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Forcing a AdSense Update?

How do I get the ads served on a page updated?

         

btas2

12:09 am on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have a page on my website that changes topic from time to time. Let's say last month it was about green widgets, this month it's about blue widgets and next month it will be about red widgets. It's the "current widgets" page.

When I launch the page for the first time, Google looks at it and serves up green widget ads. However it gets stuck there. It doesn't update when the topic changes to blue widegets and it still doesn't update when the subject turns to red widgets. This is over months, not days. It just keeps displaying green widget ads.

Now if I make a new page on red widgets, VOILA! Red widget ads.

But I don't want to make a new page every time the widget color changes, or to change the page URL. I just want to change the ads to reflect the content of one page, but AdSense stubornly refuses to do this. The only way I can get red widget ads is to write a page on red widgets (which instantly gets red widget ads served) and then do a redirect from the original page, but now I have two pages and I really want people to bookmark and search engines to index the original page.

Has anyone come up with a trick or scheme which will force an Adsense update of ads served on a page? I get spidered. AdSense looks at the pages, it just seems that it never bothers to re-evaluate the contents, even though they changed a month or two ago.

BTW I've tried changing ad layout, colors and page layout. Doesn't seem to help.

Jenstar

12:22 am on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Changing the ad unit size should trigger a revisit, however, it will not necessarily be instantaneous, it might take a few hours.

bnhall

1:29 am on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I've also found that changing the filename can trigger a re-visit.

muszek

3:41 am on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



changing the filename? it's just a completely new page then (and is obviously re-visited). in most cases you don't want a new url for the same page (links, bookmarks, search engines...).

btas2

6:19 am on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



As I said in the question..."I don't want to make a new page every time the widget color changes, or to change the page URL". So changing the file name isn't an option.

I've done this. Created a new page, with a new ad layout (different ad format) and saved it under a new URL. It gets appropriate ads.

I now save the same file under the original filename of the page that was getting inappropriate ads. It still gets inappropriate ads, while the identical file saved under a new name gets appropriate ads.

It's as though Ad sense says, "OK", the page may have changed, but it's still about some sort of widget. We originally seved green widget ads, and it's still about some sort of widget, so we'll just keep serving green widget ads.

I haven't yet tried changing the content to something not even remotly connected with the orginal subject, say, from "widgets" to "medical malpractice lawsuits", and to see if THAT gets Adsense to revise the ads it serves. It's a bit difficult to do that on a live site, particularly with a feature page, since it's going to confuse and annoy my readers!

There appears to be some sort of inertia to the ads, meaning once adsense has analyzed a page, it's really reluctant to analyze it again and change the ads it serves, even though it gets spidered.

Note that if I run the preview tool on the new file saved under the new filename, I see a different (more appropriate) set of ads than I see if I run the preview tool on the identical file saved under the old filename. So the preview tool is also heavily influenced by intertia. It doesn't seem to be analyzing the page, if the page is already in the AdSense database it seems to be spitting out whatever is already stored there.

Very frustrating

howiejs

5:42 pm on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I have the same issue
Ads "stuck" on a certain older theme

I keep changing the ad size / format
still the same issue for 2 weeks

btas2

6:50 pm on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Yup, mine's still stuck too. I tried all the suggestions - changing layout, changing ad size, changing ad color, using the preview tool etc. Nothing works.

So I now have two absolutely identical pages, one under the old filename, one under a new filename. Same content exactly, same HTML code. Identical except the old one is named, say, "index.html" and the new one is named, say, "index2.html"

The old one displays the old ads on the old topic and will only display one ad block.

The new one not only displays correctly targeted ads, but it will also display three ad blocks.

The (old) page gets maybe 500 hits a day and a small clickthrough rate, so it's not like AdSense doesn't know it's there.

I'm still looking for tricks to shake it up. Maybe something added to the AdSense code for one pageload that makes it say "Uh? what was that? Let me go look at the page again..."

ve3cnu

8:15 pm on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



My ads are kind of stuck too.

Here's a clue though. I looked up the cached snapshot of my website's homepage and voile! The content on that day it was cached does relate to the current ads.

shortfork

9:29 pm on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I find that the little AdSense bots are on my site just about continously. Especially waiting for new messages on the chat board.

It does not seem to take very long to get them to visit a new page on the site, but revisiting a page with changes takes a very long time.

I'd suggest changing the name of the file, then if you are concerned about search engines or other links leading to that page, change it back..

Which may or may not change the ads right back to what they were.. have not tried it.

Shortz

trader

11:22 pm on Nov 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Can not understand why G seems to get stuck on old page content even though it was freshly respidered? It is very odd and seems strange they do that.

Someone said earlier they do not want to completely change the website theme and content to force new ads however that also may fail to help as I have been there and done that!

Just yesterday had a widgets site with good widget adsense on it. Next completely changed everything on the site (offering content/services diverse from widgets and removing all referencxes to widgets), including title descr meta tags and all content.

Did not do that to change adsense but only because of an earlier decision to target the site to a much different product (not identified by its url in any way).

When I did that was happy to see G immidiately respidered the site and put up 4 great fresh new ads about my non-widgets (totally different products).

However, within 1 hour hr G took down the great new ads and replaced them with old widget ads again though the new web-site had no mention of the old widgets anywhere. This scenario has also happened to me several times before!

Very mysterious and puzzling why they do that. Anyone know why or can guess?