Ad content determined by URL?

Uncrawled pages defaulting to irrelevant ads

[Adam7288]

Hey I have a search based website, and when I first launched it, adsense determined the content of uncrawled pages by using the information in the url (ie /topic/'search query').

After a couple of weeks, however, the system thinks it knows the general idea of the site, even though there is no over-arching theme. So now on an uncrawled page, these default ads are shown. A couple of hours later when the page is crawled, the ads are relevant, but by then it is too late.

When I just type in the IP address of the server and then enter the search query, the system uses the url instead of the default ads. This tells me that my domain has been filed as a certain topic in there system.

I have gone back and forth with google and they are giving me the run around. It seems silly that a company that is in the business of ad relevancy is this rigid when it comes to their system.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[Quadrille]

Adsense tries to match the content of your *page*; if it's reduced to matching the URL, then either there's too little content, no advertiser in your niche - or Adsense cannot read the page content. The first few times, it will be hit and miss; then it'll settle down.

You might want to review your page content and how it is served. To get the best of Adsense, you need to work around them - they won't rewrite the rules for you :)

[SteveWh]

Yes, I've noticed that after initially publishing a static page, the AdSense ads on it are only site-relevant, not page-relevant, for the first few times that I load the page. Sometimes it takes several minutes, regardless of the number of times the page is refreshed, for the ads to become page-relevant, as though it takes several minutes to analyze the page content. For static pages, this isn't much of a problem, but from your saying, "by then it's too late", I'm assuming your pages are dynamically generated such that no individual page is actually ever generated more than once. They're search results pages? I don't know what to suggest doing about it, but can only confirm that what you're describing seems to be the general behavior of AdSense and it could be an actual problem that you need to contend with. AdSense For Search might be one possible route, although that sort of offloads the search responsibility onto Google, as well as the responsibility for the ads, which is more than likely not what you want. If it's possible, one thing you might do is repeat the user's search query in bold text on the result page. If the initial cursory AdSense analysis makes use of emphasis indicators like bold text, then maybe that would help the initial ads be more relevant.

[Matt Probert]

Google Adsense uses its own spider to fetch and analyse pages which serve Adsense adverts. before this spider fetches the page, Google Adsense knows nothing about it (obviously!)

The Adsense spider is separate and distinct from the main Google search spider (Googlebot).

In reality this means that it takes time before Adsense starts serving adverts relevant to the content of any specific page.

Matt

[ConfusedButCommitted]

Do you visit your own pages?
I visit a page after I load it so that the
Mediapartners-Google/2.1 Bot comes calling.
It seems to help

[MThiessen]

Do you visit your own pages?
I visit a page after I load it so that the
Mediapartners-Google/2.1 Bot comes calling.
It seems to help

I visit my pages, mostly because I have forums to moderate, check the guestbook etc etc.

But as far as google's mediabot, unless YOU are the only person visiting your site, then visiting for the sole reason of getting Gbot to see is is unnecessary. The first natural visitor should trigger it anyway.

[ConfusedButCommitted]

I think I understand your situation now. My pages are static and may not be visited by a real person anytime soon. That's why I visit them.

If your site is a forum, does your software put the subject of the post as the title and/or meta of the HTML page? Like WebmasterWorld

[andrewshim]

I've had this problem for a long time now. Because my URL has a major competitive keyword in it, ads based on this keyword keep appearing, overpowering specific page-topic ads.

Running tests, the only way I can get topic related ads to appear would be to place the maximum 3 rectangle blocks (12 ads altogether). Then, the last 2 or 3 spots would probably be on-target. But I don't do this because it would be overkill and it looks bad... so I've decided to live with it.

Worse, my very first Adsense site unfortunately has the word "tones" in it, although this "tones" refers to "feelings, general wellbeing etc". The first year, it was ok, with ads on family wellbeing, positive thinking etc, but you guessed it.... now the ONLY ads that appear are ring-tone ads. So I've taken Adsense off that site entirely.

Sigh... I don't like the Adsense bot...

[MThiessen]

If your site is a forum, does your software put the subject of the post as the title and/or meta of the HTML page?

Two of my sites are forums. Both use mod-rewrite to make them *appear* static. I have SEO mods that make custom title, meta description and meta keywords on the fly.

My adsense ads only appear on the second post of a thread, its a leaderboard between the second and third post in a thread.

This works very well, and the serps consistently rank pages in the threads appropriately. They look really good in the serps too, I like the descriptions, it uses for the meta description the first paragraph of the first post. This almost always makes a great meta description.