Forum Moderators: martinibuster
First: a big thank you for the help I received here in past topics. I have found lots of practical answers and inspiration in the topics at WebmasterWorldorld.
One of the topics that caught my attention was Brett's article on theme pyramids [searchengineworld.com].
I actually translated my entire Dutch site into English, put it into a Mysql db, wrote a web front-end following the theme pyramid article and here I am, almost ready to launch my site (how very exciting! :-) ), but still wondering how my theme pyramid is going to influence Adsense targetting.
I decided to use the pyramid structure to get better rankings in search engines. Only some days ago I realized that this structure might solve some targetting issues that I have on my 'old' Dutch site.
On my Dutch site all pages (security widgets, widget building, widget troubleshooting, cheap widgets) were on the same level (/level1/). I am under the impression this causes bad targetting for Adsense, but I am not very sure about this.
Does someone here have any experience with Adsense targetting on sites using the pyramid structure as opposed to sites that don't use the pyramid structure?
I find the biggest factor on whether I get well matched ads is related to the topic. Some topics just do a lot better as more matching ads are available.
It was interesting to reread Brett's article. I find my root and second level pages do better than he seems to think they would. Maybe on an educational site more people link to the root page. Overall though, the pyramid seems to be a good way to design a site in terms of helping the googlebot find all the pages and it helps visitors find their way around your site as well.
I'm curious if anyone else has some thoughts on the pyramid.
"Is the site structure a factor in Adsense targetting or are ads chosen based on page contents only?"
I added Adsense ads to my new site a few hours ago and up till now Adsense targetting is very good. I use a wide skyscraper on every page and at least 4 out of 5 ads are targetted really nicely.
This nice targetting could be (partly) caused by the pyramid structure, but on the other hand as Annej says, there are a lot of other factors too, such as ad availability (high for my topics) and the way my pages are written (highly targetted).
I am surprised to know what you think about the influence of site structure on Adsense targetting. Since site structure is a factor in the PR algo I thought it would also be a factor in Adsense targetting.
i've heard it said here, that the 'theme' of a 'site' can influence the ads, but i've seen no evidence of that. (although the domain name may be a factor that has been confusing people into thinking that the theme of a site is a factor)
from what i have seen adsense works entirely with on page factors, not off page.
Some members here have presented anecdotal evidence that ad matching is based to at least some degree on off page factors - namely link title text.
On my site, for example, I have an affiliate link for a company called "[transportation mode] [continent]," and I've been getting AdSense ads for that company and its competitors all over my site for the past year.
Another interesting thing: Every time I feature an article on [type of waterway] cruising on my home page, ads for travel agencies that represent [type of waterway] cruising turn up on my home page--and there's often a lag after I remove the blurb, so that I may keep seeing ads for [type of waterway] cruising for days after the keywords have been removed from the page.
I do think that Google keeps a block or two or three of "default ads" for a site in reserve, because it's hard to believe that--for example--the same "¦transportation mode] [continent]" affiliate link would catch Google's attention on scores of pages that don't have page-targeted ads on any given day. Such reserve or default ads may not be based on "theme" per se, but in effect they're "theme ads"--at least on my site, where the site's name includes a word that's also in most of the default ads and the previously mentioned affiliate link.
topr8 wrote:from what i have seen adsense works entirely with on page factors, not off page.
Some members here have presented anecdotal evidence that ad matching is based to at least some degree on off page factors - namely link title text.
yes i'm aware that some memebers think that, but i also think that things are said in this forum that are just rehashes of what others have said and so on, rather than being based on first hand observation, i'm not saying that in this instance i'm right or they are wrong, just that my informed opinion is as i said.
i would at least partly concur with europeforvisitors thoughts on this matter, and certainly ads can be 'out of date' after changes to a page have been made, so ads may be stored in memory for a while (in a manner of speaking) - these ads could be used on a different page for some reason, but if that is the case there is no reason to suppose that a theme or off-page factors are being considered.
That is why sites that have a strong theme may have pages with little content on them to target ads that get PSA's. If a theme was used then google could place ads using its knowledge of the site theme.
Aside from the obvious good rank sans backlinks, it is interesting as a playground. It gets 3500-4000 visits per day from SEs.
I added a page to the domain, not linked, with the same adsense account. No content. It showed on-site-theme ads.
I added unrelated context to the page, semantically crafted. Same ads. I added outbound links on the new page's theme, adjusted adsense, and still no change - domain themed ads. After several days, the ads changed to a mix of site-theme and on-page. I tried this experiment again and saw the same behaviour. The page sees a mix of ads for the site's theme and the page's theme (they are very distict from each other).
Since the domain name itself is non-thematic for either contextual basis, I don't see how the domain name (words) could be influencing AdSense ad selection.
I believe my experience suggests that AdSense has a store of the contextual basis for a domain, and uses it along with on-page factors to select ads. Sure that site basis would be influenced by linking text on the site, outbound links, etc.
I wonder if I move the page to a new domain, would it lose those site-themed ads altogether? What if I moved it to another domain that laready had an established site-theme?
Not sure further play it worthwhile... I am happy playing with the semantics.
There is another thread talking about the promised increase in relevance:
[webmasterworld.com...]
My most successful topic is the history of a hobby/craft. The ads are for both the hobby supplies and the finished product. None of the ads are related to history. But the ads are of interest to the people who visit the pages on that topic since many are also involved in the hobby/craft.
OTOH other history related topics such as 'women's history' have no ads because there is no product to be sold. I find that Amazon Books are best for the topics that can't be targeted with adsense. Amazon doesn't earn me as much but at least I am offerning a service in helping visitors find books related to the topic.
