Is The Adsense Preview Tool Working Okay?

[andrewshim]

Mediapartners seems to be spidering my site very heavily this month. However, earnings have been fluctuating from very high to very low. So I decided to take a peek at the ads using the Preview Tool.

*Aghast!*

The Preview Tool is showing completely off target ads : Free Games, Cell phone games... even Girls Dress Up Games!

My site is business related. However, I see on-target ads in Malaysia. Ads have ALWAYS been targetted especially for my home page. Even the preview tool used to show ON-target ads before.

Is anyone seeing crappy off target ads using the Preview Tool or is it just me? Should I disregard the Preview Tool?

[swa66]

start banning.

The preview tool is a very poor tool, but the only we have be given by Google.

Hopefully your banlist has some space in it.

[andrewshim]

Okay, but why would my site suddenly be swarmed by games ads when there has never been a shortage of advertisers for my niche. In fact, because I have NEVER been plagued by ads like these before, I have NEVER ever had to use my filter except to block advertisers that were hogging space.

Plus... I'm seeing correctly targetted ads where I am, so I was wondering if the Tool is broken. Should I trust the tool?

[Tropical Island]

Be sure to check that when you right click that your cursor is not in an ad field. make sure it is on the text area of the page. If you activate the preview tool with the cursor in an ad area you will get totally unrelated results.

[andrewshim]

Well I'll be! Tropical Island, you are absolutely right! I didn't know that! Right-clicking on the text instead of the ad gives me my usual tartetted ads while right-clicking ON the ad gives totally OFF target ads. I wonder why in the world it does that?

In any case, [ major relief ] my question seems to be answered - the tool is NOT working properly!

Case closed. Thanks a bunch!

[tim222]

Right-clicking on the text instead of the ad gives me my usual tartetted ads while right-clicking ON the ad gives totally OFF target ads. I wonder why in the world it does that?

There are some explanations of why it does that in this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]