Getting the words right

Trouble targetting phrases for AdSense

[trillianjedi]

Last week I posted an article on our widgets website about wodgets. Wodgets are loosely related to widgets - it is on topic, but different Ads really should be targetted. I suppose you liken the liken difference to "cars" and "trucks".

I see these different Ads in google if I search for "wodgets", but I still see the "widgets" related ads on my new wodgets article.

Does google theme a site for the purpose of AdSense, or does it rely on keyword density?

Page title is "wodgets" and anchor text links to the page are "wodgets". Theme of the article itself is clearly "wodgets".

Thanks,

TJ

[jomaxx]

I don't know if there's much you can do, except lighten up on the "widget" text as much as possible. IMO Google have their algorithm tweaked a bit too far in favor of showing high-paying ads over the most relevant ads.

[edited by: jomaxx at 4:25 pm (utc) on Feb. 10, 2004]

[linear]

My experience has been: it depends. It's hard to distill a bunch of observations into any kind of coherent format, but here's my best (although probably ultimately vain) attempt at it:

+ I notice the same thing, I have a fairly diverse set of topics overall, and quite often AS will target an ad to the most prevalent "theme" of my site despite the page not addressing that topic at all. On the irritant scale, this is at the low end for me, because after all, there's a decent shot that a reader may take a bite.

+ Over short time frames, this appears to not be so static. The scenario above is pretty common for newly added pages; it used to be about 100% but lately other weirdness has taken hold (more on that in a second). However, after a few days, the ads seem to find their "steady state" value and not change much. In general. Sometimes it's a complete targeting miss though, and I've had zero satisfaction reporting those to Google. (Example: dating service ads on a page announcing the move of a directory within my site to its own domain.) My irritaion with this is considerable. It's just bad targeting.

+ The new wrinkle is that I see what smells like a "run-of-network" ad real frequently these days. I don't know if they are targeting the word "the" or what exactly, but several poster store affiliate links seem to be the new "default ad" for pages on my site where Mediabot hasn't done its magic yet. This one really gets me mad, because I know blocking those by domain is likely to be a complete waste of time. Matters not what the page topic is, either. I haven't done any "deliberate" attempts to probe that, but it would be easy to do.

My overall response is to pretty much quit trying to figure it out and focus instead on busting out more articles. I'm guessing about 85% of my pages are very well-targeted. So instead of dwelling on the 15%, I'm just moving along and relying on 85% of a bigger number overall. YMMV.

+

[trillianjedi]

Thanks guys - some interesting observations.

I too have had the dating ads in the most bizarre places, with no text on the pages that media-bot could possibly have thought were relevant and on topic.

I guess they classify "dating" as some kind of generic ("potentially everyone could be interested") type thing. I get the odd financial ad too.

I wonder whether AdSense now themes a site so that at least themed ads appear on new pages before mediabot gets a chance to take a look?

TJ

[annej]

IMO Google have their algorithm tweaked a bit too far in favor of showing high-paying ads over the most relevant ads.

I wonder if this is why I'm getting a lot of generic 'we search for the product for you' sites listed from adsense instead of the actual pages where widgets and widgetmaking supplies can be bought. I know there are plenty of them so it's not for lack of relevant material.

If adsense keeps including these ad sites people will soon quit clicking. They expect to find a shop selling what it says it sells not some search devise. I would think that those who pay for adwords wouldn't ge too happy either.