GOOGLE ADS are not matching up with my content

[george2004]

the ads that adsense is putting is really not what my site is all about, how can i change that?

[vredungmand]

I have the same problem too. There is very little text on my site but some lively Java applets.

I am currently looking into adding meta description / meta keywords to my pages. I as far as I can tell keywords are ignored by the standard Google bot but it seems like the advertisement service uses input from its own bot (the one identifying itself as "MediaPartners").

I started an experiment yesterday with two more or less corresponding pages.

I will post some results within a couple of days.

[ronin]

I have the same problem too. There is very little text on my site

Put more text on your site.

[Jenstar]

Lack of content is a major issue. In fact, you may end up getting a warning from Google to remove AdSense from pages with little content on them.

How long have the ads been up? People generally report better targeted ads after a while. And themed ads might kick in as well, displaying ads for the overall theme of your site, as opposed to ads that are specifically targeted to the content on a single page.

[paybacksa]

Is there any way to frankly discuss with Google how to target ads for a site? Automated algos are cool, but this is business and in some cases a webmaster knows very well who the audience is, while the text content doesn't show that. A few comments with a google rep would lead to some very high CTRs.

For example (my case), an online interactive quiz site may be promoted very heavily offline in very targeted trade magazines. The site includes additional offline feedback mechanism and offline viral marketing, such that I am very much aware of the demographics of my vistors. Of course as a website it is also fairly prominant on the Internet and sees a good amount of referral traffic from adult (non-sexual) websites. The page text is all about the game, the rules, the reasons, etc and has very little DIRECT relationship to the audience demographics.

The AdSense ads are ridiculous and see a <1% CTR. However, if the target was preset to restaurants, hotels, business facilities, and all the other stuff that tarveling salesmen buy (they are huge consumers and pay premium prices) the ads would be very effective.

I am not interested in changing my site to make it look like a business travel site, nor should I have to create links to truly unrelated websites or hubs. It seems to me a phone call to Google should be able to fix this...?

[europeforvisitors]

A phone call to Google won't change a thing. AdSense ads are matched automatically to the page's text via an algorithm--period. This means you'll have to take potluck or find another revenue source for pages that don't have enough relevant text for the Mediabot crawler to digest and identify.

[loanuniverse]

The whole program is based on contextual advertising. Unfortunately, I don't think calling will do any good. There are competing programs that might be coming online within the next six months to a year that would allow certain amount of "webmaster help" in the targeting.

I doubt that Google would ever move on that direction.

I also doubt that the competing programs will be able to match the revenue that adsense has provided to a lot of publishers.

[vredungmand]

This really is a problem with the Adsense service: There is a large number of sites out there that simply do not have any text - photography sites, web games ...

I really hope that this can be solved with html meta or similar mechanism. I mean we have already been accepted as good content providers so abuse of meta keywords etc. should not be a problem.

[jomaxx]

In the quiz example above, I see lots of opportunity to monetize the resulting traffic. However putting ads on the actual page where people are doing the quiz seems like a waste anyways. Who's going to be looking at ads when they're doing an activity like that?

As for photo/image galleries, if there is ALT text or meta tag text that is genuinely relevant to the images, just put it on the page in plain view.

[loanuniverse]

While it might mean a lot of work to insert relevant text on each page. You could use SSI to add a couple of sentences defining your site that would show up on all of your pages.

Do you have a slogan? If the slogan is not something that defines what your site is about, then it might be time to think up a new one.

Just an idea.

P.S: Do not go overboard as to make the site ugly or go with hidden text or you might get in trouble with the visitors or the SE.

[ronin]

This really is a problem with the Adsense service: There is a large number of sites out there that simply do not have any text

Yes, but AdSense isn't for sites that do not have any text. AdSense is for sites which have a lot of text.

And to you as the publisher, AdSense is not providing a service. You are providing the service. AdSense is your client.

[vredungmand]

ronin: I make contents for my visitors not for Adsense. The web is not just text, Adsense is missing surious business if it cannot handle that.

[davthp]

" I make contents for my visitors not for Adsense. The web is not just text, Adsense is missing surious business if it cannot handle that."

OK then take adsense off!

[vredungmand]

davthp: Unfortunately you are right. Ultimately the consequence of this will be that content providers will find another advertisement broker that handles non textual contents.

However I am still hoping to find a solution with Google Adsense i.e. by using html metadata.

[Jenstar]

AdSense is a CONTEXTUAL advertiser, so its ads are based upon text on a page. I don't think they will be offering any kind of targeting for non-text-content anytime soon.

Targeting ads using meta tags alone leaves far too much open for abuse. Someone could easily have a media page about a video game, but use meta tags for a high paying keyword area that is completely unrelated to the video game.

[vredungmand]

Jenstar: That was what I meant by us - content providers - already been accepted as good content providers. We go through a screening process and we have accepted a TOS that leaves us completely at the mercy of Google. The problem of fraudlent or non thrustworthy content providers is handled there.

BTW I have the opposite problem too: I have a fairly popular web game - Taleban vs. Robot (a bomberman clone). Because there is a high ranking keyword in its title, Adsense is exclusively showing ads for industrial robots.

If I had the option then I would really like to provide guidance for the mediabot, so it would actually show relevant ads for other gaming sites, toys etc.

I am not looking to exploit Adsense.

[dwhite]

Most of my site is targeted well by Adsense, but I have a page rich in text that displays ads which are completely unrelated. This is thanks to an important keyword which has two very different meanings.

It's a shame, because one of my other pages has the exact ads that I would have wanted for the first page. But it has only a fraction of the visitors going to it.

The use of metadata sounds like a good idea to me. Although the idea is potentially open to abuse, the point is, webmasters could abuse the system by creating these extra 'spammy' pages anyway, and then putting Adsense on those.

[level80]

I run a site about computer games. Although most of the Adsense ads are targeted well - for some unusual games they are targeted based on words on the page. So for instance a page about a game called Oregon Trail 3 - as it has a cheat to type in and get more cash - all the Adsense ads are about gift ideas and competitions. The Pirates of the Carribbean page shows an ad for a Love Actually DVD (very strange that one), the Theme Hospital page shows an ad for education in developing countries (why?) and in the past on the pages involving games about robots etc I've seen ads for various engineering firms.

Most of the time the targeting is pretty accurate though. I just think that the Adsense bot takes things too literally at the moment.

[richmondsteve]

level80, I think we as publishers should expect some sort of error rate with the ad matching. It can be frustrating, but without human review I think there will always be some error rate, though the matching may improve over time and actually seems to me to have improved since launch. I look at it this way - a small percentage of AdSense impressions across all publishers is probably not matched well. Many of these publishers had either not shown ads prior to AdSense or were showing non-related ads on many pages before anyway - mortgage ads, credit report ads, domain hosting ads, etc. AdSense with a low error rate is better than the no-AdSense alternative.

[europeforvisitors]

I think it would be useful if a publisher could provide "helper" keywords (either positive or negative) to prevent mismatches on text pages. Such keywords could be used to nudge or steer the automated contextual ad matching, not to bypass it altogether.

Example: In an article on using ATMs in Europe, I get ads for ATM equipment and supplies. If I could include negative keywords for "equipment" and "supplies," that would wipe out an entire category of inappropriate ads (which is a lot more efficient than my trying to block several advertisers by domain and having other banking-supply advertisers take their place).

For positive keywords, there could be a limiting factor built in that would prevent my keywords from overriding the algorithm completely. In other words, in an article on Munich's Oktoberfest, I could include keyphrases for "Munich hotels," "Oktoberfest beer," or whatever else I might consider to be appropriate, and the algorithm would take those into consideration. But if I tried to introduce "Viagra" or "debt consolidation" via the helper-keywords meta attribute, Google would reject the suggested keywords as being off-topic. (Google could even maintain a list of the most abused keywords and keyphrases to help in filtering out inappropriate terms.)

I don't think it's realistic to expect that AdSense will ever let publishers dictate ad keywords or keyphrases for pages without text. AdSense is a product that leverages Google's technical competence in text-based search, not a general-purpose ad network.

[paybacksa]

Jenn said that [if it wasn't algo-based conTEXTual] one cmight manipulate metatags to get high-paying ads which are unrelated to the content. Since AdSense pays per click, how would that be a problem?

If the ads were not of interest, they wouldnot be clicked. If they are of interest, then there is no argument that the ads were appropriately placed.

?

[loanuniverse]

Since AdSense pays per click, how would that be a problem?

It is a problem because the program is sold to the advertisers as being contextual either in SERPs or in sites. It is a widely held belief, that this type of advertising provides a "better qualified lead" than indiscriminatory "Run of network" ads.

If you have enough impressions, you will eventually get clicks no matter how different your topic is from your ads, but advertisers might not be willing to pay what they are paying for those clicks.

It is all about the customer, and I don't think we are Google's customers.

[jomaxx]

IMO, fishing for high-bid ads is usually a self-defeating process because the click rate is so much lower than for ads that are properly targeted. Unfortunately there is no shortage of publishers who don't comprehend this and would rather rely on bored, accidental or fake clicks on super-high-paying ads. This kind of traffic brings the whole program into disrepute.

By the way, vredungmand, the screening process is extremely superficial. Google isn't saying your site (or my site) is "good" when they accept you into the program, merely that the site you entered on your application conforms to the terms of service. Many of us would like them to apply a higher level of scrutiny before a site is allowed to run AdSense.