Adsense suggestion for Google on PSAs

An algo change

[Clark]

A lot of us have expressed disappointment at Google's PSAs. I can understand the importance of contextual advertising and that the PR for displaying PSAs does help Google's image.

However we are businesspeople too and giving a generous amount of screen space to a huge PSA ad that does also advertise Google's ad system (so the "cost" to them is not as high as it is for us) is a waste for our purposes.

I'm sure income would increase significantly if less PSA ads are shown.

Google can easily break down the adsense ads per domain. If 99% of the ads on a domain name are about widgets and then there is a new page shown for which Google does not have data but knows that the domain is all about widgets, how about a widgets set of ads instead of PSAs?

[richmondsteve]

Try adSense on a site on sexual health. I'm currently mass-synonymizng offensive words.

I can relate. Like I've mentioned AdSense hasn't played well on my site on sex crimes and sex offenses.

Do you have concerns that your site's search engine rankings will take a dive as a result and the copy won't read as well?

My site had over 28,000 unique search phrases last month from search engine visitors. 30% included "sex" or a variant and about 20% more contained "porn" or "rape". I'm reluctant to mass-synonymize as a result and because I've tested such global text changes and they read poorly on most of my pages.

But it's all guess work, a guide of offensive words would be helpful.

True. Anything useful from Google would be nice. Their form letters haven't had anything useful for me.

[hyperkik]

My site is all about content. I'm not going to confound the content (and confuse my readers) in order to trick Google's algorithm. I am instead going to keep focusing on making good content, while hoping Google does something to appropriately narrow its filtering algorithm.

The larger issue is that if an alternative to AdSense becomes available through an outfit like Yahoo!/Overture, and that alternative has a better algorithm for filtering so-called "offensive" content, despite an attachment to Google some of us will have to seriously consider switching.

[Macro]

Like I've mentioned AdSense hasn't played well on my site on sex crimes and sex offenses

I can relate. Just because I've mentioned "Windows XP" on an IT site I get Double Glazing ads!

I'm not going to confound the content (and confuse my readers) in order to trick Google's algorithm. I am instead going to keep focusing on making good content

Well said. I'm going to follow suit.

[Sharky]

I agree that we should be able to set defaults.

It seems like it would be easy to let Adsense users specify a list of keywords to use as defaults per-site when a page with an ad isn't in the index, for example.

Along these same lines, I would love to be able to override Google's choice of keywords for a particular URL. Since the goal for both Google and advertisers is higher CTR, then for advertisers who are willing to optimize in this way, I can't see why Google or their advertisers would care. They could still override the defaults if "inappropriate" content was identified on a page.

[hyperkik]

I note that Google has refined its algorithm somewhat, and that a number of pages that were formerly filtered are now displaying paying ads. Good work, Google.