All About ‘Matched Content Unit’: Google Adsense

In 2015, Google launched Matched Content Unit to help increase user engagement and time spent on the site by promoting relevant content present within the site. According to Googles own research based on the real-time data this matched content unit increased number of pages viewed by 9% and the time spent on site by 10%.

Note:
1. You can’t cross promote your articles/contents from 2 different sites. Matched content recommendations that are generated for each site will be internal to that site.
2. Matched Content units generate recommendations from pages that have Google ads or Matched content units on them.

Matched content units work on mobile, tablet, and desktop and are mostly responsive(the images and text within the unit content) in nature. If your articles do not contain images then text only format will be displayed.

Eligibility for Matched content unit

Eligibility What it means
Not currently eligible to use Matched content Your site doesn’t yet meet minimum requirements for traffic volume and number of unique pages.
Eligible to use Matched content Your site meets minimum requirements for traffic volume and number of unique pages.
Eligible to use Matched content and show ads in between recommendations Your site meets minimum requirements for traffic volume and number of unique pages, and it can be well monetized.

It has 2 criteria, minimum requirements for traffic volume and number of unique pages. The exact number for traffic is not known but we believe a site with as low as 400-500 unique visits per day is eligible provided it has enough unique pages – because these matched content units must show relevant related content without which it is of not much use to the visitors.

Check eligibility

settings-matched-content-adsense

Log into your adsense account. Go to Settings -> My Sites -> Matched Content.

Here it shows the domains which work well with Matched Content. You can create a Matched Content unit in My Ads section and use this list to see which domains will show good recommendations from pages on that domain.

Add Matched Content To Your Site
Go to MyAds, click on New ad unit button.

adsense-matched-content-native

Select ‘Matched Content‘. To your right hand site you get options to customize the look and feel of your matched content unit. Here you can also opt-in or opt-out of ‘Monetize with Ads’, under Ad options settings.

Next you can also set its font family, title and background color. You can also set the width and height of the matched content unit or else select responsive unit. Save & Get Code. Paste the code inside your website / blog wherever you want this ‘Matched Content Unit’ to appear.

customize-matched-content-adsense

Responsive Matched Content Unit
Matched content units are optimized based on the container size. You can use the preview tool available inside your adsense account to see how the unit changes across different sizes.

Tips on Matched Content Unit Placement

At the end of article matched content

For best results, place your matched content unit directly below your article or in the sidebar.

Earn with Matched Content Unit
You can also show ads, so you earn money while promoting your content. Simply opt-in to show ads and Google will start showing relevant ads to your users whenever it’s appropriate.

We’re already seeing 3 ads along with our own content recommended in Matched Content Unit on one of our blog.

Matched Content Unit on Technotip.com
We got approved for using Matched Content Unit on one of our sites Technotip.com You can check the unit below each article. We’ll update this post after going through the performance report of this Matched Content Unit on our blog.

Let us know if you need to know anything about these units ..I’ll be happy to assist you with whatever I know.

The Best RSS Reader App

We all loved Google Reader to add, read and keep track of our favorite sites / blogs online. Consuming our favorite content was easy and clutter free all those years we had Google Reader with us. But unfortunately Google stopped the service and many went on to the extent of filing online petition for Google to reopen it.

Our RSS Reader on Google Play

What is a Google Reader?
Google Reader was an RSS/Atom feed aggregator operated by Google. It was created in early 2005 by Google engineer Chris Wetherell and launched on October 7, 2005, through Google Labs. Google Reader grew in popularity to support a number of apps which used it as a platform for serving news and information to people.

What is RSS feed?
RSS (Rich Site Summary; originally RDF Site Summary; often called Really Simple Syndication) uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information: blog entries, news headlines, audio, video. … RSS feeds enable publishers to syndicate data automatically.

rss feed reader

Timeline
Over years I’ve used many different feed readers and many of them do a decent job. But so many are using web page scrapers to fetch the content and display inside the app, which I do not feel as ethical way of doing things. If an author is providing the feed, that means he would like to share his content that way. But no one actually likes scrapping of their pages and stealing the content.

Design
I always feel minimalistic reading apps bring sanity to the already cluttered world of information. I mean, there is an overwhelming amount of information out in the web and it gets distractive very quickly. We start by reading some quotes, we end up on Facebook, spend some hours liking commenting on photos and end up on YouTube watching few dozen videos and then we realize we did not get much of our works done. Spent precious hours browsing the web carelessly.

With minimalistic approach, we can concentrate only on one thing at a time and there will be less clutter and hence we can consume the content with sanity and without getting distracted by the bells and whistles.

Our RSS Reader app
Finally I decided to develop a simple minimalistic rss feed reading application – specially for WordPress(though works with any other sites) sites. I use it for consuming my favorite sites content online. Today I decided to make it public via Google Playstore, hoping it would help some of you too.

RSS Reader on Google Play

How does it work?


YouTube link: RSS Reader Mobile Application

Feed Page
Add your favorite websites feed directly using RSS feed address or Search and add. You can even collectively subscribe to certain topics.

Home Page
We show 4 articles each from your favorite sites on the home page. If you need more you can visit Feed Page and get more.

You also get Bookmarking facility and settings where you can take backup of your bookmarks and feed list and also change device using options present there.

Hope you enjoy using the app. And if you like it, please give 5 star rating and comment on RSS Reader ( Google Playstore ) page.