Any correlation with Google Adsense Matched Content and rankings?

[chrisv1963]

I am using "Google Adsense Matched Content" (2 rows) at the bottom of each page on my 2 websites that got badly hit by the August 1st update. I have 2 other websites with the same amount and position of ads, but no Google Adsense Matched Content unit. These 2 websites were not affected by the update. Does Google think that the matched content unit is a huge ad? Is this killing my rankings? Anyone with similar experiences?

[keyplyr]

Any correlation with Google Adsense Matched Content and rankings?

Not directly, but there are numerous related indicators that may affect your rankings.

You do need to follow AdSense program policies [support.google.com]

You need to have sufficient content in relation to how many ads & those ads should not be close to any active links (click points.)

The Mobile-first index [webmasterworld.com] is also in transition and sites are still being evaluated one by one.

[Broaster]

keyplyr
what is your opinion on the amount of ads you should have?

Google adsense removed their limit, also when I put that auto ad code sometimes they put 8 ads on there

should I just remove the auto ads code

I noticed many website big name sites have many ads will google punish them as well?

[keyplyr]

what is your opinion on the amount of ads you should have?

Should? You mean "can" have?

I'm probably not the right person to ask about how many ads can be on a page. I think most ads ruin a webpage. It depends on what type of site you have and the reason you have that site.

I use ads on about 70% of my pages, but they are not intrusive and I block many in Adsense's Ad review center because I don't like either their message or I don't like the look of them.

I don't use auto ads.

[JS_Harris]

I use a matched content unit at the bottom of pages and was not hit with a traffic loss in the Aug update. I also have a lot of pages that my google search console says are only linked to from 1 page on my site as a result of using their matched unit. I didn't interlink from within the majority of the articles as this did nothing the similar content units couldn't do, back when I built most of the site(2006-2008).

I also have no categories, the site is some 400 pages in size and I have a "sitemap" page with a list of all pages curated in a way that tells users which my top choices are. It's an actual page, not an xml sitemap. This ensures all my pages are connected. I let the matched content unit do the heavy lifting of deciding what's related and my analytics shows me a decent/low bounce rate.

I wouldn't put as much emphasis on having a homepage with a category to everything as was once needed, traffic from search comes in directly to URLs and visitors want to see content, not everything else the site has to offer.

My best pages are linked from the index page, the text is hand written and not an aggregate of the most recent posts because there is no CMS used. The site kindof blows a lot of what webmasters hold as mandatory out of the water(must interlink a lot, must have categories etc) but take that with a grain of salt, it's an old site with a long backlink profile. A long history of solid backlinks seems to cure all.

[universenet]

I am just curious...who is using adsense matched contents?
And if using enabled earning or not?
And what are experience about