Irrelevant adsense

I walk the line

[Haecceity]

Kinda weird. I just started using adsense a week ago, and I was impressed by how relevant the ads were to my niche. Then today the ads on my home page were a mixture: sheet music for a famous (dead) country singer and wildlife photos.

Even odder, the reason I spotted this was because my eCPM for my home page had shot up to well over $30 and I went to take a look. I'm not sure whether to be displeased at having irrelevant links or ecstatic because the punters are so keen to click on them.

The only reason I can think for having these ads is that my domain name has the word "wild" in it, and Google is somehow ignoring the page content. At least that theory explains the wildlife pics, but maybe not the Man in Black.

Is this kind of thing normal? Am I going down, down, down, into a burning ring of fire?

[jchampliaud]

"Am I going down, down, down, into a burning ring of fire?"

Only time will tell on that question. Things like this do happen. Wait and give it some time. The relevant ads should come back.

[mattg3]

There is supposedly a period where Google tries the best mix of ads for your site. This can then involve periods where it finds that the words your url are irrelevant to your content.

[Hobbs]

I going down, down, down

Haecceity,
It's all a Leap Of Faith or a Roll Of The Dice,
Probably you're Dancing In The Dark, When The Lights Go Out..
You're in the Tunnel Of Love right now.
So enjoy.

[Haecceity]

Back to normal for now.

I Guess Things Happen That Way. On the other hand perhaps my site is secretly the Home of the Blues.

:)

[netmeg]

Just be glad you aren't Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart

(yes, that's a real one)

[LBmtb]

Maybe look into using a bit of section targetting?
[google.com...]

[jchampliaud]

Just be glad you aren't Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart

(yes, that's a real one)

... and a great song!

[Haecceity]

Maybe look into using a bit of section targetting?

The irrelevance disappeared, but that's a great suggestion for some of my pages, LBmtb. Thanks.

When you go quite deeply into a very detailed area of a topic Google sometimes doesn't seem to be able to recognize the big picture. Like if you were discussing the valves on bicycle tires adsense may have ads for valves generally (heart valves, washing machine valves) and not so much about bicycles or their tires.

At the same time, it's been instructive to learn what Google *thinks* my pages are about, which is sometimes not what I know they're about. I'll be making changes to the text in order to give Google "adsense hooks," and I think this will have SEO benefits more generally. In the meantime, though, section targeting will give me a speedy way to get the ads on track.

[nonni]

The question is: are the 'best' ads the one's that the publisher thinks are most in tune with the site's topic, or the ones that result in highest revenue? Sure, a page might be about golf, but if it is an older affluent crowd, wouldn't ads for Cadillacs and Viagra be appropriate for a website, as they are for some golf magazines?

I think my adsense performance improves when they mix things up a bit - Too many ads for widgets on a widget page contribute to blindness. Ads for sea monkeys and x-ray spectacles wake up the widgeteers.

[netmeg]

Sometimes ads can be TOO targeted.