Targeting is back! Yee Hah!

..but I'm knocking on wood just in case

[icedowl]

I was just perusing my site and it has the best targeting I've seen since I started with AdSense. :) I sure hope this is here to stay.

Anyone else seeing this miracle on their site?

[Duke_of_Url]

Hi Ice

I'll certainly look out for it! curiously a long established site of mine, with ads on many pages, refuses (since Fri 16th) to show anything but PSA ads on the homepage. Lower pages are spot on, but the home page refuses to show relevant ads for me. Others I've spoken to say theyre seeing proper ads on my homepage, but I'm not seeing them despite refreshing the page, clearing cookies and ctrl-F5ing etc. A channels report backs up the fact that some people are seeing PSA and others relevant ads. Hope it sorts itself out!

DoU

[adfree]

G is certainly experimenting a lot these days which is in fact visible in the varying results we all see. I get much better targeting for a while now, last couple of days fluctuating, yesterday being one of the best days, therefore EPC skyrocketing!

[europeforvisitors]

Targeting is worse than usual on my home page this morning.

[mipapage]

<whine>
I hope that targeting is the excuse, 'cause earnings on our one and only site with adsense are down close to 100% for 2004!
</whine>

[rravenn]

durant,

I just checked your site and the targeting from here is spot on.

RvN

[rubenski]

I see a lot of fluctuation too. My site is in Dutch. When I placed a new page in English in SITEROOT/english/ Google displayed ads for 'language courses' and 'translation' on my entire site for two days, while my site is about computers and internet.:D I am actually glad Google is experimenting with it's ad service, because it is not as intelligent as many like to believe.

[europeforvisitors]

RvN:

It fluctuates quite a bit. I looked now, and the ads were fine, but earlier today the ads on my home page were all for Venice (presumably because one of the blurbs was for a Venice article). And for some reason I was seeing Thailand ads on some of my pages last night even though the words "Thailand," "Thai," or even "Siam" or "The King and I" weren't anywhere in sight.

[Chndru]

I am kinda hanging on the idea that they let loose targetting once a while, to catch those "illegal" clicks.

[linear]

I seem to have one "lightning rod" page that attracts horribly mistargeted ads. It's not really a very popular page, so I keep it (perhaps for the same reason you can't resist picking at a scab...).

Today it's alternating between flexible circuit boards and Gay love spells/bisexual dating services. Neither is even close the page topic.

Site-wide, targeting is what I would call good, which is the usual situation. My CTR is markedly up for the day, but I'm not willing to declare that a "trend" just yet.

[asinah]

europeforvisitors,
I am facing the same problems as you do but I have rent a cars all over my sites. Banned them all and it looks now ok. I do still face some challenges on our Mideast Travel guides were Israeli websites are all over the site advertised, specially for our hotels in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan and Kuwait but things looks much better as last week.

Would you mine sticky me your url?

[icedowl]

Good thing I wasn't holding my breath. It's fluctuating today between general and targetted ads. Still, some improvement.

[Need3lives]

Is anyone else noticing greater delays in targeting showing up on new pages added?

Previously AdSense would spider a new page being added and receiving an impression within hours. Often, within minutes. Occasionally, it might take 12-24 hours. I now have at least 6 new pages that have been up, and getting page views daily, for at least 4 days without even some semblence of targeted ads appearing. Most are receiving PSAs yet, or general ads that broadly match the site, but for which there is no mention of the keywords on those specific pages.

[europeforvisitors]

No PSAs, but I'm seeing ads for U.S. dog-walking and petsitting services in an article about Venice, Italy walking tours that I published about 48 hours ago. So Google is crawling my new pages; it just can't determine what they're about. :-)

Another thought on mistargeting: I get the impression that Google is looking for phrases that are buried deep in the body text, possibly to avoid being tricked by deceptive page titles or headlines. Either that, or (as another member has suggested) it's looking at all the keywords on a page and is grabbing the ones that match high-bid ads. Unfortunately, that approach can results in ads that are wildly off-topic or that are related to something that's mentioned only in passing, as in a blurb for an article within the site.

[EVOrange]

Chndru, I like this theory. Hadn't thought of that before, but considering some of the mis-targets on my ads sometimes, it's the only thing making sense. I mean, my site is wine, from where comes Czech Republic calling cards?

EVO

[Sunflux]

Interesting... right this instant targeting is looking better. The "close but completely wrong" ad category that had invaded my site in April is still around, but pages that were hopelessly stuck showing 100% of those ads are now displaying a better mixture of those with "good" ads. As a result, I'm seeing a lot more variety on pages, and on-topic ads I hadn't seen before...

[varya]

They keep claiming that they don't serve the ads based on keywords, but I can't see another explanation for why my review and study resources for a novel about a 14th century Scotsman keeps producing ads for renting French and English castles.

[icedowl]

I'm seeing a lot more variety on pages, and on-topic ads I hadn't seen before

Me too. It isn't perfect yet, and still fluctuates quite a bit, but I feel like I'm seeing a light at the end of a tunnel... and it isn't an oncoming train!

I'm finding that the targeting is much better for my site during the late afternoon/evening hours. Fortunately, that is when most of my traffic hits.

[Macro]

On my sites I don't even have to see the actual ads to know when the targeting is good or bad - I can tell it from the sharp movements of a normally fairly high CTR.

CTR has been pretty low for most of the month but did rise yesterday to almost pre-April levels, so they did serve some targeted ads yesterday.

Maybe they are using badly targeted ads to catch out click fraud as suggested earlier. I just wish they don't use it so much :(

[linear]

After reading this and similar threads, I'm pretty convinced G is doing some "A/B testing" with changes taking place more often than once a day. For the past few days I seem to fill up my "earnings bucket" by afternoon, and not too many more dollars arrive later, even though my clicks increment. This sort of thing has previously been attributed to different stats on the page updating at different times/frequencies. At the moment I'm leaning toward the former interpretation.