AdSense getting too specific with targeting

picking up on a single term and missing the real topic

[annej]

I'm having problems with AdSense focusing on the name of the pattern for my individual topics and in the process they are way off. For example if the patterns is called the "old widget homemadeobject" AdSense gives all ads about old widgets but none for about the homemadeobject. Since my visitors are interested in patterns, materials and tools for making the homemadeobject the ad space is just wasted.

I've tried using section targeting and it's not doing the job. I didn't mind when these odd ads appeared now and then but now it's all the time.

Is there any solution other than taking AdSense off the problem pages?

[vero]

On many of my pages, I've had to play around with titles and headers to get the adsense ads better targeted to what the page was about. If you can't change the url old_widget_homemadeobject.htm, try changing the title tag in the head section to just Homemadeobject, then add a <h3> with homemadeobject in the body section. Also, intersperse your copy with some <h4>s with homemadeobject in them. And make sure that your first paragraph focuses on homemadeobject not old widgets.

[dibbern2]

I wouldn't touch the title tag on any page that ranks well in the serps - it could bring real trouble. Same goes, obviously, for the page's file name. Changing that could create a duplicate content issue until you formally remove the old file from G's index.

[ddogg]

It will do that for me too. I will have 1 word on the page that AdSense will target. The page has nothing to do with that word, it is just one link.

I think it will do this if it can't really properly identify the theme of the page. For example if your page has different content sections or a bunch of semi-related links, Google might end up just picking one and using that for the theme. Try to keep your pages strongly themed if you can.

[annej]

The pages that I'm concerned about get a lot of traffic from Google so I don't dare change titles and headings.

[alephh]

Could it just be that your traffic is more interested about "old widget" than about "homemadeobject", and that's why they keep on clicking "old widget" -ads, causing them to show more and more.

[annej]

I guess I'd better let it go and see if AdSense sorts it out.

[europeforvisitors]

Is this an ongoing, constant problem? Or is it something that just happens from time to time? If it's the latter, patience may be the best solution. (I've found that AdSense ad matching gets really goofy now and then--due to tweaking of the ad-matching algorithm, maybe?--but eventually things get sorted out and the ad matching becomes much better.)

[netmeg]

I had the same problem for a long time, where my domain consists of the name of my state and a particular type of event. I wanted ads targeted to my state, but I got ads targeted to the type of event only. I played with the target options, but that didn't seem to help. Took about a year and half for AdSense to finally figure it out and get it right, but they finally did, and it's been great the last year. So yea, patience may be the only solution.

[iridiax]

I think that some apparent Adsense targeting problems are actually due to a poor choice of keywords, insufficient negative keywords, and inefficient keyword matching options by Adwords advertisers. I've ended up having to block some of these advertisers to get rid of their poorly targeted ads.

[dibbern2]

one more idea: you could use a gif instead of text for "old widgets".

It sounds labor intensive, but its not too hard if you use a screen grab of your page as it is now and crop/save the instance of "old widgets".

Yeah I know, this is too much if there are lots of page with lots of references to the phrase. And it won't help you if you have "old widgets" in the titles or metas. (Well, it would help a little, I suppose.)

Just trying to help.

[annej]

I've had AdSense on these pages for 3 or 4 years and this was a definite shift to targeting the specific words instead of the overall topic. Has anyone else seen a shift like this?

Thanks to everyone for their ideas. It looks like it would be wise to just wait and see for now.

[greatstart]

Now that you mentioned it, I have an article on one of my pages that mentions telephones, and guess what type of ads are now appearing? You got it right, Ringtones! I now have to substitute that text for a image of the word telephones. What a pain, but well worth it. Those ringtone ads bring in next to nothing, maybe a cent or two.

[potentialgeek]

Ringtones is part of the Google Spam Network. Just like the Lover Calculator. In other words, they show up on anything and everything, relevant or not. Being a preferred member of the Content Network has its advantages--for the preferred members--only.

I'd like to see Matt Cutts, the Google Spam Assassin, let loose on the Adsense Program. Bring him in to exterminate the evil!

p/g

[LostOne]

How about this scenerio:

I've tip toed into adsense this past week with a fairly active site in my industry and the ads show well sometimes, but other times it doesn't do well. Some urls are targeted while others were established before I learned of their importance with plain vanilla SEO a few years back.

I am in the process of adding to the site that will not take effect for a few months. In trying to capture the long tail effect for multiple keywords(not more than five) in the url and title tag it really gets thrown off.

Considering adense seems to weigh heavily on the url and title tag, would reducing the title tag and url to specific products on the page work better? Granted I'll probably lose some search traffic but at least the ads could be more targeted, or so it seems. Incidentally, these will be new pages and not existing.

Any opinions would be helpful!

Thanks

[edited by: LostOne at 12:07 pm (utc) on Feb. 14, 2008]

[europeforvisitors]

I've had AdSense on these pages for 3 or 4 years and this was a definite shift to targeting the specific words instead of the overall topic. Has anyone else seen a shift like this?

Occasionally. Not for long. (I used to see ads for "New York hotels" or "San Diego hotels" on pages about a continent that's 5,000 km to 8,000 km away from those U.S. cities, presumably because AdSense and/or advertisers were targeting the word "hotels" indiscriminately, but the problem was intermittent and of short duration.)

Patience may or may not be a virtue, but it can be useful in avoiding stress.