AdSenseAdvisor - 11:18 pm on Jun 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

I think there might be some confusion about how geotargeting works. It is set up to automatically maximize your site's revenue potential.

Geotargeting is based on the IP address of your users. So, say one page of your site is about Spain, and a user from Japan is viewing it. That user will see AdWords ads targeted to 1) a Japanese audience and 2) the text based content of the site. The advertiser chooses which countries they would like to target. A user in Canada might see a different set of ads.

So, your Japanese readers MAY see ads specifically targeted to 'Spain'. However, they may also see ads for 'Portugal' if these are the highest paying ads available for a Japanese audience that are also relevant to the page content (i.e., travel in Iberia).

Regardless, the highest paying ads available at any given moment for any geographic audience will always appear on your site. And 'highest paying' isn't solely determined based on bid price, but on quality score as well -- meaning how the ads actually perform (see [adsense.blogspot.com...] for more information about ad ranking).

The AdSense algorithm takes all of these factors into account to ensure your site's revenue potential is automatically being maximized.