Religious and suicide help ads showing showing on home page

and this isn't in the content

[hannamyluv]

I am only asking this because it is driving me up the wall.

I have a blog that is comedic in nature about a subject that is popular and for the most part light-hearted, and in no way related to church, death, suicide or the need for motivational help. Yet on the homepage, that is all that shows.

The internal pages of the site all show the correct type of ads, it is just the homepage (where I get the most traffic) that this weird thing is happening.

What possible reason could this be happening. The site is not set up to make money, but when I am writing something that is suppose to be funny, it is a bit disconcerting to see the ad say "Thinking about suicide?" or "Have you let jesus into your life?"

I am starting to fill up my competative ad filter, which I would rather save for filtering sites for the sites I do make money off.

Is there any way to get adsense to reasses this page?

[Hobbs]

see if the words jesus or kill are in your text first.

[hannamyluv]

I did that, and yes, as it is a blog, their is a alot of "Jesus christ, why did I do something that stupid!" and "I killed my plant, again", but when these same posts are looked at on their individual page, the ads are correct and related to the industry.

That's what I don't get. If it was happening across the board, I would figure it was the language, but it only happens on the homepage.

[vincevincevince]

Perhaps you are being site targetted?

[hannamyluv]

I suspect that. I wasn't sure if site targeted ads would show up across the site though. Some, but not all, of the links I have gone through so far have similar tracking code in the landing page url that makes me think that they are from the same company.

Someone mentioned that they wanted a filter for entire site targeted campaigns. If I have been targeted, I second that. This is a bit rediculous.

[Hobbs]

instead of sailing against the wind and blocking, edit out those words and see if the problem is solved.

[hannamyluv]

edit out those words

I don't want to do that. It's my personal blog and I am not going to censor myself for the grace of adsense. The blog works because I curse, rant and talk about how to exterminate pests. Taking those words out would kill the mood.

I'll take it off the homepage before I do that. I was just trying to see why this effect was only happening on the homepage and not the internals and if there was some way to change it without having to change the site itself.

[trillianjedi]

I used the word "panther" on a technical page once (product name) and was getting ads for Xmas cards featuring cats on the front (this was in September too lol).

The easiest way to deal with this kind of poor targetting is to section target problem pages, or put the ads you don't want in your blocked domain list.

TJ

[Hobbs]

I feel your pain, it is occurring only on the home page probably due to the frequency of repetition of those words there than anywhere else, I doubt if your kind of blog can use this, but lookup 'section targeting'.

Otherwise restrict home page ads to Referrals only.

[hannamyluv]

section targeting

I think that will work well enough. (didn't know about that. I should really wander around here more often) I'll have the adsense focus on just the nav bar on the homepage and that should force it to show generally related ads on the homepage.

[celgins]

I agree. Section targetting is your best bet.

Had a similar issue last week and it was cleared up through section targeting tags. Google's instruction notes that it may take up to two weeks for the targeting to be effective, but I noticed the change after a few days.

[hunderdown]

You could also try an adlinks block on the homepage instead of an adblock, in addition to section targeting.

With section targeting, give the bot as much content as possible to chew on--a nav bar may not do it.

[onlineleben]

I'll take it off the homepage before I do that.

Try out an other ad network for your homepage. Yahoo?

[Alex_Miles]

"Thinking about suicide?" or "Have you let jesus into your life?"

You don't mention Adwords, do you? :)

[vincevincevince]

Perhaps the words which are skewing the targetting can be replaced with javascript snippets to return the same word, or even just broken up using a span element.

Je<span>sus</span> as a search-and-replace throughout the database.

[hunderdown]

vince, now that is a clever idea. No need to censor yourself, then.

[Green_Grass]

"Section targetting is your best bet."

For me, section targetting takes 2-3 weeks to have an effect. And seems to work for a month or two before it goes off target.

I don't know why.

[eeek]

For me, section targetting takes 2-3 weeks to have an effect. And seems to work for a month or two before it goes off target.

I've also noticed section targeting will sometimes appear to stop working after a while. Could Google have a bug?

[Leva]

I've had issues with religious ads showing on my site that were deliberately targeted by certain religious denominations. My site is about fantasy and science fiction & certain people were targeting words like "witchcraft" and "wizard" and "cloning" and others -- basically normal words you'd use discussing your average fantasy or SF book or movie. The CTR on the ads was horrible, and the sites users complained.

[Khensu]

Here is a little technique I have been saving to post.

Go to the Adwords keyword tool and put in "family widgets"

set it for "cost & ad position estimates" & get more keywords at $5.00, if someone is paying $5 for search they are probably paying $1 - $2 on content or in that area.

Now click get more keywords, click estimated average CPC hit the triangle for large up and select the top 20 keywords.

Now edit out anything that would in theory not really work then switch the words around to best suit your topics.

Follow as much of the following form as you can relative to the code that your are using, hopefull this is a non SERPs vital page .

<head>

<meta name="keywords" content="discount family widgets, family widget, family widgets, family fun widgets, widgets for families, family widgets spots, family widgets planning">

<meta name="Subject" content="discount family widgets, family widget, family widgets, family fun widgets, widgets for families, family widgets spots, family widgets planning">

<meta name="description" content="discount family widgets, family widget, family widgets, family fun widgets, widgets for families, family widgets spots, family widgets planning">

<style>discount family widgets</style>
<style>family widget</style>
<style>family widgets</style>
<style>family fun widgets</style>
<style>widgets for families</style>
<style>family widgets spots</style>
<style>family widgets planning</style>

</head>

<body>

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->

blah,blah, blah family widgets

<!-- google_ad_section_end(weight=ignore) -->

</body>

and Wala $1 clicks or what is relative to the topic/cpc you chose. Granted I have very little text on my pages because it is a download site so I don't really know if you can totally defeat the effect of the body text. I would stay pretty close to your topic as to not give the user a "bad of false experience" and maximize your audience response. If you don't have a high paying niche you can at least get the maximum dollar out of it by choosing the most dollar value keywords, even if it is 30 cents vs a nickel.

[edited by: Khensu at 10:29 pm (utc) on July 17, 2006]