Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have a somewhat complex site that my partner and I are working on. It's basically a blog, but there are a number of sub-blogs, and it's quite complex. Firstly, he's got a blog devoted to articles about geeky things I know little about. I've got a pair of complementary blogs, one of which is a personal blog that I'm not planning on putting Adsense on, and the other that plays host to my article collection.
These three blogs are spread out over two domains.
To complicate things further, my articles blog covers a number of topics. I was going to split the archives up by categories and some of them, I was thinking of promoting as their own subsites, given how comprehensive the article collections are.
How does Adsense work, structurally? Does Google care? Can I put ads on my main page and on the various subpages and have them all target wildly different contexts? What if my main page is generally about what an awesome writer (put any verbed noun in there) I am, and one of my article archive categories is about the Battles of the English Civil War (or any arcane category you like)?
Would there be any problems inherent in that? Especially if the main page simply shows whatever the last article posted was, whether it be about blogging, pineapples, widgets, or harquebusiers? And how much does it complicate things to include my partner's blog, where he's going on about reification and foaf?
Should he apply separately to Adsense? Even though the sites are all hosted on the same server and administrated together?
My main question really boils down to -- how is the targeting done? By page? If I had a whole bunch of pages about Cromwell's Ironside cavalry and then threw in a page about washing machines, would there be any confusion? Are the ads targeted by individual page?
I've read their FAQ and their TOS and still am not sure what the best way of approaching this is, and whether I'm going to have any trouble with this. So, any explanations or help would be greatly appreciated. I'm quite confused.
This has nothing to do with the ad inventory that Google has at the time because an ad relevant to page A may only appear on page B (where it is not relevant) and not on page A. Others here have commented similarly.
You'll just need to put up the code on your sites to see how well it works.
My main question really boils down to -- how is the targeting done? By page? If I had a whole bunch of pages about Cromwell's Ironside cavalry and then threw in a page about washing machines, would there be any confusion? Are the ads targeted by individual page?
Personally, I think that the targetting is weighted with most of the weight given to the page content, on the other hand, the common objects in the page such as a navigation bar, will surely influence the overall targeting. Also when I say content, I mean not only the body text, but also the title and the <h> "headings".
Just for good site structure, since you might be building this from scratch, I would create directories:
i.e:
/civil-war/
/appliances/
I don't think putting in an article about washing machines in a civil-war site is a good fit, then again we are talking about a blog here so everything goes. :)
When you're accepted by AdSense, you can put the AdSense code on any of your sites that comply with the AdSense rules. (You can't use your code on a gambling site, for example.)
You're also welcome to mix and match ad sizes: For example, you could have banners on some pages, leaderboards on others, and skyscrapers on another part of your site. (You just can't "double serve" ads, meaning that--for example--you can't have a banner at the top and a skyscraper along the side of the same page.)
Targeting:
Adsense seems very well able to target ads per page, so if your pages have coherent topics, you'll do fine. Occasionally there's a period between when the bot first identifies a new page and when it does some real crunching, during which you may (or may not) get a site-targeted ad instead. At a page level, that's not great, but overall it seems to work out okay, and it's infrequent enough for me.
Sometimes Adsense totally fails to target an ad, and you have the option (a recent improvement) to display an ad of your choosing in its place. Again, the ratio of this to overall impressions is very small in my case, let's call it "satisfactory." Others have reported higher rates, let's call them "worrisome."
promotion
I've been thinking along the same lines as you re grouping and promotion. I can't say I've really got any magic bullets, but making sites that are groups of related pages has seemed to improve the length of time I hold on to a reader. It's appealing to think that would improve earnings ultimately, but I haven't seen a lot of evidence to support that in my case. So I've been wrestling with how to manage my "editorial diversity" better, mainly from the promotion angle.
I've tweaked a lot on my site since adding Adsense, and evrything has really been aimed at making the pages more attractive to readers (those groupings, better navigation, etc.) versus trying to optimaize for the bots. I didn't really have a reason to promote before adding adsense, but I cranked my impressions up by a factor of 5 over the last 2 months with a little bit of effort. And that's been pretty well rewarded.
So I'd say you're a good candidate, the diversity will tend to smooth out earnings variations* due to fluctuations in advertising for a given topic. When the online harquebus shops spend through their advertising budget or go into the off-season, the revenue from pineapple growers will see you through.
*My analysis of lots of posts here, plus my experience.
Personally, I think that the targetting is weighted with most of the weight given to the page content, on the other hand, the common objects in the page such as a navigation bar, will surely influence the overall targeting.
I've noticed that, too, and it's probably one of the reason why I don't get many PSAs. If Google can't find ads related to keywords in the headings and body text, it usually displays ads related to my navigation and affiliate links. And since those navigation and affiliate links are related to my overall site topics, those "backup ads" are usually for products or services that are likely to interest my readers.
So...
TIP: If you're getting a lot of PSAs, make sure that your navigation links are truly descriptive: e.g., a link to a page on car parts should read "Car Parts" or "Performance Auto Parts," not something cute but obscure like "Hot Rod Hardware."
Sometimes Adsense totally fails to target an ad, and you have the option (a recent improvement) to display an ad of your choosing in its place.
Alternate ads are only displayed in place of PSAs. You do not have the option to display your alternate ads when AdSense simply mistargets but serves a paying ad.
