AdSense is showing AdWords -- for the same site!

It shows an ad for foobar.com... on foobar.com. Oops!

[ThatAdamGuy]

This is quite a bummer. I just noticed that on the front page of one of my sites, the very first AdSense ad is an ad for the exact same site.

Well, I can't complain that the ad is off-topic! :D And I admit that I can go into my AdSense panel and block my own domain(s).

But this does seem really silly. Shouldn't AdSense be smart enough not to put ads for foobar.com... on foobar.com? It's not fair to my visitors (who may click on it, only to find themselves right back on the same page), and it's not fair to me, since I'm just throwing money out the window.

I plan on writing Google about this before blocking it, so they can see what's going on. But I wanted to warn you fellow Webmasters out there to consider blocking your own URLs so you don't pay for traffic you already have.

[PatrickDeese]

Umm. The first thing I did when I put Adsense on my sites was to block domains that I was running Adwords campaigns for, kind of a no-brainer.

[Macro]

Shouldn't AdSense be smart enough not to put ads for foobar.com

I'm surprised they didn't build such a feature into the program. If it was a genuine oversight Google should do the decent thing now and announce that they've added this functionality by default.

AWA, you around?

[CPCretirement]

Strange indeed. I have never run into this problem even though I have used Adwords quite heavily at times.

I'll have to keep an eye out to see if something has changed.

[ThatAdamGuy]

I heard back from Google today (from my e-mailed query to their tech support), and was told that the reason I'm experiencing this unfortunate my-ads-on-my-own-site thing is that I'm using a different e-mail address for AdWords and AdSense.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to synchronize my account addresses :(. AdSense doesn't let one change his or her e-mail address after opening the account, apparently, and AdWords complains that my AdSense e-mail address is already taken when I try to change to it.

Anyone know if there are any benefits (other than the auto-URL filtering) to having sync'd addresses for the two services? I've asked Google, but to be honest, they're not always on target in answering my questions the first time 'round.

[brotherhood of LAN]

>AdSense doesn't let one change his or her e-mail address after opening the account

I heard the same from them, first time round. I explained the e-mail address will no longer be active, after the 2nd e-mail I got it changed...

[ThatAdamGuy]

Wow, well, surprisingly, I got an informative e-mail back from AdSense not only without me having to offer further clarifications, but very quickly, too (less than an hour from my query!)

I was informed that:
1) I'd have to open up a separate AdSense account if I wanted to have my addresses match (though this seems to contradict what you learned, Brotherhood)
2) There's really no advantages in having synch'd addresses, other than the URL filtering issue.

So I'll just go and filter my URLs and I guess that'll be the end of it.