So, I went to adsense to check my stats and I get a page that is almost blank with the only text showing being UsernamePasswdNotMatch
Ahhhhh…. what have I done to upset the Google overlords…..
It sounds like just clearing your browser cache and trying again should get you in. It’s also possible that this is an intermittent problem and is affecting more than just your account. The Digital Point Forums can be a good place to check up and see if others are having similar login problems.
This is a fairly significant “state of this site” type post and well… if you’re a usual visitor you might want to read/skim this one. It’s been about 15 months or so since the last big redesign of this site and as some long time lurkers may know, the updates were FEW and far between before moving to WordPress and this new layout. I mean, a year or so between updates was not uncommon. In the last year+ I’ve had a few spans where a month or so has gone by without posting, but in many cases I’ve been posting multiple (in other cases MANY MANY) posts in a single day.
Several blog posts have heralded the arrival of Google’s newest toy, a custom search engine setup… sort of Through Google Coop you can design a search engine that only covers the sites you want it to cover (or favor, it can search the web and just be biased towards the sites you prefer.) Of course, this relies on googles existing index, so if a site has not been crawled and indexed by the googlebot, you seem to be out of luck. I’ve tried a test at http://www.southcarolinagenealogy.org/search for my North and South Carolina genealogy sites…. a merged search between the two would be handy…
I’ve detailed some of the struggles I had for a bit with FLOODS of comment spam. Details of the issue and a fix which has been rock solid for WordPress can be found in the following posts (reverse chronological order): Update on comment spam storms, trackback spam countermeasures such as akismet and trackback validation, another trackback storm, botnets spreading trackback spam?, Initial trackback storm. To sum up though, I’ve found 2 plugins to make for a rock solid combination here in wordpress. Akismet (which caught 99% or so of trackback spam) and The trackback validator plugin which caught everything else. (99% sounds good, but when you’re getting thousands of attempts a day?)
There is a new twist on the bot networks that have been the plague of computing in recent years. This one is called ClickBot. The story is from Incidents.org Many sites, (like this one) use adsense to “monetize their content”. The idea is that advertisers bid on “clicks”. So, if I wanted to advertise on the keywords “asheville computer repair” I might bid 5 cents for every click on one of my ads. The problem is many content owners are less than scrupulous.
New category for Google Adsense – I talk about it enough here…. anyway. I’ve noticed today that they’ve expanded the referrals program. When it started, the deal was $1 for Mozilla Firefox (with Google toolbar) referrals and then the Google Adsense referral for which you earned $100 (If I recall correctly), when the signup earned their first $100. Then they rolled out AdWORDS referrals which was $20 when the referral spends their first $100….. Well, now they’ve gone and added a few more options….
I noticed something yesterday when I had logged into the adsense page at Google. They’ve now added “adwords” referrals. For those that don’t know – Adwords is the name for the program where you can advertise your site on google, or through their advertising network (such as this site for example.)
The deal seems to be that when someone spends $100 in advertising (within 90 days of signing up) from a referred click (and they’ve never been an adwords user before.)…. then the referring site get’s $20…. not bad. As for adwords itself….
Just noticed that for the last (hour?) the main adsense login site has been down with an interesting multi-language error message page. Ads seem to be served still, but the login is offline at the moment. And back up by 1AM EST 12/17/05.
Infoworld has an interesting article this afternoon, that suggests that Microsoft may pay users of their MSN search out of the ad revenue that Microsoft earns from their new adertising service. Speaking of Google, Bill Gates says…
But they don’t share these advertising revenues with the end users who help them get the revenue, Gates said. “Google keeps all of the money with itself,” he added.