Why You May Be Getting PSAs

Keywords could be triggering them

[Blue_Fin]

I was just reading a post on another message board from someone who has a site which details auto insurance laws in all 50 U.S. states. Except for his main page, he is getting PSAs on all of his pages. He asked Google why and they replied that their automated system which seeks content which could be negative or unfamily safe (their words) was triggered by death, car accident and injury. Because all auto insurance policies contain those words, this Adsense feature has rendered his site non-compatible with Adsense ads.

So for those of you who feel you have a high ratio of PSAs, your content may be triggering this feature. It's really a shame that Google can't override this after a site has been reviewed. In the example above, there really are a lot of targeted ads that would work well on his site.

[acidic]

I have a freeware game download site. One of the games on my site is called “Sectors of Death” and that name appears in the title of the game review page as well as several times in the text of the page. The thing is this page is consistently getting 4 paid for ads.

[WebWalla]

It's possible that this particular page with the review of this game hasn't been spidered yet by mediabot and you're getting generic ads related to your site's content.

[Brett_Tabke]

all over again:
[searchengineworld.com...]

[google.com...]

[hyperkik]

Mention of death doesn't seem to trigger the filter, of itself. The trigger seems to be anything that suggests (beyond a certain keyword density) a violent or accidental death.

The effects of the filter can seem eccentric. A page on traffic ticket law, for example, may get paid ads for drunk driving defense lawyers - but a page on drunk driving law may get nothing but PSA's, out of Google's apparent concern that it may be placing ads for drunk driving defense lawyers on an article about somebody's tragedy.

[Iguana]

Napalm death is ok by Google.

[daunk]

Anyone in the Uk will know about the football r*pe case allegations, any page about this leads to PSA's being shown.

[trillianjedi]

Interesting read Brett - are there resources for any current "poison" words floating around?

TJ

[Jane_Doe]

I have the reverse situation......I'm getting car insurance ads on pages that have nothing to do with car insurance.

[the_nerd]

I have the reverse situation......I'm getting car insurance ads on pages that have nothing to do with car insurance.

they have to put them somewhere, after all :)

[Blue_Fin]

Jane, you should provide the URLs of those pages to AdSense so they can look into why you are getting mistargeted ads.

[blasto333]

How would one tell if an ad is a public service annoucment?

Thanks,

Chris

[Jenstar]

You can find the current list of PSAs here [webmasterworld.com]

[Jenstar]

I'm getting car insurance ads on pages that have nothing to do with car insurance.

There could be a trigger keyword on your pages that car insurance companies are bidding on, even though at first glance it would seemingly have nothing to do with car insurance. But because an insurance company could be bidding on it, it could then show up on your pages because you have that same keyword somewhere in your text. I have seen this happen before.

[Jane_Doe]

Jane, you should provide the URLs of those pages to AdSense so they can look into why you are getting mistargeted ads.

I'm scared of the adsense people ever since they sent me a threatening fraudulent clicks warning email, so I decided it's best not to wake the sleeping giant. :)

Anyway, the insurance ads are gone today.

[universetoday]

I can't seem to get the PSAs off my homepage. I don't see anything on the homepage that's even slightly racy, and yet, it's been PSAs for days now.

[Blue_Fin]

If the homepage you are referring to is the domain in your email address listed on your WW profile, I am not seeing PSAs. In fact, I checked quite a few pages on that site and the only page I got PSAs was the Archive page.

I did see something that I haven't seen before. On a couple of your pages, the Leaderboard showed 3 ads rather than 4 and on those ads, the advertiser's URL was displayed. I've never seen the advertiser's URL on Leaderboards before and it doesn't appear on the Leaderboards that are displaying 4 ads, only those displaying 3.

[Visi]

Blue...typical when leaderboards not full....we have seen this recently.

[universetoday]

It had been all PSAs for several days. I wrote Google and email and they fixed the problem. That's why you're seeing proper ads there now.

[Blue_Fin]

Why did you wait several days before writing to Google about it? I checked your site 15 minutes after you posted that PSAs were showing and they weren't showing for me. Did you post before checking to see if it had been fixed? Did Google indicate why you were getting PSAs since they had relevant ads?