Bad Adsense targeting is back

or is it just me?

[ownerrim]

Once again, I am getting off target ads and once again I have none of my adsense-alloted magic bullets (200 to the box, one box only, url-filter brand)

Anyone else seeing this?

[leveldisc]

We just seem to be getting general site themes on each specialist page. Quite frankly it makes some of the pages look ridiculous. We've had to remove Adsense from some pages. Disappointing, although relieved it isn't just us.

[hamster77]

Yeah, it looks ridiculous and it's also quite embarrassing. I'm perfectly happy with ads that are directing my site customers to a related site, but when a site selling gifts is trying to ram ads for financial services down the visitors' throats, then to me that just looks spammy...

[madmatt69]

Yeah it so strange how adsense roller-caosters like this. I had my best day a couple days ago, with my highest ctr in ages and now today it's back down to one of my lowest ctr's. I don't understand it all.

[martinibuster]

I noticed on other sites that the poor Adsense targetting is tied to left hand side links (near the top of the code).

Is there anybody else with a clue as to what is triggering bad AdSense ads?

[ken_b]

MB; I'm not seeing that on my site. For me the ads seem to have gone to a very general theme.

Many of the long time ads are gone off my item specific pages. In there place are (widget) loan type ads.

Those ads may pay more per click, but the likelyhood of my visitors clicking on them is small.

This is a change from even yesterday.

To early to tell yet, but if what I'm seeing in my stats now holds, this will be my worst CTR day yet.

sigh.... time for another round of URL blocking I guess.

[Powdork]

I too have gone back from record high days to record low ones again. The ads have gone from highly targetted and switching regularly to the same four broadly targetted ones showing all the time on almost every page.

[ownerrim]

well, as long as this is a wider phenomenon, it's more likely google is trying to get it fixed. Someone said "rollercoaster" and they were right. Except this ride would be called "the Adsense hurler: guaranteed to twist your stomach in knots". Or maybe "the Googler dollar drop of death". It reminds me of pacino in Godfather III: "just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in!" I'll just lobby once more: GG or AA, how about increasing the url filter limit? 200 isn't way enough.

[Powdork]

One other thing I have been considering is that Google is spreading clicks amongst days to make it harder to determine the cost of any particular click. It seems as though the record lows are always followed by record highs, but the average is the same as before.
Except that that the poor ctr is accompanied by what looks to all of us to be poor targetting.

[danny]

Why does my page of reviews of Indonesian textbooks have "learn Polish" ads on it?!?

[Powdork]

Is the name of the first author on the page a polish name?

[danny]

Is the name of the first author on the page a polish name?

Soenjono Dardjowidjojo? I don't think so - there are enough consonants, but not enough Ws, Ls, and Zs :-)

I really can't see anything remotely Polish-looking on the page, but maybe Google is going "Indonesian -> language learning -> Polish"...

[Powdork]

When I saw it the first thing I thought of was Wojciehowicz from barney miller. Do you have anything blocked in your url filter?

[dogboy]

- my ctr went from around 25% to 9% on the 27th
- epc is way up
- total impressions way up

if impressions stayed the same and everything fluxed, I wouldnt care that much.... but with impressions up, I kind of wish I could take a crack at the normal ctr

[europeforvisitors]

Hmmm...I wonder how many ads for shoe polish and furniture polish are on Polish language-learning sites?

[yump]

>martinibuster

Regardless of topical context, Google is pulling the EXACT SAME ADS for every page.

We've had that as well and still going on to some extent (UK). Nothing definite in response when we emailed them - usual depends on this, depends on that comment.

Convinced something wrong and also convinced not imagining it or paranoid or 'seeing localised adverts' or run out of advertisers.

[Powdork]

Last night I starterd getting the Glengarry leads again. So maybe today will be another record day. Additionally, if they are moving clicks to new days I would expect today they would have to make up for the low number on previous days. What's it all add up to? A record day on a friday?!

[ken_b]

Well, as I feared last night, yesterday turned out to be an all time low for CTR for me.

Off target ads are mostly responsible I suspect.

I just spent an hour adding more sites too my blocked url list, that means I added 2 more pages of urls.

...sigh...

[hdpt00]

If my name was Terry Semel and I was CEO of Yahoo and therefore owned overture, I would be coming here everyday and stickying some of you guys asking exactly what you want from AdSense. Then, I would make OvertureSense and Google would be dead. I think that would bring Yahoo back in the favor of webmasters (not that it went away per se) and if they were half as secretive as google we would probably know if we are getting taken for EPC-wise.

So, Terry Semel, if you're reading this, the people (webmasters) need you. Allowing us to filter keywords, domains, whatever we want and suggesting keywords would be a start. Live stats with unlimited channels could come next. Yahoo and Overture have the power to easily make this system and target it just as well as google.

After some of the secrets of AdSense came out with the SEC, they should realize exactly how much money google makes off publishers. They could, I imagine, take a lot of that money for themselves. Currently, the only site I frequent that uses "OvertureSense" is CNN and the targeting isn't half bad.

Hopefully, someone in the know can forward this to Mr. Semel, Mr. Yang or Mr. Filo and get rolling.

-Brandon

[nealw]

Well, as I feared last night, yesterday turned out to be an all time low for CTR for me.
Off target ads are mostly responsible I suspect.

Ditto here. This has been the all time worst week for me working with Adsense. Still, well over half of the ads being shown on my sites have very little to do with the content of the page.

In my opinion, something funky is going on or something is very wrong over at the GooglePlex.

[Palehorse]

Worst week for me too, At least it is not just me. VERY poor targeting, way off topic. Strange but I see an odd connection, like (just an example not true or specific) "signs" being targeted like "road side signs" instead of "zodiac signs". You get the picture, it is like it is correct targeting, but for a wrong word's definition. It does that for lots of key words on my site... And for key words that may only be used just once on the page, overlooking keywords that are rich on the page.

[surfer67]

my ctr went from around 25% to 9%

Please tell me that was a typo. 25%?

[aliqui]

Hello,

currently ads delivered on my most profitable Adsense page seem to be as well targeted as before April 27,when it lost 66% CTR

It is just me?

[7_Driver]

Update - the usual superb targeting seems to be back for us - and CTR is back up again.

Wonder if it will stick - or if they'll continue to "flip-flop" between different algos for a while yet...

[adamxcl]

Worst week ever as well. The same ads keep showing on many pages whether relevant or not. Many of them used to be the same large company but had different titles and descriptions that at least made them relevant. Instead, the last few days have seen them with the same non-relevant title on all of them. Had to block the URL's even though I shouldn't have had to do that if adsense was working right.

[Dan_Norder]

This last week has just been awful on my sites getting any ad that makes any amount of sense for the page. I know the types of ads I used to get are still out there, but for some reason they are putting in things that are not only not related but so obviously wrong that it looks scary. Most of my income was coming from one small sets of pages and now that suddenly dropped to basically nothing in the past week. Blocking the ads hasn't helped because they just keep putting bad ones up.

[bernis]

i also experienced very bad targeting since beginning of this week (ctr dropped about 60-70% from last month's average) but yesterday it went back to normal and it seems stable now

[annej]

It's a bit as though Google had decided to display four leaderboard ads for Peruvian albino gerbils on a 4,000-page site about pet care.

Thanks for starting my day with a good laugh Of course what makes is so funny it I could see it really happening. :)

It often seems that Google is rotating not just ads, but also its ad-matching algorithms from day to day or even hour to hour.

I think you are right here. They are fishing around to see what works.

One of my pages has been showing knitting related ads. I searched the whole site and found I'd used the word 'knitting' once on an unrelated page. The page itself refers to quilting and more important the topic of the article is "feedsacks", a popular collectable. I was delighted when I was getting a lot of feedsack ads as this is exactly what the readers of the article would be interested in buying. But alas, these ads have been gone for some time and I'm left with knitting. Could this be Google theming gone awry?

It just occured to me do you think I could have used the word 'feedsacks' too many time? A matter of natural writing looking like key word stuffing to Google. If so I doubt I could rewrite it with less use of the word and still have it make sense. I suppose it's worth a try though if that is what is causing the problem.

[Need3lives]

In particular, I have noticed that new pages all go through this pattern recently:

First hour to 2 days: Poorly targeted ads or PSAs
Next 8 hours to 2 days: Correctly targeted ads (Yeah!)
Next 1 day to 3 days: Poorly targeted ads (Ugh!)
And finally: Correctly targeted ads

Then, once they have the correctly targeted ads, the new pages are generally good to go for the most part, except for those occasional days we all seem to note when suddenly the targeting is lost again, before it returns 1-2 days later. It seems that perhaps that happens about once per week, since they made the changes back in March.

[Palehorse]

need3lives I don't think this topic is about new sites. Most of us here are getting really BAD targeting on well established sites that have had adsense for awhile.

My best one, makes over a grand a month normally, is dragging it's butt pretty bad due to ctr.

Went from 1.9 to 3.5 daily averages to .02 to .07. This REALLY sucks. It is due to very poor targeting, where once it was right on.

Too bad they have to keep fixing and fixing it, thats the best way to brake something is by fixing in over and over. They should learn to leave alone what is not broken.

There must be some programmer in the adsense department in danger of getting canned so he fiddles with it over an over to justify his (or her) exisitance...

[Need3lives]

Understood, just pointing out what I am seeing w/ new pages that I upload to existing sites. Perhaps, and I would assume, these issues are related.