New Feature...Section Targeting

Better ad targeting.

[ken_b]

This apparently lets a publisher specify which sections of the content on a page that they would like Adsense to focus on for ad targeting purposes.

This should be very helpfull on pages that cover several topics, like a home page might.

Haven't tried this yet because I just spotted the notice while checking my stats. Sounds interesting though.

[edit note] edited to remove a quote[/edit]

[fromholland]

If I select a quite small part of the page with the most quality content and the most specific keyword, will I get less ads, or will Google also take a look at the other content?

[Rodney]

If I select a quite small part of the page with the most quality content and the most specific keyword, will I get less ads, or will Google also take a look at the other content?

From the page linked to above, Google says the section should include a large amount of content for the best results or you might get PSA's if there isn't enough content to analyze.

[sailorjwd]

Great!

Now maybe I can put back the side bar navigation that was throwing off the targeting.

<the google page has vanished>

[edited by: sailorjwd at 8:58 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2005]

[ronburk]

The idea is interesting but in my opinion is incomplete.

Just "interesting"? Well, you wait for the feature you want, but I've got plenty of use for this feature. Like on the pages that have a couple of occurrences of a word that AdSense seems to incorrectly become obsessed with. Or articles that include analogies to make a point -- and then AdSense pitches me ads related to the analogous topic instead of to the real point of the article.

Or best of all -- maybe I can quit having to do some keyword tweaking to convince AdSense what the real topic is. Like, I could write about traveling to Mars and Venus, and include a little comment to AdSense that says "yeah, I know I only used the phrase 'outer space' twice, but it's rather strongly related to the topic of this article".

I hope this means that Google is now confident enough that their other mechanisms can weed out most AdSense spammers, so they can let real content providers give some hints to guide AdSense. Heh, in fact, I kinda hope using this new mechanism attracts increased attention from the Spam Squad. I mean, you can kinda guarantee all AdSense spammers are going to try this as soon as they hear about it, right?

At last, some hope that the content creator can help get AdSense back on topic when it gets confused. I'm going to try it right now -- sure hope it works!

[linuxguy]

I kinda hope using this new mechanism attracts increased attention from the Spam Squad. I mean, you can kinda guarantee all AdSense spammers are going to try this as soon as they hear about it, right?

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
mesothelioma
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

lol!

[pmkpmk]

<the google page has vanished>

No, but it seems to suffer a DDOS attack from WebmasterWorld members :-) It goes on and off, but usually after a few reloads it's there.

[incrediBILL]

Well, this solves the age old problem of adjusting your HTML to make sure the content is closest to the top of the page to generate good ads.

[Sierra_Dad]

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
mesothelioma
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

lol!

Yep, and then they'll wonder why they get all PSA ads.

[pmkpmk]

adjusting your HTML to make sure the content is closest to the top of the page

... which can now be solved pretty easy with CSS. And I guess it's still a good idea to do, since there are other SE's apart from Google out there who want to index your content.

[Swebbie]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but this is a great example of the ol' free market at work. Yahoo announces YPN and - what's this? - Google suddenly starts rolling out new features for its AS publishers and AW advertisers. Nothing like competition to get things moving in the right direction.