AdSense Ad Targeting

How to trigger better targeting

[adfree]

I have played a bit with targeting AS ads better and came to the following observation as of targeting ratio:

Title 30%
First paragraph 20%
Overall theme of site 10%
Page topic, theme 10%
Linkage 10%
Description <10%
H1-H3 <10%

Am I way off in comparison to your experience?

Cheers, Jens

[richmondsteve]

I haven't even thought of trying to assign percentages. But I've noticed that on sites with a text menu of hyperlinks at the top of the page, ads are sometimes targeted to the menu text despite body text unrelated to the menu link titles.

[europeforvisitors]

I've noticed that on sites with a text menu of hyperlinks at the top of the page, ads are sometimes targeted to the menu text despite body text unrelated to the menu link titles.

When AdSense can't find a matching ad for a page on my site, it usually serves what might be called "default" or "theme" ads. Sometimes these reflect my overall topic, but often they seem to be matched to one of the affiliate links in my right margin. In other words, if a page about submarine cruises in the Rhone River doesn't attract any targeted ads, Google will look at the Widgets Europe affiliate link in my right margin and display ads for Widgets Europe and other European widgets vendors that advertise regularly with AdSense.

[adfree]

This is really interesting, I got something similar going on:

If nothing suitable is found on either of my site's pages AS serves the determined site theme relation. If the site scheme is not clear (yet) AS picks links from the top which can be misleading at times. Especially on one site where I got the general info right on top like Affiliates ¦ Ad-Free E-Mail ¦ Support - AS would then feature ads related to Advertising firms or Affiliate marketing, this is when AS screws up my navigational intent...

Any other experiences anyone?

Thanks, Jens

[kwasher]

I've noticed that on sites with a text menu of hyperlinks at the top of the page, ads are sometimes targeted to the menu text despite body text unrelated to the menu link titles.

I can TOTALLY relate to this. I recently put a little blurb up towards the top of my site about a product. Now all my goggle listings and adsense ads are related to this blurb and totally ignores anything else my site is about. Sheesh.

Today, I just went ahead and posted what my site was REALLY about right at the very top of the page, first thing you see. I'm pretty confident that during the next googlebot visit I'll have changed listings.

[adfree]

It's the Mediabot you need to wait for, which is (by G's definition) visting your site any time new pages with AS code are called upon...
Jens

[RoySpencer]

We just got a message from the Adsense team today saying that the mediabot is "theme"-based rather than "keyword" based (although obviously it has to read words to diagnose a theme).
ALSO (since they were responding to our continued nagging about poor ad targeting at our site), they said they are experimenting with new ways for publishers to have more control over the ad targeting.

New member here, BTW. Howdy to all!

[RoySpencer]

...but, to more directly respond to Jens...
Today I was doing some similar experimentation to try to get better targeting. Some things I found were:
1) I can make some rather massive deletions to the content on a page, and still get the same ads.
2) Brand new pages no longer have PSA ads...they have ads that appear to match the overall theme of our site.
3) deleting the meta description and keyword tags DID change the ads
4) In order to get the kinds of ads *I* wanted, I had to delete all content except that which was directly related to the ads I wanted.

IMHO, I doubt the the mediabot algo can be expressed as a linear combination of several factors...I get the impression it is a very nonlinear (and therefore difficult to predict) algorithm.

[europeforvisitors]

IMHO, I doubt the the mediabot algo can be expressed as a linear combination of several factors...I get the impression it is a very nonlinear (and therefore difficult to predict) algorithm.

I'll agree with that. For a long time, my article on Munich's Oktoberfest was displaying AdSense ads for beer taps, kegs, etc. because there was one comment in the article about the mayor of Munich tapping the first keg to open Oktoberfest. There was no reference to taps or kegs in the page title, headline, subheads, first paragraph, and so on; for some reason, the Mediapartnerbot seized on that one half-sentence in the body text. It was almost as if someone had written a program that said, "Grab two words at random from a sentence 80% down in the text" on the theory that no one would be able to reverse-engineer the algorithm. :-)

[paul12345]

I've had this experience:

The names of my site's HTML pages are all preceeded with the identifiers "T1_....", "T2_....", etc... (text page #1, text page #2, etc...).

When I edit and refine a page's HTML the file I view in my browser during testing is of course on my computer but I am also hooked up to the web so Adsense ads get called and shown so I can see how the page really will look.

Clearly a file on my computer has not been indexed by Google.

Many of the Adsense ads which show on these pages drawn off my computer during testing are for:

1) Terminator 3 (or which ever is the number of the latest Arnold Schwartzenegger movie). This movie is often abbreviated as just "T3".

2) I also see ads for "T1" which is some sort of high speed internet hook up.

These topics have absolutely nothing to with the content of my site.

So if Adsense ads are called from a page which has not been indexed by Google, the title is extreemly important in determining which ads are shown.

[ThatAdamGuy]

Well, as I noted in another thread, Google has decided that one word in my site name -- MY name (Adam) -- is the general theme of my site. :(

So I'm getting ads for Adam Widgets, Adams Widget Service, JP Adams Market, seemingly everything except for Adam & Eve :D.

In fairness, I can understand the mediabot's confusion. My main site (which has grown out of an old personal "home page") now has lots and lots of page views, but no narrow focus (it has a variety of topics within a very broad and not-really-lucrative theme).

I'd really really love to be able to tell Mediabot:
- Everything in /foo is about funny wadgets
- Everything in /bar is about wodgets in drama
and so on.

I suppose I could start adding "Adam"-based ads into my AdSense block file, but that's not really going to help Google target stuff any better. If anything, I figure it'll just give me PSAs.

Frankly, I feel bad for these "Adam"-advertisers; even though they're likely getting very few clicks from my visitors, it's almost certainly wasted money. Then again, they're getting an enormous amount of what ends up being free branding. So, I guess it's just Google 'n' me that are losing out with this poor targeting.

Luckily, though, the MAJORITY of my site is targeted reasonably. The "Adam" ads are pretty much in the less-clearly-thematic pages or newer pages (and, sadly, in my in-testing photo gallery pages with nasty URLs), where PSA's once were.

[Hissingsid]

Many of the Adsense ads which show on these pages drawn off my computer during testing are for:

1) Terminator 3 (or which ever is the number of the latest Arnold Schwartzenegger movie). This movie is often abbreviated as just "T3".

2) I also see ads for "T1" which is some sort of high speed internet hook up.

Hi,

Interesting thread. Does anyone know how important file and folder names are once they have been crawled. In other words can you give the Adsense algo a clue about a pages content by means of the words in the in site URL.

Also how does this relate to the assessment of the overall theme of the site. In other words where does Adsense "sense" site theme from. From what Adam has said his domain name is important.

Thanks for any input.

Best wishes

Sid

[adfree]

My overall theme is quite strong, domain contributes to the theme as well. Although: if you diversify at any given page with title and copy I have not recognized any impact/change of folder name. File name might contribute way more than folder IMHO.
Jens

[spud01]

RoySpencer
We just got a message from the Adsense team today saying that the mediabot is "theme"-based rather than "keyword" based (although obviously it has to read words to diagnose a theme).

What do u mean by Theme based?

[kwasher]

I've noticed that on sites with a text menu of hyperlinks at the top of the page, ads are sometimes targeted to the menu text despite body text unrelated to the menu link titles.

I can TOTALLY relate to this. I recently put a little blurb up towards the top of my site about a product. Now all my goggle listings and adsense ads are related to this blurb and totally ignores anything else my site is about. Sheesh.

Today, I just went ahead and posted what my site was REALLY about right at the very top of the page, first thing you see. I'm pretty confident that during the next googlebot visit I'll have changed listings.

Well, my little experiment didnt work. Google seems to have grabbed on to the word RESELLER which I have in the blurb mentioned previously... so I am getting all kinds of ads with the word 'reseller' in them still.

I wonder about my 'blurb' becasue it is posted on my site in the form of a quote
"This widget is great" - My Name, Webmaster

I wonder if I put quotes around the words I -want- Google to pick up on, if it would make a difference.

[adfree]

If you were to find at least some ads within the AS offer that do not relate to reseller, maybe you could stop the reseller URLs within the AS tool?

Worked for me for "ad"-related where I actually wanted to have "ad-free email" related ads.

Finally deleted 50 of them and now the right target seems to be found.

[kwasher]

Yes, perhaps, though I am not totally opposed to the reseller ads as they can be considered to fit into the site theme. The main point is that it was just SO OBVIOUS that this tiny 'blurb' is where Google took its entire lead from, so this looks like a good testing opportunity. I'll play with the page text a bit and see if anything happens.

[ronin]

I've generally found that, unless there are some potentially higher CPC phrases lower down the page, copy towards the top of the document (not the screen) tends to influence the AdSense panels a lot more than copy towards the bottom.

I reconfigured the CSS on some of my pages so that I could write the body of text at the top of the document (makes sense for text-only browsers) and found that the on-page AdSense panels started displaying more relevant ads.

Not only that, but thematically-related pages linked to the pages I had altered also started displaying more relevant ads - even though I had not changed anything on this latter set of pages. I think this suggests that - at least sometimes - the ads shown on a given page may also be influenced by content on linked pages from the same domain.

[Hissingsid]

Hi,

I was just doing some playing around with the preview tool to see if I could get more relevant ads and I noticed that I have a problem with a default page.

If I point the preview tool at [example.com...] I see public service and charity ads. Now if I duplicate that exact same default.htm page and call it randomname.html and submit that to the preview tool I get very relevant ads.

Any ideas if this is because default pages are treated differently or maybe it is because the default page had been previously spidered?

Anyone else noticed this?

Best wishes

Sid

[edited by: Jenstar at 10:59 pm (utc) on Jan. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] examplified URL [/edit]

[adfree]

My guess would be that the default doc could be considered carrying the determined site theme much more than any other file.
But I might be off on that one...
Cheers, Jens

[ogletree]

I have a strange problem. My site is about a subject in Texas. The site name has Texas in it the title has Texas in it and the word texas is all over the place. I still get ads for other states on that subject and none with Texas in it.

[linear]

ronin, I was about to post pretty much exactly what your post says. CSS helps get the nav stuff away from the top of your page, but lets it be on top of the rendered view of your page.

[ogletree]

Well I got an email back from Google after complainng about what I said earlier in this post. They said the looked at my site and I was getting relavant ads. They say they may only have a limited number of ads for Texas. I know that is not true. Even if it was I would be happy to have only one or two ads related to Texas then all those from other states. My visitors are almost all from Texas and are looking for Texas ads. I am making money but I made the site to help people in Texas.

[ogletree]

I started blocking some of the state ads as I saw them and that seems to have cleared things up. My ads are much better now. I still get a few state specific ones.

[europeforvisitors]

I'm getting ads for hotels in St. Martin on a page about Germany. Why? Because the mediapartnerbot is seeing the word "accommodations" and the name "Martin Luther" on the page and making a leap of geographic if not Christian faith. :-)

If the ads' URLS pointed to individual hotels or booking sites in St. Martin, I could simply block them, but the URLs point to general hotel-booking sites--and it seems like overkill to block the advertiser's ads for all of Europe because of two ads.

[ronin]

europeforvisitors> Try sticking the word Unterkunft somewhere on the page and see if your ads don't sharpen up...

[adfree]

Blocking ads should only be a last resort, most of the time this kind of tweaking helps in terms of SEOing your own pages quite nicely.

Afterall: mediabot must have some knowledge about how bots in general (Gbot in particular) want to read pages. Doing well with ad targeting will help you doing well with SERPS in general.

Therefore I consider this tweaking exercise pure SEO for all kind of games out there. Love it.

Cheers, Jens

[europeforvisitors]

Blocking ads should only be a last resort, most of the time this kind of tweaking helps in terms of SEOing your own pages quite nicely.

Afterall: mediabot must have some knowledge about how bots in general (Gbot in particular) want to read pages. Doing well with ad targeting will help you doing well with SERPS in general.

It isn't that simple. Google and AdSense work quite differently, because they have different purposes. Google's job is to serve up the most relevant search listings when a user searches on a phrase; AdSense's job is to serve up ads that complement a page's content. The latter is the more difficult job of the two.

To use an example, Google does a perfectly adequate job of serving up pages about St. Martin hotels if you search on "St. Martin hotels," because--at the most basic level--all it has to do is find pages that include the phrase "St. Martin Hotels" and make sure those pages are in the top few dozen search results. With AdSense, things are trickier. Context becomes more important, even for the most basic functionality. AdSense obviously can't deal with context, to judge from the "St. Martin Hotels" ads that I see on a page about accommodations in the German monastery where Martin Luther took his vows.

Similarly, if a user is searching on information about ATMs in Europe, Google can be confident of dealing relevant results by looking for pages that contain the phrase "ATMs in Europe" in the title, anchor text, body text, etc. (One can argue about how the pages should be ranked, but the basic task of finding pages about ATMs in Europe isn't too difficult.) AdSense's job is trickier, because it needs to determine whether the page is geared to consumers or the banking industry--a task that it clearly can't perform reliably, since I continue to see ads for ATM equipment and supplies in an article on using ATMs in Europe. No amount of SEO "tweaking" is going to help AdSense make the right decision-- partly because AdSense can't handle context, and partly because ad bids, ad inventory, and ad clickthrough rates come into play when AdSense tries to match ads to a page.

AdSense's job is obviously easier in cases where the topic of a page is a direct match for ads that are in inventory (e.g., ads for "Cruiseco cruises" on a review of a Cruiseco cruise or an ad for "Elbonian rail passes" in an article about Elbonian rail passes or even Elbonian rail travel). Sometimes, matching ads to a page is a no-brainer. But on an editorial site, especially, such convenient pairings aren't going to happen all the time--and off-topic ads will continue to be a problem until Google lets publishers supply clues when they're needed to prevent mismatches between ads and content.

[adfree]

Thanks for pointing this out, I wasn't all too deep with my assumption I guess.

Your insight and experience shared will help to understand the more complex nature of ad targeting.

Thanks again, Jens

[brycen]

I would, of course, love to supply Google with clues as to what my page is "really about", and more importantly what type of ads visitors are likely to care about.

But, if Google did that, what kind of abuse would follow?