Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Over the past few weeks, I've been re-designing my site, targetting the following changes:
Decreasing load-time. To do this, I have begun removing all Java Applets, reducing graphical design elements, cleaning up the code in general.
Increasing ease of navigation: Using key-navigation pages, clearly defined, in order for my site users to find what they are looking for with greater ease.
Transition to CSS and h1, h2, h3, style header tags: I'm doing this so that the "on page" text can be more clearly read by users, and the relevance of key text can be more easily analyzed by automated systems.
For several days after I began laying out the changes, I noticed a marked improvment in the quality of the targetting of the Google Adsense ads, then, their relevance dropped off to previous levels: Effective relevance, ZERO on content pages. The key navigation pages have always displayed relevant ads, and continue to do so.
The content pages are simply short stories and poetry. In spite of clearly defined h1 tags, listing specificly what the page is about (whether it be fiction or poetry, and what genre of fiction), the AdSense bots seem intent on ignoring these, and instead picking out obscure words from the text of the stories to determine what type of ad is displayed.
I am led to believe that the types of ads being displayed are indicative of how the pages are classified within google search results. I don't expect page 1 results for my site, it's a small site in a big market dominated by heavyweights. I would simply like to see my pages at least classified in the right part of the directory. I would also like to see the ads from AdSense become more relevant.
And I'm running out of ideas on how to do this, and the patience to even try.
Any advice you can offer would be appreciated. I am more than willing to work within your guidelines to make my site more easily read by googlebot. I am NOT, however, willing to reduce my site's human usability in order to please a bot, nor am I willing to trash a clean, simple, design that my readers find intuitive, eye catching, and an easy format within which to read large pieces of text.
If I cannot make the site perform for google without sacificing usability, then I will simply move on to other search engines, and other advertising streams. And advise my small (but loyal) readership of the changes I am making and why.
But.. back to the original question. I think with AdSense as it is, you'll have a hard time persuading it to *not* pick out the wrong keywords in a poem about Viagra (say), and perhaps therefore the best solution is to ditch AdWords and try something else.
Speaking of Viagra, I recently published a book review that included the word "Viagra" in a subhead and short excerpt (for legitimate reasons, I might add). I was half-afraid that AdSense would display a bunch of sleazy "Perk up Petey!" or "Rejuvenate your Johnson" ads above the quote from a travel-narrative book about Paris, but so far, the ads are for travel--except for one ad about silk sleeping-bag liners, which may have been inspired by the author's reference to buying fancy underwear for her trysts with an aging count. :-)
Things I'm going to try to rectify the situation (based on input from this thread):
First, set up 4 channels, so I can track the effectiveness of different approaches.
Channel 1: Not gonna change anything on some pages, just see if Adsense can figure it out over time.
Channel 2: Keywords in the table cel around the AdSense code.
Channel 3: Outbound Links to other literary sites that are well indexed.
Channel 4: Ad extra relevant ads. Already have an Amazon account, might as well use it.
Then: Let it sit until after XMas/New Year, and see what comes of it.
Note on putting up a "graphic" of the works: Three reasons I'm not going to do this.
First reason: Usability. If my pages aren't fully functional and usable in Lynx, then I consider the layout a failure. And I like to follow the 30K rule whenever possible (on really long pieces, I can't avoid going over).
Second Reason: Poetry is only a portion of the content on the site (roughly20-25%). The rest is serial novels and short stories. I'm not about to turn a 10 page story or chapter into a series of graphics.
Third Reason: All that text confusing google searches sometimes works in my favor. I get hits on incredibly weird keyword combinations I would NEVER have predicted.
Bookmarking this entire thread to read it over a few times.
And I'll see what works, and try and give an analyses sometime in January.
At my site <snip> I use Adsonar, and they target the content.
Their index is still low, but they have gone a long way and are becoming a serious alternative.
I hope this helps.
[edited by: Jenstar at 11:22 pm (utc) on Dec. 9, 2004]
[edit reason] No URLS as per TOS, please! [/edit]
At my site <snip> I use Adsonar, and they target the content.
What advertisers really need is contextual advertising that can target an audience, too, the way ads in hobby publications, trade magazines, etc. do offline. In theory, AdSense might be able to do that (to some degree, anyway) if--for example--Google had an option that let advertisers limit placement to sites that had an identified "theme" or category and a certain level of stickiness.
[edited by: Jenstar at 11:23 pm (utc) on Dec. 9, 2004]
[edit reason] No URLS as per TOS, please! [/edit]
As for the short stories, it would probably be hard to get contextual ads to work...
They replied without a yes or no to that request but instead offered their optimization services. I accepted and they offered some advice on how to better place the ads for more revenue.
Coincidentally, before I made any changes based on their recommendations my ads are now targetted around the keyword I requested. I have no doubt that they were kind enough to manually adjust the theme for me after personally reveiwing my site. It's just too large a coincidence that a few months go by without a single correct ad, and now even new pages get the correct themed ad throughout the site.
So, thanks Google. To the original poster - might be worth writing them a polite note and asking if they can let you use keyword hints.
eddy
To the original poster - might be worth writing them a polite note and asking if they can let you use keyword hints.
Actually, sent one off Wednesday afternoon, and they replied by thursday evening. I am completely impressed by their response time, and judging by the content of their e-mail, genuine concern in the issue.
Surprisingly (or maybe not) the relevance of the ads started to pick up across the site (after they got my e-mail), but roughly 25% of the pages are still off. They asked for screen captures and URLs, which I'm sending them, along with documentation on how the pages are coded, and what I'm planning on doing to get things more focused on the site.
Also, if the information I give them helps them tweak the program to make it more effective, then EVERYONE wins.
I do think the reason I was getting targeted ads is that I have the word 'poetry' in all the titles. Putting a term related to writing in each title might help a lot.
I had pretty good luck with getting writing related ads on my poetry pages but didn't like the fact I got so many vanity press ads so took adsense off.
On my writing-related site, I was also getting ads for phony "poetry contests" until I quickly gave up and pulled AdSense from that site.
asp4bunnies ....you mean adsense offers optimization service? That would be great!
Is there any charge for this?
Yes, they do. It was news to me as well and very appreciated. It was free.
You must put your poem or the part you don't want to interfere with Adsense in a Javascript.
This Javascript is not indexed/read by Google Adsense, so their is no influence in the ad's display.
You place your wording on the regular html page.
Don't test, but must work.
I think adsenese should offer a channel which does "Cross Selling" instead of "Contextual" advertising.
There are other contextual advertisers that do just this. I've dropped AdSense in many cases and gone with them. Better CPC and CTR so much better CPM.
In addition to the volume issue, a downside is that these newer ones seem to roll out targetting the highest value sectors first e.g. travel, health etc.
CF
nullify your unwanted keywords with creative encoding. For example
widget -> widget
This would accomplish the same result as presenting a JPEG, and remain completely standards-compliant, doesn't require javascript and renders perfectly in lynx as well. Readers would never appreciate a distinction, but it's pretty obvious that widget!= widget, keyword-wise.
In theory, at some point, spiders could decode everything, but I'm pretty confident that today this isn't occurring (I have some evidence I'll present if there's interest). And since there are plenty of alternative schemes (wid<span>g</span>et, etc.) that meet the same tests, this seems like an attractive technique if you are getting bit by this kind of issue.
Sadly, this information could be put to more nefarious purposes as well...
>>Am I crazy or does adsense suddenly seem to be using off-page links to determine what ads to show in some cases?
An absolute emphatic YES! I'm guessing that they are looking at a domain-wide keyword clustering. Brand new pages on one of our domains start with a general keyword consistent with the entire domain (whether that page pertains or not) and then usually starts to zero in within 24 hours. Kinda like a domain-wide google-hint. Which overall means the targeting gets ever-better with time. Which is good unless they somehow got a bad idea of what your domain is about to begin with, then you're in trouble. Or if you drastically change the content of a page weekly, which is one of our problems. Probably why Bunny was able see improvement so fast, they were able to reset the overall domain topic manually allowing the ads to zero-in much quicker.
Just my analysis, but it seems to work for me.
So I'm pretty comfortable asserting that the span trick would also neutralize an undesirable keyword for you, at the expense of it appearing in search index, however. I tend to prefer the entity method.
Regarding Google giving websites high ranks for certain terms but bad ads for the pages related to the rank in the SERPs, it makes you wonder why the Adsense system can't reference SERP data. What would be the downside to that (especially since I can see a downside to allowing hints and negative hints)?
I like the kill ke<span>ywo</span>rd idea, for it's simplicity.
I happen to have a story in mind I can test it out on, mentions a certain swedish furniture manufacturer once or twice too often. (and in the context of the story, I'm pretty sure they don't want their ads being placed there).
I like it because it's quick, simple, and has a good potential for knocking off any word that seems to be giving me grief.
I'll change the code and upload it tonight (within the next 5 minutes, I think) and let it run like that for a few days.
Maybe change the ad size to get the media bot to come and take a look sooner.
I just worry this might put a bit of grey dust on my nice white stetson.
I'm inclined to stick with adsense on the pages that are getting good targetting but would like to try something else for the pages that are off target with adsense. Being able to list some key words would help.
It's worth to try.
