Poor AdSense Targetting

[iCanteachu]

We need some help trying to figure out why and how to rectify the following problem.

Our website has several subdomains based on different topics each containing our adsense code. When we first built the sites everything was displaying propperly with adsense ads on topic within each subdomain.

We then got indexed and the strangest thing has happened. Most of our pages ended being listed in the supplemental dbase and our adsense results have gone haywire.

Index page for each directory within the subdomains is pulling relevant adsense ads just fine...BUT... all of the inside pages within each of those directories is pulling ads from one of our other subdomains which is completely off topic.

Does anyone have a clue as to what is going on?

[loner]

Adsense has gone nearly completely haywire here also- the ads have nothing to do with content other than misc. geographically. Not good.

[dirkji]

Targetting is very bad here as well. Never had targetting problems for years, it just started recently. Maybe because of the arbitrage measures, there's not enough ad inventory.

[netmeg]

My ad targeting is pretty spot on at the moment. But the links are kind of messed up - at least, the titles that show in the links. My site contains events specific ONLY to my state (the state is even in the domain name), and the links keep showing MN Events, IA events, etc.

[Chapman]

My ad targeting has been consistantly good for years but lately my English art history site has been showing ads, in French, for French biographies OR... companies that sell door knobs!

Chapman

[annej]

My AdSense ads are OK but not as good as they used to be. They are starting to look a little more like (shudder) Yahoo targeting.

The main thing happening is that they take a secondary key word and go with ads on that which are sometimes way off if they don't also consider the overall topic.

[OutdoorWebcams]

I can't complain about targetting - it's spot on on most of my pages.
But for all of you being affected, maybe the reason can be found here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[rden17]

I'm seeing really bad geotargeting lately. If I have a site on "Colorado", I'll get all ads for "Oklahoma" for example. Way off. No mention of the word "Oklahoma" anywhere on the page.

Just noticed this happening in the past week or so

[netmeg]

I'm getting that too. But people seem to be clicking on them, so what the hey. It's vacation season.

[SlimKim]

I have a domain that is like unto NewYorkWidgets dot com and some of the Adsense ads are for Atlanta Widgets and i don't live near Georgia.

Sometimes it displays ads for NearbyCity Widgets, but the city is in Arkansas where i live. You will frequently get ads targeted to the geo area your surf from.

The problem will probably correct itself. If all else fails you can always go with a contexual ad provider that will allow you to choose what keyword you display ads for. Of course, this has it's drawbacks to, unless your page content is constantly about the same subject.

[martinibuster]

...some of the Adsense ads are for Atlanta Widgets and i don't live near Georgia.

Are any of the site visitors showing IP addresses traceable to Atlanta? Would be interesting to see if a preponderance of visitors from certain locales could affect the ads being shown.

I once ran ads for a specific section of one of my sites, but ads for that subsection started showing throughout my site to me, even though I wasn't clicking through on those particular keywords.

[sailorjwd]

As has been discussed on the adwords side, adwords seems a little f'd up the last two days.

[martinibuster]

Would be interesting to tease out what change is accounting for what they're seeing.

As for AW being screwed up, today is literally my best day in a month.

[inactivist]

I've complained about poor ad targeting on some of my sites, but lately, my main site is showing excellent targeting on most pages. It's as if a switch was thrown, and Google finally figured out what my site is about...

Oh, yeah, site-targeted (CPM) ads account for only about 0.32% of overall impressions, so we're seeing a plentiful supply of CPC ads (with great targeting).

I'm really freaked out by this, because I know it just can't last...

[netmeg]

As for AW being screwed up, today is literally my best day in a month.

Yea, if this is screwed up, bring it on. My last two weeks have earned more than the previous two YEARS combined.