Has 'Bad Word Filter' been recently tweaked?

Pages no longer display ads

[LoveWarrior]

I've experienced quite a few pages on a couple of my sites that have been serving up ads for months but, as of about 2 weeks ago, no longer serve up ads.

When researching these pages, I find that there are some common words that may be causing this to occur. Those words are "non-sexual", "erotic", and "bisexual".

Before you respond and rail on me for violations of TOS because of adult sites, please note that Google has reviewed these sites (in other e-mail conversations with them) and they have never stated that the sites are against TOS even though these words appear (in very limited number). These sites are NOT adult sites.

These words have been on my sites for months without any problems whatsoever.

In the past, the words "nonsexual" and "bisexual" have never been a problem for me. The word "erotic", however, has been a problem when used to frequently and/or used on a page with limited other content.

One interesting thing is that there is still one page that serves up ads despite the fact that the word "erotic" appears twice. Although, this particular page also has a lot of other words (2211 to be exact). So, perhaps the ads still appear because the words do not reach some sort of "threshhold".

Anyway, it seems the bad word filter has recently been cranked up a notch or two. A few questions ...

1) Has anyone else experienced these challenges?

2) Are there words that are strictly "kill" words (words that cause no ads to appear) and yet others that will kill ads only if used too frequently, in combination with other words, and/or used on pages with other limited content (reaches some sort of threshhold)?

3) Is there a list of kill words out there somewhere?

Thanks for any and all help.

[edited by: LoveWarrior at 4:21 pm (utc) on July 17, 2007]

[celgins]

1) Has anyone else experienced these challenges?

Only if I add poison or stop-words to my pages. Google is constantly tweaking the Adsense system, so it is possible that new stop-words have been added and new procedures for processing those stop-words have been implemented.

2) Are there words that are strictly "kill" words (words that cause no ads to appear) and yet others that will kill ads only if used too frequently, in combination with other words, and/or used on pages with other limited content (reaches some sort of threshhold)?

There are definitely stop-words, but only Google knows if a certain number of those words will trigger a response.

3) Is there a list of kill words out there somewhere?

I don't think Google publishes one, but most of the common ones are self-explanatory.

For more info, read this thread: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/1158.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[wheelie34]

I had the same issue on a lingerie directory site I manage for someone else, it has adsense and was doing well (wish it was mine) 2 weeks ago she rang saying PSA ads were on her pages, it was only on certain pages, she was careful when adding sites by removing any adult words from their submission.

Some pages did still show adsense, she tried removing some words from a few listings but it didn't help, she emailed support and they said to have alternative ads show, external file you know the drill.

We did that for a week but she decided if it was that close to the possible closing of her account it wasn't worth it, she now has other aff ads instead.

Support did seem to insinuate that it could be the sites that were linked to, the items they offered as well as lingerie were for a more mature audience, so it goes that far ahead then, the bot looks at your links out too, could be an eye opener for some people.

[greatstart]

Want to know a little trick to resolve this problem?

You make a transparent image of the bad word and place it where the text was at. If it's blended in perfectly, it will look just like it did before.

Then you will get your ads to display properly once again instead of those darn PSA's!

[malachite]

The word "erotic", however, has been a problem when used to frequently and/or used on a page with limited other content.

Just checked one of my pages which includes the word erotic, and references to sex, red light district and drugs (it's about Amsterdam ;) ) and the page is still happily showing ads.

Maybe there's something else on your page that Google doesn't like?

[LoveWarrior]

Thanks for the responses.

I wonder if some of my outbound links have created the problem. so, another question ...

If I place a rel="nofollow" tag on some of my outbound links, will the AdSense BOT pay attention to it, or ignore it?

[wheelie34]

Tried it already didn't help.

AdSenseBot probably looks differently than googlebot, it spots a link OFF an AD page (that could be accessed by minors) to adult/mature site/content = dont display ads display PSA

[koan]

You make a transparent image of the bad word and place it where the text was at. If it's blended in perfectly, it will look just like it did before.

I have this problem at times but this create a new problem after solving the first one: you lose out on important terms for Google traffic. In his case, if someone were to search for "amsterdam red light erotic" (which could be a high converting wannabe tourist with adsense), that image (even if you add a little alt text) wouldn't do him justice in terms of SEO.

I decided to leave it be, I'd rather have traffic and a few badly targeted pages with adsense. I hate it though.