Forum Moderators: martinibuster
It's a subdirectory of a large personal site which includes various sections: a bible section, a section about Maine, an EMS section, one about ocelots...and a host of other topics.
My husband just commented that his hardtack site has ads for fire and EMS shirts, EMT education, Bangor real estate, and Bangor hotels.
Strange, I thought, because although the ads are relevant to other parts of the site, nowhere are any of those topics mentioned on the hardtack pages.
Why would this happen?
(The oddity gets stranger, but I will post the other thing in my next post.)
I have a couple of sites that are about say, the 100,000 different themes of widgets and if Google doesn't have a good inventory about a theme it tends to add in ads about widgets in general, even though I'd much rather have the more specifically targeted ads.
One of the reasons I'd like to see the ability to block keywords (instead of just specific domains) in the ads is because in the above example it'd be really nice to block all "widgets" ads in the belief that if they want widgets info, they can already find it all on my site, but if they mistakenly ended up there because they were looking for "theme A", but didn't necessarily want "theme A widgets" I think the best ads to show them are ones about "theme A", not ones about widgets. I'd rather keep the widgets visitors for myself and give the ads better targeted clicks on their theme.
People have also noticed that they seem to be doing targeting based upon the domain's main content, which would explain the EMS and Bangor showing up on the hardtack pages. When there are no relevant ads, or when the pages haven't been crawled, AdSense has been showing more ads based upon the domain's main (or perhaps most viewed?) pages rather than the specific pages.
Also, whenever I mention river cruises or barges in a body-text blurb on my home page, ads for river cruises and barge travel turn up in my AdSense skyscraper--which seems odd, since there are plenty of more prominent topics on my home page. The only explanation I can think of is that ads for Venice, river cruises, and barge travel may be fetching higher bids than ads on my other topics, and higher bids may trump relevance as long as the right keywords are on the page.
I do not know if you are aware, but that page has 2 meta tags for description (and 2 for keywords) :(
For example, my site about Europe has a link to a major subsection on Venice in the top navigation bar on every page. As a result, I'll often see ads for Venice hotels, apartments, etc. on pages that have nothing to do with Venice.
Yes, I have noticed exactly this. I get lots of ads for things that I link to, rather than on page topics.
This makes sense actually, as if I consider it relevent enough to link to then why shouldnt they link to that subject too!
It would be better though if google could somehow filter out links that appear on every page such as the navigation links.
It would be better though if google could somehow filter out links that appear on every page such as the navigation links.
Or, better yet, if the publisher could include or exclude certain topics.
Or, better yet, if the publisher could include or exclude certain topics.
But this would have to be on a per page basis which would not be very practical. I have ads on a number of sites with very different topics, and wouldnt want to exclude any topics from everything.
To do it by site would also pose problems as in your example - you dont want ads for Venice showing up all over the site, but you certainly do want them showing up on the Venice pages.
It would be best to let the algorithm determine the ads with the least amount of publisher interferance.
This reminds me of the spam reporting for the main index, and google wanting to change the alorithm to catch the spam, rather than weeding it out by hand....
>>Or, better yet, if the publisher could include or exclude certain topics.<<But this would have to be on a per page basis which would not be very practical.
It would take a bit of work, but the effort would certainly be worthwhile on sites that consisted primarily of "evergreen" pages.
Also, such tags or filters wouldn't have to be applied to every page. They'd be needed only on pages that got significant traffic or were consistently showing irrelevant ads.
Also, such tags or filters wouldn't have to be applied to every page. They'd be needed only on pages that got significant traffic or were consistently showing irrelevant ads.
Yes, I agree this would be useful, and it would be even more useful if we got some detailed statistics to help us do this. But i'm getting off topic a bit.....
I suppose one way to lessen the effect of this in the short term would be avoid linking to non-topical pages on the page where you want very specific ads to be shown.
If you must link to off topic pages, perhaps you could use a graphic instead of a text link to lessen the effect.
(This is assuming that it is the link text that is causing this rather than just a general knowledge of what other topics/pages the site contains).
I suppose one way to lessen the effect of this in the short term would be avoid linking to non-topical pages on the page where you want very specific ads to be shown.
I'm not about to remove standing navigation links to major sections of my site just to keep AdSense from displaying a Springfield ad on a page about Shelbyville. :-)
If you must link to off topic pages, perhaps you could use a graphic instead of a text link to lessen the effect.
Graphics slow page download times and increase bandwidth costs. I use them for photos, but using them for links is simply wasteful (and annoying to users with slow connections).
In any case, this is a problem that Google needs to solve instead of letting publishers figure out workarounds. I expect that Google will solve it in time, since off-topic ads mean lost revenues for AdSense.
n any case, this is a problem that Google needs to solve instead of letting publishers figure out workarounds. I expect that Google will solve it in time, since off-topic ads mean lost revenues for AdSense.
Precisely my point when i suggested they fix this with an algorithm change instead of us having to go through and filter keywords for each page of our sites.
I didn't meant this to sound like a permenant solution, but only until we get a better fix to get more relevent ads on the problem pages.
If links are the problem then maybe javascript links wouldn't be weighted as much as regular links by the adsense spider?
Precisely my point when i suggested they fix this with an algorithm change instead of us having to go through and filter keywords for each page of our sites.
I'm very skeptical about Google's ability to solve this problem with an algorithm change in the foreseeable future. How, for example, is an algorithm going to know that a reference to "Venice" is about Venice, Italy and not Venice, California? Or that a reference to "river cruises" should lead to ads for European river cruises and not Mississippi river cruises? Maybe artificial intelligence will someday be able to handle such situations, but in the meantime, it would be far simpler (and the results would be far more reliable) if Webmasters could indicate categories or use include and exclude filters via meta tags.
If links are the problem then maybe javascript links wouldn't be weighted as much as regular links by the adsense spider?
I don't believe Googlebot crawls JavaScript links, so I'm not about to risk losing my Google search listings (or my excellent rankings on many Google SERPs) just to keep AdSense from serving off-topic ads.
I have puzzled over this one too.
I have found Birmingham Alabama pages serving up ads for Burmingham UK - and vice versa, eben though the page shows the ancillary tageting information in close proximity
I have reached the conclusion that the "fault" probably lies with the advertiser, who has probably not made the specification and left it open at just "Birmingham"
If the advertiser does not tie it down then the algo can never know!
I have reached the conclusion that the "fault" probably lies with the advertiser, who has probably not made the specification and left it open at just "Birmingham"If the advertiser does not tie it down then the algo can never know!
True, but the advertiser knows that some people will search on the single keyword "Birmingham"--and by writing the copy to make it clear that the ad is for Birmingham, England, the advertiser can minimize the likelihood of clicks by people who are interested in Alabama. So the "Birmingham" confusion isn't really a problem for the advertiser, who pays only for clicks. It is a problem for the publisher and Google, who miss out on potential revenues when off-topic ads are displayed.
On my own site, I've got an article on Munich's Oktoberfest that currently shows four AdSense ads: the first three are for beer kegs, taps, and pumps, and only the fourth has anything to do with Munich. I could try using my "Advanced Options" filter to prevent the off-topic ads from displaying, but that might not solve the problem--more than likely, I'd just get lower-bid keg, tap, and pump ads instead. I could also rewrite my article to delete the sentence that describes how Munich's mayor taps the first "keg of beer" at Oktoberfest, but that's not an acceptable solution. (An editorial site shouldn't be rewriting its content to satisfy the needs of an ad network.) A much better solution would be the ability to block Google's MediaPartner bot from using certain keywords on the page, or to indicate a category ("travel," "Munich") that would limit the range of topics that AdSense tries to relate to the page.
A much better solution would be the ability to block Google's MediaPartner bot from using certain keywords on the page, or to indicate a category ("travel," "Munich") that would limit the range of topics that AdSense tries to relate to the page.
I completely see where you are coming from.
I envisioned having to define each page with keywords in the Adsense control panel as you have to do to filter URLS (which would have been a huge job), but I now see that it could easily be implemented with some kind of special adsense meta tags, either on the page as a whole or in the ad javascript itself...
Keyword includes would have to be handled well so that it doesnt open the whole thing to spamming for high value clicks...
Do you think it is worth coming up with a temporary solution to get more relevant ads until a proper solution is made available?
Do you think it is worth coming up with a temporary solution to get more relevant ads until a proper solution is made available?
Not in my case, since my traffic is spread over several thousand pages and a few off-topic ads won't have that much impact on the bottom line. But a site that gets most of its traffic on a few pages (or that has a handful of important "money" pages) might benefit from a workaround.
I would like to see a permanent solution--not just to maximize revenues, but also because a site's perceived usefulness to the reader is enhanced by relevant ads.
