Becoming frustrated with AdSense

Any secrets in ensuring the ads are more relevant?

[uk_webber]

I have a travel related web site and on some of my pages I am getting totally irrelevent ads coming up (ads for 'brick ovens' for instance!)

Anyway I was wondering what I should focus on to improve this situation? I have tried to include more relevent words in the articles and fiddled about with title and meta tags but to no avail!

I know premium service can get around this but I am long way off that status!

Any help much appreciated.

[picasso]

How do you have adsense on yout site? It can last a few weeks till adsense has "found" the best ads.

[uk_webber]

Some if the pages hace had AdSense running for months.

If I change the page so much the quality of the articles will diminish which is n't very good for the web in general.

In a way google are manipulating webmasters so their content just serves good adverts rather than caring about the visitor experience.

I think it is similar to the search engine results having lots of spammy, poor quality sites at the top that are not there on merit but because they know the techniques.

To hell with the web experience for the visitors!

[security56]

another question is this a recent event. I am asking because a lot of people are getting irrevelant ads for the last few days, even without content change.

[ownerrim]

same problem here. weird and bizarre ads. even funeral ads (the site has absolutely nothing to do with funerals, death, dying etc)

may work itself it out in time, usually does, and this is certainly isn't the first time this has happened. my observation is that this tends to occur when adsense changes are in the works. unfortunately, the other effect is a real drag on earnings for the duration----which is why the url filter can be essential for the time being.

[ken_b]

The reality is that Adsense simply doesn't work on some pages, or sites. I've removed Adsense from whole sections of my site because of consistent mistargeting.

But overall, Adsense does pretty well at targeting for me.

[Longhaired Genius]

In my experience, a concise meta-description and keywords-in-heading on a page will lead to more targeted adsence ads.

[security56]

Thats the thing it don't seem to be because of the page layout since it hasn't change in months some of then, it must be something else, probably the adsense new polocies maybe I dont know.

[ownerrim]

"The reality is that Adsense simply doesn't work on some pages, or sites."

works perfect on my site...when it works (which, fortunately, is 95% of the time)

[webmastertexas]

Just my personal opinion, but if your site is content-based, I wouldn't "fiddle" or mess with the article just so you'll get more relevant ads. I mean, what about the integrity of your content? If you start tweaking them for the sake of Adsense, how much integrity does your article/content really have?

Just my .2 cents.

[whoisgregg]

It takes time for the ads to adjust. Best to not think about it and continue to go about improving the site.

If you start tweaking them for the sake of Adsense, how much integrity does your article/content really have?

An excellent point webmastertexas, worth printing out and posting somewhere visible.

[maximillianos]

I find that moving the primary content of my page up closer to the top helps. Try cleaning up your HTML so that the page is simple, and that the majority of the code on the page is the text. That may help. Also, make sure you have a relevent <TITLE> etc... all those little things help G figure out what to show.

Good luck!

[petra]

You can also block up to 200 sites from showing up, my suggestion would be to start blocking the ads that are irrelevent and see if that works.

[annej]

I didn't know that the adsense bot looks a the meta-description. Are we sure of that?

[walrus]

If you had been fiddling with tags and title than it might still be to soon to tell, and the recent changes regarding affiliate ads may bring you better results, so its another reason to bear with it if you've optimized all you can.

[maximillianos]

I'm not sure the META tags help. But I try to keep them relevent as well just in case. As long as you cover all your bases you usually get some decent ads:

1. Good title
2. Good meta
3. Good content
4. Mix in some <H1> or <H2> subtitles (instead of CSS or javascript based subtitles)
5. Keep it simple - let your content dominate the page

Good luck!

[annej]

I use <H1> or <H2> but resize them with CSS. Does that work too as long as I'm useing the H tags? I still use them for larger headings but otherwise esp H1 is sooo big.

I'm doing some reworking of my pages so I might as well take a look at my meta descriptions just in case.

[webmastertexas]

I've noticed that meta tags DOES make a difference with Adsense, especially on pages where you don't have a lot of content for Adsense to search for and match up with. For example, on my image pages, where I have an image, and a caption under it, Adsense has to reach for whatever content it could find, and this includes the title of the page, the meta tags, AND the URL.

[steve40]

Its worth noting possibly that g decides to place poor targetting sometimes to help with algo checking for invalid clicks
i.e
poor targetting = 2%
good targetting = 10%

Lets imagine you wished to check for bot clicking if the ctr stays the same at poor as well as good targetting times some indication could be gained re: fraudulant clicks

just a dumb theory but you never know
steve

[whoisgregg]

Interesting theory steve40. If they aren't doing it already, it's definitely a good idea to implement. :)

[MikeNoLastName]

Have had the same problem for months.
1. Wait. Give THEIR algorithm a chance. 2 wks or 1000 impressions, whichever comes first.
if no improvement...
2. Figure out what words they are targeting and delete for modify them on your page (mispell temporarily or delete). Do a preview tool to get the spider in there quick. It could still take 2-7 days. Packing with keywords is very minimal help.
3. If still not good, give-'em-a-hand. Start URL filtering top results until better ads start coming in.

Good Luck!....

[bumpski]

I have what I believe is a simple Adsense improvement.
I believe it conforms to the TOS in all regards.
I have a couple blocks of text on all my pages basically advertising other pages on my site. Also at the bottom of my pages I have Copyright info and other site wide specific stuff. Sometimes adsense seems to lock onto this content, instead of the main theme of the page. I've seen adsense lock onto affiliate ad content.

I create IFrames for each of these blocks of non page-topic relevant text. Then make small seperate pages with the content for these IFrames. These pages only have the unaltered Adsense code, no text whatsoever. When Google indexes my site these sections in IFrames are no longer indexed at all, (fine by me more targeted searches too, to my site). For example I used to be able to search for my Copyright notice, Google no longer finds my notice, since its in an IFrame. (This may change in the future, who knows.)
I believe the same is true for Adsense. Since I've done this I believe I've fixed some very mistargeted Adsense ads.

There are several advantages to this fix and several unexpected, but relatively minor, disadvantages, and some precautions. I'm afraid it's just to much to cover in this particular forum. So if you try this please don't shoot the messenger.
<snip>

[edited by: Jenstar at 7:36 pm (utc) on Jan. 17, 2005]
[edit reason] No promotional links please, as per TOS [/edit]