Canonical-Tag only used by SEOs? Google seems to think so

[cangoou]

Hello!

I have a site (a forum) with the topic of widgets. I implemented AdSense on the site so I got ads about widgets - which is fine so far.

Because the forum-software is not very search-engine friendly, I added the canonical tag yesterday. It was the only thing I changed in the last weeks.

And now - what happens? I get only ads from SEOs - no more ads about widgets!

I thought about posting this in the AdSense-Forum (and if a admin thinks so as well, please move it)... But isn't it a hint that Google somehow thinks all sites with a canonical tag are SEO-related? But why are they giving ads for SEO to someone they think is a SEO? It's very strange.

[edited by: tedster at 4:22 pm (utc) on Apr 29, 2010]
[edit reason] "widgetize" the keywords [/edit]

[1script]

Don't worry about it too much - it is showing SEO ads TO YOU because you've been to SEO-related sites (such as this one) and some ran AdSense. They got your cookie/IP and now know that you are interested in SEO - "interest targeting" I think is the term. Your actual visitors are seeing ads about other stuff that interests them - no less irrelevant to your site - if those ads promise to have a higher CPM than the ads related to the theme of your site.

Again, nothing to worry about - it's normal.

[internetheaven]

it is showing SEO ads TO YOU because you've been to SEO-related sites (such as this one)

Yeah, that has been winding me up no end! Makes it very difficult to do my job across several different industries.

Bit pointless too ... for the rest of the day I'll get ads for a service related to a site I accidentally ended up on due to Google's organic search serving up rubbish!

[Simsi]

Presumably you will be able to disable that "feature" soon when the new EU cookie privacy laws come into place.