Can one keyword outweigh all other keywords on a page

so that all ads displayed are triggered by this word?

[Crickey]

Sorry if the question isn't clear but I'll try to explain.

On a blog of mine I'm getting nothing but ads for hosting and/or domain registering services.
My posts don't adress these kind of topics whatsoever,so I'm wondering what is triggering these ads?

Could it be that a category name in the sidebar like 'online' and 'internet' are responsible for this?

When looking at individual posts on my blog the ads are well targeted most of the time, it's just on the main page, where the sidebar is, that I have this "problem".

[MikeNoLastName]

Heck yeah! I've written "books" about this on here in years gone by. If the CPM for this term is good, then who cares. In most cases it can turn out to be a very good, high paying term, but since GAds smartpricing has determined your page isn't the best match for this term (e.g. your page doesn't rank highly for it on Google <- my theory), you get paid relatively little for it.
If not then you need to remove it from the page, mispell it (at least temporarily), put a space in it or other hidden character or possibly try moving your ad as far away from it as possible, althought this will not always work either. If the topic is narrow enough and there are few enough ads, you can try competition filtering them ALL.
The worst case is where you've been with Adsense a while and they get the idea your entire website is about this erroneous term and start showing ads for it even on pages where you don't mention it.
Good Luck.

[jretzer]

It happened to me when I used the term "mosquito" in my blog to describe someone with a very small mind. The next thing I knew, every ad I had was about mosquito eliminating equipment. I had no idea that there were so many companies in the busines. I thought it was temporary, but after two days, I deleted the entire post. A week later, my ads were still all-mosquito, all the time. I eventually used fifty of my slots to get rid fo the ads.

[Broadway]

I've had this problem. I used to put text links to other portions of my site at the bottom of each page. Adsense would pick up on the key words in these links and show ads regarding them, as opposed to the real topic of the page. I ended up having to put the text in a graphic link so Adsense couldn't read it.

Now days I use:
<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
Off target text.
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

I think there is a similar mark up to tell Adsense that the enclosed text specifically IS the topic of the page too.

[Crickey]

Hm, a lot of my post (almost all of them) do end with a link to a website that I name 'Website' so i guess this could be one of the causes, although, as I said before, when looking at the ads on individual posts the targetting is pretty good.

Anyway, I did a small test and made a post about an online pokergame, making sure I used the word 'poker' and other poker related words frequently (not too much though) even putting it in the image alt description.

You'd think that there would be plenty of ads for that topic but it didn't change anything on the frontpage.

I just filtered out a couple of those hosting ads to see what the results will be.

[i hate registration2]

careful about the gambling terms. Aren't they blacklisted?

[i hate registration2]

careful about the gambling terms. Aren't they blacklisted?

[Crickey]

careful about the gambling terms. Aren't they blacklisted?

it's an on-topic post though (not the kind of spamposts you see on google blogs a lot) and I really didn't go all out on the keywords.
Just enough to trigger related ads.
And they do appear when I look at the article page, so I guess they're not blacklisted. =)

[MikeNoLastName]

I contacted G when these type ads started appearing on our relatively unrelated page and they said, that promoting online gambling per se (which is officially illegal in some locations) is blacklisted, but "self help" books or instructional materials (videos, online training), including "how to beat the house playing xyz" and "how to get rich at xyz", etc. were acceptable. Therefore the terms which trigger them must be acceptable as well.