New Annoyance: Ads not in English

[wizarddave]

All of my sites are in English exclusively. Last week I had to filter an ad that, although appearing to be contextually accurate, was displaying on my site in French.

I just now had to filter an ad showing in Polish. It also appeared to be contextually correct, but what good is that if I'm displaying ads that never have a chance to be clicked on?

This is starting to get out of hand. It seems I'm having to add to the filters list daily. Is someone asleep at the switch at G?

BTW: How big is your filter list? And do you ever go back and remove old listings to prevent your list from getting too big?

[wizarddave]

ARGGH! I just got off from posting this and go back to my site and now the very same page is being targeted by an ad that's totally off topic and not even worded in proper grammar!

Just yesterday I had to filter a targeted ad and now here I am filtering one again, just minutes after adding the Polish ad to the list.

I am *not* having a happy Thursday so far...

[hunderdown]

You might just try ignoring it. No one will click on it, and it will stop appearing. I took that approach when some wildly off-target ads for dating services started appearing on my children's book-related site. I suspected that the advertizer had bid on many keywords, and the algorithm had dutifully given them a trial. The ads were gone the next day.

I have fewer than 20 URLs in my filter list. I have removed some from time to time. I try to keep it short.

[cws3di]

I have noticed an issue with French ads, too. Almost all of my cached pages display French ads. The caches are usually time-stamped as wee hours of the morning, so it has not concerned me much.

Maybe G is testing something?

I have never seen these Fench ads myself, on the site, during the day. Only seen in cache.

[wizarddave]

Hunderdown: Perhaps I should learn how to try, but I cannot ignore these. I believe it makes my site look stupid, and therefore, myself look like a moron by association.

I might as well dump AS and display the "Punch the Clown" ads...

[wizarddave]

It gets worse. I just checked out my new targeted ad (by cutting and pasting the URL, not by clicking on it) and I see that it's an ad for the "secrets" to making money with Google Adwords. The name "google" is actually part of the advertiser's domain name. Is this a good thing? How could G allow this?

[url of advertiser by request in sticky mail]

[hunderdown]

I believe it makes my site look stupid, and therefore, myself look like a moron by association.

I know what you mean, but I think that if it makes anyone look stupid, it's Google. Remember it says "Ads by Google" right above the stupid ads....

[wizarddave]

Geeks (like us :) ) see that and understand the distinction, but I don't believe the vast unwashed web site readers do.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Hi all -

If you're seeing ads targeted to the wrong language, I have a few suggestions. First, make sure there is enough text-based content on the page in the site's primary language.

If there's lots of text-based content, it may be a deeper troubleshooting issue. If you'd like to send me a sticky mail with the URL, I'll investigate further and let you know how to correct the problem.

Cheers,

ASA