Alright today I’d like to introduce to you a super simple tool. It probably won’t change your life but if you’re leveraging Google AdSense to display ads on your site, you may want to check this out.
Google account confusion
You’re probably thinking that you can easily go to http://adsense.google.com and yes you’d be absolutely correct. But if some of you are like me, the primary Google account you’re usually signed in with normally is not the same as the account that’s tied to Google Adsense. As a result, it’s usually a pain for me to check my account because I have to logout and then re-login just to go to Adsense and see how I’m doing. That is the reason why I used to really only check once a month when I did my monthly income report.
Chrome extension to the rescue
A pleasant discovery of mine a little while back has been the Google Publisher Toolbar Chrome extension. I can’t remember where I heard about it but all it is a little pop up extension you can access from your browser that gives you instant access to your earnings.
To install this extension simply go to the Chrome extension store and look for “Google Publisher Toolbar”
After you’ve installed the toolbar, the setup is incredibly simple. All it asks you to do is link up your Google AdSense account and once you’ve authenticated your credentials you’re all set! Yeah it’s that easy.
Another neat feature of the extension is that you can see overlays on sites you own to display the ad unit’s name and earning.
Simple overlay on an ad:
The overlay in the toolbar looks like this:
If you click the overlay, it’ll take you to more details about how the ad is performing:
And that’s all I wanted to show you guys in this quick look. The great thing about this is that I can see how my ads are doing at any time with a quick tap of the extension button.