Forum Moderators: martinibuster
For those of you who have very diverse websites, does google post rotating ads relevant to a specific topic among your many diverse topics? My question is about my index page. It lists all of my articles, but my main keyword for the page has nothing to do with the ads. (It did briefly, and in a round-about way) but only briefly. Now it is showing ads for a specific topic that I have written about. I can take this to mean two things: (1) Either my main keyword phrase isn't optimized well (I can't see how, I even did the LSI thing) or (2) In order to get maximum adwords results, they are showing anything relevant to the SITE, but the adwords they are showing are not for the pages that I get top rankings for. So why show ads relevant to a topicical page that is not ranked well when adwords pays for adsense (I would imagine)?
JPell
BTW, what is the "LSI thing" you mention with regards to search engine optimization?
[webmasterworld.com...]
[javelina.cet.middlebury.edu...]
It's pretty much theory as to how much Google is using it right now but may well be the path to the future.
I was curious if howstuffworks.com was pandering to keywords that sell through AdSense after seeing "How Web Pages Work" and searched for Viagra. That brought up this page ([science.howstuffworks.com ]), titled "Where do all those strange names for prescription drugs come from?"
The four AdSense ads were for "Hawkeye Boroscopes," "Hydraulic Cylinders," "Air-Hydraulics Inc.," and "Buy a Hydraulic Press."
This makes me wonder if this is an example of the drawback to LSI. From the linked LSI description example:
In an AP news wire database, a search for Saddam Hussein returns articles on the Gulf War, UN sanctions, the oil embargo, and documents on Iraq that do not contain the Iraqi president's name at all.
So is the LSI algorithm is linking hydraulic to Viagra? ;)
I got the impression that initially AdSense gave me a set of ads based on regular Google crawls of my site. I believe this because the ads came up immediately with no delay for an AdSense crawl. Later the ads were a little more specific though not that refined.
It seems to me that it tends to be all one topic category or another. Like initially a page on Native American Widgets was showing all widget related ads, now it is showing Native American pottery related ads. This must be because the article tells about widgets based on pottery designs.
Another page jumps between widgeting and creativity as topics. It always seems to be one or the other. Never a mix of both.
Not only are your most important keywords not as relevant, but, and most notedly, it seems google no longer looks at a specific page in relation to a query, but the entire site.
AdSense does try to serve relevant default ads for a site when keyword-targeted ads aren't available. Usually it does a pretty good job (at least on a site like mine that has several clear "umbrella topics" and which consists mostly of evergreen content). I used to see goofy matches like ads beer tappers in an Oktoberfest article, but lately the incorrect matches have been the result of taking what appear to be correct keywords out of context--e.g., "ATM equipment and supplies" ads in an article on using ATMs abroad, or an ad for St. Martin hotels on a page where AdSense has found "hotels" and "Martin Luther." As time goes by and Google refines its semantic or contextual matching algorithms, AdSense will be more likely to serve relevant defaults than irrelevant keyword-targeted ads when relevant keyword-targeted ads aren't available.
Still, even if AdSense is able to prevent silly gaffes in the future, that doesn't mean the network will work well on every site. A newspaper site, for example, may have a lot of pages where AdSense ads are basically throwaways. Maybe we'll see the network evolve into two networks: one PPC, the other CPM. Google already pays its high-traffic/general-interest "premium partners" on a CPW basis, apparently, and it might make sense for such media to run ads that are targeted more to the audience than to the page topic. An ad for Washington, D.C. real estate in a WASHINGTON POST story on the Iraq political situation might be more effective than an ad for Iraqi knick-knacks or back issues of a Middle East political journal.
I haven't found that but I did find Googleguy at least touting LSI (from [webmasterworld.com ]) : "figment88, I appreciate your point, but automating the semantic analysis can be a nice win as well. For one, webmasters might not always pick the right words. And for another, webmasters may be too busy to pick words for each page (I think europeforvisitors is making this point as I post. :)"
jpell:
From your hyperdictionary link, hydraulic can be defined as "moved or operated or effected by liquid..." and that seems about the closest to viagra but still seems a bit of a stretch (so to speak). I'd think, just like Ask Jeeves pays special attention to popular search phrases, Google would at least pay special attention to a keyword that they list starting at a max Adword CPC of $14.21.
Then again, it also could be a stretch to assume all of the above from one mention of the product on one popular page/site. Who knows.
If your page has not only the main keyword "widgets" but also "things similar to widgets" then odds are the person looking for an answer when they visit your page has a higher chance of finding it. I would imagine the idea behind the theory is a safeguard against excessive SEO, which delivers more keyword than information about the keyword. I've seen plenty of pages with top ranking that do little more than offer huge headings and then it takes 10 clicks to find your answer. People want answers fast. Who has time to click, click, click?
automating the semantic analysis can be a nice win as well
Google Guy saying that certainly hints that they are using LSI for AdSense as well.
I'm wondering if anyone can tell me, or at least give their best guess, if the data and algo used are similar or pretty different between Google as a search engine and Google deciding how to serve up AdSense.
