your content is important. We will never suggest censoring your content to meet our policies. However, we have obligations to our advertisers. If you want to post or maintain content that is not compliant with the AdSense policies, simply remove the AdSense ad code from that page. We�re here to help you maintain and grow your online business.

• Get familiar with our ad implementation policies and content policies. I�d recommend reading adult content policy and copyright policy carefully.

• Keep an eye on invalid clicks by reviewing your traffic and CTR trends.

• Check these steps before filing a policy appeal. It�s always possible to appeal a policy violation once you remove Google ads from pages that violate our policies or once you address the policy violation. Remember that all policy appeals are reviewed by our team and we try to get back to every appeal within 72 hours.

Stay tuned to the Inside AdSense blog for more of these updates.

See you online!

Posted by John Brown, Head of Publisher Policy Communications
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Lowdown: Best ways to monetize your messaging app

Lowdown is a regular series that brings you tips and tricks on how to best use AdMob to grow your app business, directly from members of the Google AdMob team.

It�s a fantastic time for messaging apps. Massive company valuations, global user bases, and strong demand for wifi-based communication have incentivized mobile developers to throw their hats into the messaging arena. We�ve seen the features and functionality for these apps become more sophisticated, expanding to delivering virtual goods, coupons, app-discovery, and even social networking. As functionality has expanded, so have the monetization potentials. Here are a few ways to best monetize your messaging app and tips to optimize your setup.

Banner Ads:

The nature of messaging apps make it very conducive for banner ad units. User spend large quantities of time on their menu, contacts and messaging pages, making it easier for users to interact with ads and drive higher engagement from anchored banner units. AdMob�s strong global coverage and year over year eCPM growth in this format can help monetize the market your users operate within.

Interstitials Ads:

Interstitial ads are not just for gaming apps. Messaging apps also have natural transition points within their user�s flow, perfect for eCPM-driven ad units like interstitials. For example a perfect place for an interstitial ad may be the moment once a user completes a phone or video call and the app transitions back into the main screen. See examples below.

Targeted In-App Purchases

Messaging apps could offer In-App Purchases (IAPs) in the form of more minutes, credits or virtual goods. Although the traditional conversion rates for these offers have been very low, AdMob automatically figures out which of your users are likely to spend, based on Google�s proprietary data and models. AdMob offers robust IAP functionality, making it easy for you to create IAP offer units and target high potential spenders. You can learn more about this feature here.

A diversified, metrics driven approach can help you to better monetize your messaging app. Visit our website to learn more about how AdMob can help you grow your app business. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Google+ page.

Posted by Jeff Salvitti

Strategic Mobile Partner Manager

New AdSense performance reports deliver quick and easy insights

Your performance reports are the key to gaining insights into how much you're earning and what impacts those earnings. To give you quick and easy access to these reports, we�ve introduced a new design for AdSense reporting with a new dashboard.

Fig 1. New Performance reports tab

With the redesigned Performance tab, you now have more control and flexibility, allowing you to better understand your AdSense earnings and performance. Some of the highlights of the new performance reports include:

• Easier analysis: Get deeper insights by adding, changing or removing dimensions with the simple, redesigned dimension selector.

• Simple metrics: Better understand your earnings with the redesigned metric families. We've designed metric families to group related reporting metrics and separate the different ways you make money from ads. For instance, the Clicks metric family includes metrics that relate to the CPC bid type.

• Flexible reporting: Configure your filters the way you want. You can now apply multiple filters to your reports with the redesigned multiple filtering. For instance, you can now filter your Ad sizes report by both the country and platform dimension.

Fig 2. New reporting dashboard

To give you a centralized view of your account�s performance, we�ve also built a new reporting dashboard. With the new reporting dashboard, you can:

• Access your top performance metrics: Switch easily between three key performance metrics: Estimated earnings, pageviews, and page RPM.

• Understand what�s driving your key metrics: Analyze your top performance metrics by five different dimensions: Time, top platforms, top countries, top channels, and top sites.

• Perform detailed analysis: View more detail for any report in the dashboard by clicking on �View report.� 

To see your new AdSense reporting design and reporting dashboard, opt in below. Alternatively, you can opt in from within the Performance reports tab in your AdSense account. 

Start using new AdSense reporting today and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Posted by Agnieszka Janowska and Daniel Kenyon-Jones, AdSense Reporting Team

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How FGL helped indie game developers increase their revenue by 50%

Adam Schroeder
Co-Founder, FGL

FGL is not your average app company. They don�t build apps themselves, instead they help independent game developers grow their business and generate more revenue. So far, they�ve earned over $20M in revenue, guiding over 30,000 registered developers from 105 countries around the world. Using AdMob well is one of the secrets to their success. We recently got to discuss their business with co-founder Adam Schroeder. To check out FGL�s success story, or any other of our other success stories, visit us at http://www.google.com/admob/success.html. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Google+ page.

Posted by

Desiree Motamedi

Product Marketing, AdMob

AdSense now speaks Malay

We�re happy to announce that starting today AdSense supports content in Malay (Bahasa Melayu), the national language of Malaysia, and one of the fastest growing languages on the Web.

By adding Malay to the family of AdSense supported languages, we hope to support publishers in creating even more great quality web content in Malay, and connect advertisers to a rapidly growing online audience.

If you already have a website in Malay, follow the steps below to start earning money with relevant ads on your website. If you were already thinking of creating a website in Malay, now you have one more reason!

1. Make sure your website is compliant with the AdSense program policies.
2. Sign up for an AdSense account by enrolling your Malay website.
3. Once your AdSense account has been approved, simply add the AdSense code to start displaying relevant ads to your users.

Selamat datang ke AdSense!
Welcome to AdSense!

Posted by Emanuele Brandi, Product Sales Lead on behalf of the AdSense Internationalization Team
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