Recently Google launched a new service called Adsense for Domains where they give you the ability to park your unused domain names at Google and have them display ads on your website. The benefit is money. Just like the regular Adsense program of putting advertisements on your blog posts, you receive revenue for impressions and clicks on your parked domain names.
There’s a set of instructions that you must follow in order to park your domain with Google’s new service and on this page I’ll outline what steps need to be taken within your Netfirms Control Panel to get this working. This will assume that you’ve already completed Google’s requirements as per the Adsense For Domains Quickstart Guide.
The first task we must do is ensure that the domain name we want to park is pointing to the Netfirms name servers. This is the most important step otherwise anything else you do afterwards will have no effect. Pointing your domain name to our name servers gives our servers the control needed to handle the redirection to Google. If your domain name was not registered with Netfirms then please contact your registrar and ask them to set your name servers to ns1.netfirms.com & ns2.netfirms.com . If Netfirms is your registrar then this change can be done from your Netfirms Control Panel.
Once the name server is set, please follow these instructions:
Create a CNAME
- Log in to your Netfirms Control Panel
- Click on the Domains menu and then go to the Domain Manager and click the ADD button in the top right corner
- On the new screen, Click the Subdomain tab and begin filling in the fields as required
- Enter Subdomain: www
- Choose the domain to apply it to from the dropdownlist
- Place a checkmark next to the CNAME option
- Host Name: pub-xxxxxxxxx.afd.ghs.google.com. (where pub-xxxxxxxxx is your unique ID listed on the AdSense setup page)
- Click the ADD button at the bottom
Assign the A Records
- On the Domain Manager page, click on the + symbol beside your domain name which will open up the extended options
- Ensure you are on the Source tab
- Place a checkmark in the option labeled, A Record
- Enter in the four IP addresses provided by Google each into their own box, 216.239.32.21, 216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21, and 216.239.38.21
- Click the Update button
Once these changes have been applied, it will take anywhere from a 10 minutes to 24 hours for these changes to be visible online.
This is me and this is my bio. My name is Dan and I'm proud to say I work with a great team here at Netfirms. I spend my days finding and compiling useful information for all of you and look forward to any feedback you may have. Feel free to leave your comments or send me an email through the contact form
Wow, Dan, it looks SO EASY now, the way you describe it, step by step. Excellent. And many thanks for creating this blog post/page!
From now on, if anybody searches for this subject, I’m sure your post will show up right at the top!
Did you see the comment at that Google AFD Help Forum thread http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=74de0e1139d972b1&hl=en (I mentioned it in your prior blog post) where this one person wrote, in part, on 1/21/09 that:
[...]
….putting your AdSense info into your registrar/hosting company is crazy. You’re opening up the door to be hacked. And for the record (in case I need refreshining) I have never seen a post, or even remotely heard anyone at all talking about putting their AdSense publishers ID in the records of their registrar. Do that at your OWN risk.
[...]
So is that true? If it is, what can we do about it?
Obviously, from your instructions, evidently we DO have to put our AFD Pub.ID in the “Host Name” area of the CNAME area at our NetFirms Control Panel.
And, oh, adding the “Show and Tell” pics are great!
Again, Many Thanks!
First of all thanks for posting the response on the Google forums. We’ve supported this for awhile but haven’t been monitoring the outside world as much as we should have been. All of that has changed!
Let me know if this doesn’t work out for you but it’s been tested on one of my own domains.
Regarding having to supply your pub-id, I can’t really see how you can be hacked by giving out that code. In fact if you view the source code for any website that uses Adsense (’Page Source’ in the Edit menu of your browser) the pub-id is publicly available. It is not secret or used as a password for anything. If it was a security vulnerability then Google themselves wouldn’t be including it in their own instructions.
Secondly, if you don’t/can’t trust your registrar or host with your Google Adsense publisher’s id, why on earth would you trust them with your credit card!
haha, good point! Well, it wasn’t my idea to begin with (I’m not that smart about webbie things yet) but I was merely repeating what that one poster said in that forum thread since he made it sound drastic and dangerous.
And you’re welcome. Glad to pass on the word that “the help” is now out and about among us on the web.
As for getting the domains over to AFD from Netfirms… whew! I’m a tryin’ real hard but something is weird. I KNOW I am doing it correctly, I have it memorized now, in “shorthand,” like so:
(Name Servers already have the correct addresses)
——
THEN…
—–
ADD
SUBDOMAIN
www - drop down menu/pick your domain
CNAME
HOST NAME = google pub ID addy
ADD
(and the big box/window closes itself up)
——-
NEXT…
——-
+ the “NEW” www domain just created (which sits right under the original domain)
SOURCE
A RECORD
216.239.32.21
216.239.34.21
216.239.36.21
216.239.38.21
UPDATE
———–
DONE!
———-
BUT after hitting Update, that last big box/window does NOT close itself back up. So I go back up and click on the + New www domain to close it up. And before I put my eyes back on the list of domains which I have ALREADY DONE, half of them switch from saying “CNAME” to “A RECORD.”
They are switching back before my very eyes, even though I KNOW they were showing (in the list of domains in the control panel) CNAME CNAME CNAME on each line for each “new” www domain I created.
Then without me doing anything, the next time I look, they change themselves to say “A RECORD,” “A RECORD,” “A RECORD,” on each line in the list (even though I had already done them correctly the first time; and they originally showed CNAME in the columns).
So what/how is making them mysteriously switch from showing CNAME (which is what works, as 2 of them HAVE worked and Google already activated them). But the remaining ones I am trying to FINISH so I can “sign out” for the evening
well, they keep changing THEMSELVES from “CNAME” to “A RECORD” in the list of domains under Domain Manager.
Whew…. hard to explain it textually. If I could show you while it happens before my very eyes… it would make more sense.
I was hoping to get these babies over to AFD tonight… it’s rather exciting as I’m very curious to see what will happen with them under Goog’s AFD program.
Well, I imagine you’re long off duty by now so I won’t “wait up” for a response tonight, lol.
I’ll catch this blog next time I’m online. Thanks again!
Check your email I sent one to you with some clarification. Hopefully that helps. I try to make the tutorials easy to follow but sometimes I forget simple things which make or break the steps. If my emails suggestion addresses the problem I’ll update this post as well
Dan,
Could you please send me the same email you sent to BG? My domains are doing the same thing. After a CNAME is added and I add an A record the CNAME is gone and the A record is in place. I can’t get them both in at the same time and stay.
All additional help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
The important thing to keep in mind is that the CNAME that you create needs to be added to the subdomain “www” as per the instructions. The A Records are added to just “domain.com”
The screenshots in the post show the steps.
Very nice screenshots. It looks very easy to do in the Netfirms Control panel.
James
Just wunderin’ …
When the newly formed italicized http://www.mydomain.com addy mysteriously revert from saying CNAME to A-RECORD in the list of domains in the control panel, is the only way to fix it is to just DELETE each one and start over from scratch?
I had tried doing this AFD for my new two domains but to no avail. The domains are http://www.best-cheapflights.com, and http://www.cheap-realestate.com. My cnames are my.best-cheapflights.com, my.cheap-realestate.com,and in the directory portion I filled http://www.best-cheapflights.com, http://www.cheap-realestate.com. I had all four IP’s from google copied and pasted. I did all other stuff, and this is about 24 hrs yet am still waitng. Please can you help me out with that.
I have sent Dan all I needed to for my domains to be included-I am yet to see anything come through. Please I will like to have refunds on the last two domains I bought so I can re-register them with hosting companies with a clearer way of having my domains registered under adsense. Thanks