Dave Taylor posts that AdSense are testing with a select group of publishers a program called ‘Site Authentication’ where they allow publishers to run their ads on password protected sites – something not previously allowed. He publishes part of an email that AdSense sent to testers:
‘”You are one of a select group of publishers that has been chosen to try out our new Site Authentication feature. Site Authentication allows publishers to give our crawler access to login-protected content so that users can receive targeted ads. While there is no obligation for you to try out this new feature, you may find it helpful if you have pages of your site protected behind a login screen.
“As an example, an online newspaper site may protect content behind a login for premium readers. Without Site Authentication, the publisher can’t show readers targeted ads on those premium pages because our crawler has not been able to access the content. Using Site Authentication, the publisher can now specify details for our crawler to pass the login screen and reach the protected content, allowing AdSense to serve relevant ads to the readers.”‘
This probably won’t impact too many bloggers but membership sites, forums that need registration and newspapers will be interested to see if this is a test that becomes available to others.
Read more at Dave’s post at “Can I use Google AdSense on password-protected areas?”
