Only the First Block shown

Why 2nd and 3rd blocks are blank?

[signup1]

Same page, same content, changed from root / as index.htm to something.htm. It had 3 blocks shown and now only 1st block shown. I thought it takes time, but waited for 2 months, still only 1 block. I checked the ad inventory on the page, there are a lot, so there is no shortage of that. What is the problem?

[Powdork]

I am having this problem today as well. the only difference between the pages that are showing multiple ads and the ones not is that the ones that don't reside in a folder in which Googlebot is prohibited through robots.txt.
Its not from a lack of ads. The page will fill up a skyscraper but won't show four ads if they're in two banners.

[webmastertexas]

If Google doesn't have enough DIFFERENT ads to fill out all the Adsense blocks you put on one page, it'll only fill what it can -- one whole block, and leave the other two blank. Depends on your content, I suppose. If your content can fill up a lot of ads, they'll show all they can. If not -- well, you end up with just one block filled.

[signup1]

webmastertexas, i know what you mean, but it is not the case here. there are at least 20 in inventory, but it only filled the 4 in the first block. it is a bug i believe in google.

[Powdork]

Thats what I mean. It will fill up a skyscraper with four ads, but not two 468X60 banners which is also four ads. The pages that lie outside the robots protected folder have no problem filling up a skyscraper and a leaderboard and they would probably pull in more if I were so inclined.

[signup1]

Email google, but they always give the same reply similar to our program will act automatically. If we don't show 3 blocks, then there is a reason for that.

[ownerrim]

same here. have 20+ advertisers and all ad blocks are fine on most pages. But on some, the 2nd or third block is not showing

[MikeNoLastName]

I've been having the same problem with a new page I added ads to on Monday (page has been around long time). I have 3 - 120x600s (very long page) and only the first is filling and the other two are blank. Have tried everything. creating a new channel for the second. using 160x600 for second, even smaller formats. Nothing helped. I've already written G and mentioned that the preview tool shows at least 12, and they took a few days to answer, but, of course the standard answer... "must not be enough".

I've also been having problems on the same page with G locking onto one silly word appearing twice on the whole 75Kb page and targeting all the ads based on that.

You'd think if you set up 3 units they'd consider at least 3 different terms on the page to focus on at least initially. If I was designing the algo, I'd test out a broad range of related terms for each new page when it is first spidered, by putting the top bidders from the top 4 keyword densities on the page, and see which get clicked on most (weighted for bid amount of course), then refine based upon those results, over and over maybe daily depending on traffic.

I think G might be having a serious problem with very long pages. In this case the page is 75K, and there are at least a dozen or more graphic items near the top. The ad units are spread pretty evenly near the top (below all the graphics), middle and bottom. The ones I've found that DO work ok with multiple ads are relatively small pages and the ad units are right next to each other in the code.

Maybe if we ALL start writing they'll finally take notice!

BTW Powdork, I'm pretty sure I read something in the GAdsense FAQ about making sure your robots.txt has a line to allow G to spider it. You might want to make sure you're not violating that.

[MikeNoLastName]

Finally got a reply back from G on the 2nd and 3rd blocks. I'd prefer to just copy and paste the whole thing, as it's a bit long, but I've been censored on here before for doing that, so to paraphrase:
Their system is optimized for pages that have highly targeted ads available. So on pages with "generalized" content, we may "sometimes" see that only the first unit contains ads. Seems pretty darn consistent to me.
Also, the AdSense Preview Tool shows ALL possible ads for a page. However, it is possible that some
advertisers' budgets may have run out. So some of the POSSIBLE ads for a page may not be displayed for that reason.
It continued on with the standard warning to have an alternate ad available for when they can't display real ads, yada, yada, yada.
Sounds like a cop-out for "we don't feel like fixing it" to me. In so far as "fixing" the related problem we had with not showing appropriate ads, the response was just another cop out claiming their "contextual advertising system" algorithm is working properly, and that it is our pages fault that it is not specific enough. Gee, the G search engine obviously thought it was specific enough to rank it in the top SERPs under the right term.
We'll be pulling the ads from that page tomorrow. It's a shame, it was one of the more productive pages for other paying clients, so I guess it will stay just that way. Maybe we'll try someone else's contextual ads there and see how well they do.
Hope this helps others somewhat.

[dataguy]

I have several sites that have generally long pages and they use a skyscraper at the top left, and at the very bottom there is a half-banner with one ad slot.

Nearly all of my pages have the skyscrapers full of ads, and the single half-banner space empty. These pages have been around for months...

I haven't really heard an explaination that makes sense except something's broke....

[alika]

I think it makes proper sense. G's explanation is that there is some sort of prioritization or optimization being done. Hence, if an advertiser sets a budget of X, and G through their calculations has determined that amount X will cover Y clickthroughs, then they must first pick the most targeted content for the ads.

If there are 10,000 publishers with the same content and G thinks that the budget will only cover 100 publishers before the budget runs out, then the ad will be shown only to the 100 most targeted places. The rest of the 9,900 publishers will be shown their alternative ads, ad blocks will not show or PSAs will only show.

Banner ad networks like Burst do some sort of optimization as well, although like G, they haven't disclosed the formula for deciding which sites should make the cut or not. It's the networks' thinking of where will they get the most buck from the advertisers.

[MikeNoLastName]

>and G thinks that the budget will only cover 100
>publishers

Yes, this would make sense if G is unable to track clickthrus on a timely basis AND G ASSUMES a certain click thru rate for those 100 publishers. And we know what happens when you assume...

Otherwise, it shouldn't matter how MANY publishers they cover at any specificity of pages, since only those with readers interested in the topic are actually going to click, the advertiser still gets the same number of clickthrus. They're not charged by impression, just clicks. If the ad is so misleading or general as to attract the "wrong element" on less specific pages then that is the advertisers fault who writes the ad copy, not the publisher or G's.