It seems Google is testing new types of interactive adsense ads. I was just going through my travel directory, when the top adsense ad caught my attention.

Apart from the usual banner, it seemed to have navigation arrows which when clicked would display different packages from Viator.

Here are the screenshots of the Google Adsense Ad from Viator and different types of packages as I go through the navigation option:

Have you seen these types of ads on your or someone else’s site?

Did you felt these were good or bad?

Running and moderating an online community is a tough job, especially when you come across situations where you need to stop a certain thread/discussion to prevent a rift between members of your community.

Martin Reed recently wrote an interesting post on this, titled “Should communities ban the discussion of certain topics?”

Martin has managed to hit the nail bang on the head by not only talking about discussions of certain nature (politics, religion) which at times can go badly out of control, he has also managed to provide crucial advice on how to deal with the situation.

According to me, the best thing to do in such a scenario is to remain calm and try not to appear bias towards a certain section, even if you strongly agree with their points. This is also something which needs to be conveyed to the rest of the moderators and forum staff to ensure that it doesn’t appears that the staff is taking the side of a particular group. Which if it happens, would alienate the members belonging to the other school of thought, and can actually make the situation worse.

What do you think needs to be done in such types of situations and in case if you have been through one, what did you do to calm every one?

Quality vs. Quantity, this is one question that no matter which organization/business you are running, is bound to popup at one point. The same is also true if you are running a web directory and free directory in particular.

A decent directory on averages receives tens if not hundreds of submissions each day, while we tend to hit the delete button on sites which do not belong to the niche of our directory or aren’t suitable for our directory. There are quite a few MFAs which get submitted as well, while they might belong to the same niche, however they don’t add value to the web and aren’t likely to impress a visitor.

In such a scenario, what do you do?

Do you allow them to get listed or do you simply reject their submission?

If you are like me, then it is likely that you don’t approve those websites. However in case you are one of those directory owners, who approves just about every thing for the sake of increasing the amount of link in their directory, I got news for you. You are polluting your own directory!

Yes that’s right, you are polluting your own directory by approving such submissions. Not only you aren’t helping a web user who might have come to your directory to search for information, you are also lowering the quality and valuation of your directory in the long term.

By listing poor quality websites, you are undermining your link power which can have a negative effect in your directories listing. Not only that, you are sending the wrong signal to those who might be thinking of buying featured link or advertisement at your directory.

By being strict about the editorial guidelines, you will not only ensure a positive experience for the users of your web directory but also ensure that advertisers see your directory in a positive light.

If you are an Adsense Publisher, then you must have noticed that since yesterday, adsense stats are not getting updated properly. In fact for a few hours yesterday, they weren’t at all updated.

Rest assured this is a wide spread issue and Google Adsense Team is working to resolve this, in fact they have posted about this on their Adsense Blog:

A number of you have informed us that your reports are substantially lower than usual today, or aren’t being updated. Our engineers are currently investigating the issue and working to resolve it as quickly as possible. Please be assured that your account data has still been tracked, so this issue will not affect your earnings or payments. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for being patient.

On that note, we’d like to let you know about the new Known Issues page, where you can check for updates on this reporting issue and other existing issues. There can be occasional hiccups in our system, but we hope that this new resource will help increase transparency and keep you informed. Whenever possible, we’ll also try to include temporary workarounds and updates about each issue as we work to resolve them.

While it is a relief that it’s just a front end reporting issue and stats are being collected in the background. Google Adsense Team should have been a little more proactive and should have posted this earlier, when hundreds of Adsense Publishers were wondering, what was going on.