Does AdSense default to site-wide keywords?

When it does not know what's on a page.

[inbound]

We use adsense for search on a popular site of ours and we're very pleased with that, however we're thinking of adding AdSense for content ads.

We've found that the preview tool can get ads spot on, but just as often gets it wrong (putting up adverts that loosely follow the site or directory topic). The problem we have is that the site in question has lots of pages and they vary widely (as we run business directories).

Does anyone have experience of how long it takes for AdSense to 'figure out' what individual pages are about when there are nearly 200,000 of them to digest? Incidentally the vast majority of pages are indexed by Google and we see a full crawl every week or so.

I'd hope that it'll take about a week, but some real life examples may help us decide what to do.

Thanks

[Quadrille]

Adsense works page-by-page, whether there's two or twenty thou.

If it can't match, the default is public service ads or empty space (though you can get rid of either).

In a high demand niche, it only takes a few words to grab an ad; in an uncompetitive, low demand niche, you may have 1000 words and not pick up an ad.

But it's page by page.

[inbound]

Thanks Quadrille,

I expected AdSense to be page-by-page but asked the question as I'm seeing odd results from the preview tool.

Does anyone know if the tool fetches a copy of the page prior to showing the ads? I'm guessing that it doesn't by the way results come out (some pages in a business directory are very similar but one page gets perfect ads, another gets odd ads), it also delivers results too quickly for me to believe it's requesting a page (I tested it by intentionally slowing the delivery of a page - it came back in no time, with wrong results).

I'd really like to find out how good the adverts are going to be before trying it out, is the preview tool as good as it gets for an estimation of what will show?

[Green_Grass]

AdSense does follow a site wide targetting when you add a new page / content. After the bot is able to 'understand' the page / content better, the targetting becomes much sharper and geared to that specific content. This may take up to a week. For me it takes upto three to four days, normally.. This is my experience.

[Khensu]

If you want to insulate your pages from you index keywords register the .org or .net of your domain and host your pages there. This will stop most of the keywords from bleeding through. Most people will not notice a slight flip from widgets.com to widgets.net. Put up the second non-used index with only graphical content and no keywords, make a graphic link to the original index on the .com. Don't market the alternate sites index just let it sit. You can even screen shot the original index and load it as the second or redirect the second to the original.

That is one of my ten golden Adsense tips.

If you want the other 9 Paypal me $100.

(just kidding)

[edited by: Khensu at 5:52 pm (utc) on Oct. 20, 2007]

[Quadrille]

It can take a day or a few - usually it's amtter of a couple of visits before the page shows correctly - so a preview can be misleading.

But in general, if there sufficient copy (and sufficient advertisers, don't bother to preview - shove the page up, and go on to the next one; Adsense will take it from there. :)

[mobilemaverick]

I am absolutely CERTAIN. Adsense DOES default to site wide topic.

If I add a page about Aliens invading the zoo on my mobile phone site, adsense would show adverts about mobiles phones for a while.

[Quadrille]

Maybe there's few advertisers interested in zoos or aliens, and your page mentions, er, mobile phones? ;)

[edited by: Quadrille at 2:17 am (utc) on Oct. 21, 2007]

[mobilemaverick]

Blahh ;)

I made a page about bluetooth, at first it showed ads for mobile phones, ringtones, themes etc. Next day it was targeted to bluetooth...

[ecmedia]

Google get it "almost" right but I have seen over and over again that when it doesn't know what the article is about it will serve what it thinks is the main focus of the site. For instance if you have a sit that talks mainly about business but then post an article about computers that help the business, it will still show business ads rather than computer ads.

[inbound]

Thanks for the insights, I think I'll use most of the channels to track performance in relate parts of the site. I'll report back if I find anything interesting.

[iridiax]

Site-wide keywords do appear to be the default and are used for new pages and quite possibly also when the Adsense system is having problems.

Adsense often forgets the targeting for my low traffic pages and instead serves up more generic, domain or site-based ads. When I visit the same page a short time later, the correct ad targeting is back. This occurs for both old and new low traffic pages. My high traffic pages have generally good ad-targeting. Normally, my new pages get correctly targeted ads within a few minutes of being published, but if these pages don't get regular traffic, Adsense will forget what they are about.

I also often see Adsense serve up only two generic ads in a four ad block, but when I refresh the page, all four ads will appear and they are now well-targeted.

This makes me wonder if Adsense is having capacity-related problems with their system, such as with the storage/processing of on-page contextual/keyword information and the timely retrieval of targeted ads. I have one site with a consistent topic and keywords throughout the whole site, and the default ad targeting is just fine, even for brand new pages not yet visited by their bot. Another of my sites has a wide variety of very different topics and keywords, so the default ad targeting is poor and I really notice it (abnormally low CTR even with normal traffic) when Adsense is reduced to serving up generic, domain or site-based ads.

[eeek]

Adsense works page-by-page, whether there's two or twenty thou.

I have over two million pages. Only a small percentage are targeted by adsense at any time.

If it can't match, the default is public service ads or empty space (though you can get rid of either).

Not true. If the page isn't in Adsense's cache, I get something generic for the site (specific to the domain, not the account).