Which Google AdSense display size produces the best click-through rate? Where should I place the ads on my web page? Which text colors should you use? AdSense is the economic engine driving revenue on thousands of blogs and niche web sites, so it's an important issue. Even high-traffic bloggers like Wil Wheaton wrestle with the best way to optimize for AdSense.
Google has now posted a page of tips to help optimize AdSense, featuring a visual "heatmap" highlighting the ad placements with the best click-through rates. Newspapers have long used heatmap technology to analyze their layouts, using "eyetracking" technology to learn which design features draw readers' attention, and which parts of a particular news page are read first (the Poynter Institute has summarized many of these findings for news web sites in its Eyetrack 2004 research). Now Google is offering similar information to AdSense publishers.