Why Can't Advertisers Find Me?

When using site targetting by descriptions . . .

[creepychris]

Since we are soon to be in the era of site targeted ads (with CPC site targeting in beta and all), it's important for advertisers to be able to find your sites to target them. So, I used my Adwords account to try and site target my own site just to get a feel for how I might be found. In particular, I used the SITE TARGETING BY DESCRIPTION.

Unfortunately, I could not be found under any keywords that reasonably describe my site. Further more, the sites that were populating the list of 100 were 20% good picks and 80% garbage. Ok, the good sites I can see but why is all this garbage above my site. It's an established authority with tons more traffic than all of these MFA crap sites put together that are in the list. I finally did find my site under keywords that were really off-topic (but I did have a single related link to that off topic).

Google's site targeting algo seems to be screwy. What kind of STO (site targetting optimization) is effective to give the algo a kick in the pants. Because I just ain't being found.

[seunosewa]

I'm experiencing the same problem. I can't find my site easily through adsense. I can't find the public channels.

[pocket calculator]

I agree, it's horrible. Even if I search adwords by the exact name of my website, it shows about 15 of my "competitors" first, and then my site, even though my site has millions of page views per month, whereas some of the suggested sites are total spam/crap with no visitors.

[creepychris]

As Adsense is practically a monopoly (especially if you are an international publisher) this is vitally important. I'm surprised this topic doesn't generate interest . . . In the new site targeted CPC era ONLY those sites that are visible in google's adwords selection tools are going to be making any money.

I really would like to know what Google uses to determine that. I'll throw one out for discussion:

(1) outbound links

I found I had good placement for a keyword that was found in one of my outbound links. The keyword was only found in that outbound link and nowhere else on the site.

[joelgreen]

Yes, that is really interesting. For example I entered "adsense" as keyword into "Describe topics" box. First few sites are 0k-10k :) So I'm almost sure traffic does not matter.

[joelgreen]

I suspect it has something to do with "adsense history" of the site. I mean CTR/eCPM.

Maybe sites with low eCPM are at the top, since site-targeted ads are to "monetize low performing pages".

By the way one of the sites from top 10 violates Google TOS by having 3 adsense blocks on login page, as well as reloading ads about every few minutes. Possibly having good CTR :)