Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Most of the pages are about widgets - a directory, a discussion area, all kinds of things.
However, people who make widgets do sometimes need to get up very early and work early shifts - and therefore have problems sleeping. So, I wrote a page about how to get a good night's sleep in terms of lifestyle and diet, and published it with a URL of widgetsUK.com/article/2911/
The article includes no talk about widgets. Just about getting a good night's sleep. So, I was fairly confident that the Google ads would reflect that. I've carefully made the title, in H1 tags, "Coping with early morning shifts and disrupted sleep", and an explanation in H2 tags.
However, days after publishing it, I still have the default ads for the domain - tons of ads for widgets, and no ads for, as I wanted, sleep aids and bed manufacturers.
I wonder how I could make this easier for Google?
My site dynamically creates pages using errordocs, so I can change its name to the already-working widgetsUK.com/article/2911/Coping_with_early_morning_shifts_and_disrupted_sleep and it'll still work - is that a good idea?
Anyone any ideas?
DaveN
In Opera 7.2, the Opera-sourced Google AdSense ads are for a shift-work calendar ("helping shiftworker plan their lives") and a 'Sleep Disorders' website.
In the main AdSense ad on my site, the ads are for widgets.
How frustrating is that?
If that doesn't work, set up a sub-domain of sleep-disorder.widgetsUK.com
or.. ww2.widgetsUK.com or just about anything that makes it appear like a new domain.
or heck.. spend $7 and buy a new domain. ;-)
widgetsUK.com/article/2911/
Try something like:
widgetsUK.com/article/help-with-sleeping/
I've also noticed that this lack of targeting is inconsistent, in that the pages will sometimes be okay and other times, they'll have ads generic section-oriented ads.
I suppose it is worth a try though, because the changed name will force a respider and you may get targeted ads for a while before it reverts to the generic ones... maybe that'll be enough time to weather whatever Google's up to.
Lastly, with Opera 7.20, I find that the browser's ads are always spot on and that, to me, indicates that whatever info Opera's account is getting about our site is fine... makes me wonder why we're suffering, when Opera's not.
They also say that (I'm paraphrasing rather than quoting) that the best way to help Google is to include as much textual content in the page as possible (I have no graphics!) and that if you make any changes to a page it can take between two and three weeks for it to get into the index.
However, I wonder - I get US ads in Opera (they talk about prices in dollars occasionally); whereas my widgetsUK.com website only shows, for me, UK ads. Maybe there are no UK sleep advertisers?
Or... maybe more correct... if Google have tons of different data centres for their search, it's possible that the Opera one goes to one data centre, but my AdSense code goes somewhere else. If that's true, that explains why I might be getting so different ads.
However, I wonder - I get US ads in Opera (they talk about prices in dollars occasionally); whereas my widgetsUK.com website only shows, for me, UK ads. Maybe there are no UK sleep advertisers?
I'm also in the UK and get US ads on Opera (i.e. they are not localised). This is actually quite a nice feature as we can see what the top two US ads are for a page. Note that Opera doesn't seem to load new ads for clearly dynamic pages, i.e. with a & in the URL.
On the second point, there seem to be UK advertisers for "sleep disorders" but you don't have that on the page according to a keyword analyser, just "disrupted sleep" for which there appear to be no UK ads (but presumably this keyword combo has been brought in the US).
To see what ads might exist (within the page, not Opera), add something like "&a=sleep-disorders" to the end of a dynamic url (or "?a=sleep-disorders" for static).
So, it seems that the specific keywords your page appears to be about (i.e. "disrupted sleep") have not been sold in the UK, although "sleep disorders" has. So you (and I) see the usual radio ads, but Opera, and Google in the US, do see ads because "disrupted sleep" has been brought there.
I've given up trying to second-guess what ads should appear on which page with adsense, I just let it get on with it. Some ads look strange but the bottom line seems OK.
[added]Although "sleep" is the top keyword on your page, there's only one highly-generic UK ad for it which probably ranks way below the two-word radio ones. So the problem is really the wrong two-word keyword - working "sleep disorder" into the main keywords should trigger the right UK ads, eventually.[/added]
They also say that ... if you make any changes to a page it can take between two and three weeks for it to get into the index.
I would rather have some general ads on a page, even if not entirely suited to the page as opposed to the site, than countless PSA's. At least with a "default ad", you have some chance of generating revenue.
I would like to see Google provide statistics on the numbers of PSA's they display on any given day, such that the CTR figure would be meaingful.
Ultimately, the lag in matching ads to a slightly changed page (whether it be the correction of a typo, an update of some information, or part of a site-wide redesign), and the excessive presentation of PSA's (or, at best, generic ads) in the interim, is the Achilles Heel of AdSense. Google should expect that, as competitors enter the market, they will target that weakness.
If he creates the page and links to it from his other pages using link anchor text that clearly describes the content of the new page, his page is 100% relevant to his visitors who can't sleep. They'll click into the page and be happy. Others will simply ignore the link and keep reading about widgets.
No search engine spamming, no misleading link anchor text, only 100% relevant content to a certain percentage of his site's visitors.
How many times have we seen posts recommending making pages based on keywords found in the referral logs? Making new pages for the purpose of getting more traffic is no different than making new pages to get more AdSense income so long as:
1 - The link anchor text accurately reflects the content of the page being linked to.
2 - The page being linked to actually has useful content that will benefit the user instead of junk accompanied by the AdSense block.
Creating a web page for sleep just because people who buy your widgets go to bed appears misleading to me. Those same widget buyers sometimes gamble, so can you create a web page about online casinos and expect Google to send you lots of casino ads? Sneaky!
As another correspondent here has mentioned 'the other generic radio ads', perhaps the moderator won't be too annoyed if I clear this up: this page appears in a radio section for radio presenters. The better you are, the more you have to get up at silly times, since breakfast radio presenters get paid most. It's most certainly not irrelevant content; of course, if it was, my visitors wouldn't click on the article, and thus the ads, anyway.
In fact, the article is compiled from a long-running thread in our discussion forums; and so is even compiled by the very people who would be interested in reading it.
Incidentally, I'm now getting four VERY tightly-targeted ads for sleep; and they also look UK-based. Maybe I was just impatient, or maybe, as promised, the Google bloke has hit something for me.
To see what ads might exist (within the page, not Opera), add something like "&a=sleep-disorders" to the end of a dynamic url (or "?a=sleep-disorders" for static).
Thanks for the great tip, Robho. Although now I'm even more frustrated at the kind of ads that I'm definitely missing out on. It's amazing how just that string at the end of the URL can change the whole theme of the ads. So much for overall content of a page.
2odd...
Something is obviously amiss. OTOH, I'm not seeing as many completely inappropriate ads as I did (such as ads for beer coolers and tapping equipment in an Oktoberfest article). Maybe Google is relying less on body text and more on navigation links to determine page context, at least until it gets the problem of off-the-wall ads sorted out.
<meta name="Keywords" content="....">
<meta name="Description" content="...">
Relevent ads even showed before I uploaded the page and just viewed it from local machine.
Ive taken a look at some of the sites mentioned in this thread and it appears the content within these tags relates to the site generally rather than to that particular page.
Like I said im no expert take it easy on me if im being naive here ;-)
