AdSense Negative Word Filter

Would that be Useful? Any Downsides you can think of?

[martinibuster]

So I was thinking that filtering ads was inefficient because I can't see all the irrelevant ads showing on my site. Ads differ according to geographic area as well as other factors like the keywords used to find my site. No matter how hard a publisher tries to catch the unwanted ads they will never catch them all because publishers can't see all the URLs of all the irrelevant ads.

A more efficient tool would seem to be an AdSense Negative Word Filter. For instance if you have a page about local Russian restaurants and see ads for mailorder brides you could be able to take them out by adding words like marriage, brides, and dating to your filter to eliminate any advertisers who fit into those buckets.

Is an AdSense Negative Word Filter something Google can create? Or is there something that could make it backfire?

[incrediBILL]

Negative keywords, opposed to just blocking domains like we do now, could easily shoot you in the foot if you got too aggressive or used a root word or something and suddenly unwittingly block bunches of good paying ads.

I'd love to have the feature myself but I fear many would nuke themselves and AdSense reps would be busier than they are now!

[netmeg]

MSN adCenter Publisher has it.

From their help files:

You can use keyword or URL lists to block any content, not only for competitive exclusion. For example, you might want to block content that you find frivolous, unprofessional, or personally offensive. Enter any keyword to block ads that bid on that word from appearing on your site.

Dunno why Google couldn't do it.

[swa66]

If a publisher shoots in their own foot, they'll learn eventually, but at least we'll need just one entry for each of "free", for "1-800", for "ebay", "screen saver", ...

will it be a step forward: YES.
will it be enough: unfortunately no.

There should be at least a companion in the form of real reporting of what ads show in what frequency on what page in what geo-targets, without that it'll remain a shot in the dark.

[farmboy]

MSN adCenter Publisher has it.

Is MSN adCenter open for applications or only available to beta testers?

Enter any keyword to block ads that bid on that word from appearing on your site.

How do you know which words an advertiser bid on for a particular ad?

FarmBoy

[rash]

Is MSN adCenter open for applications or only available to beta testers?

Its in BETA stage right now available to U.S. publishers only. More info at [advertising.microsoft.com...]

Is an AdSense Negative Word Filter something Google can create? Or is there something that could make it backfire?

It would definitely work if the programming is done in a controlled way.

[buckworks]

Negative keywords would not solve the problem of inappropriate ads, but they could reduce it.

One place where I could foresee complications is for publishers who have more than one site in their Adsense accounts.

Negative keywords could be a pretty rough tool if they applied account-wide, but if they could be specific to individual websites they might be very useful indeed.

[celgins]

I agree that a negative keyword filter would be useful, but it would have to include a mechanism to filter by specific sites like buckworks mentioned.

My guess is that Google may provide a list of keywords for filtering instead of allowing publishers to simply type in their own keywords. This would limit the number of categories/subjects that could be filtered and it won't make publishers happy.

Ideally, we would be allowed to type in any negative word we want filtered. But Google will likely define what's negative and what isn't.

Questions to consider:

What happens if a publisher misspells a word? What about words that are supposed to have accents, but are typed without their accents? What happens when advertisers begin categorizing their ads within "good" keyword categorizes in an effort to avoid being blocked under a "negative" keyword category?

I think any category or bad word filter will work best on sites that have a very specific niche. But it all will be interesting.

[jetteroheller]

Negative keywords, opposed to just blocking domains like we do now, could easily shoot you in the foot

I have experience with this.

My negative word filter used on my web form

I was once very surprised about the side effect of a word, I blocked

[Scurramunga]

For instance if you have a page about local Russian and see ads for mailorder brides you could be able to take them out by adding words like marriage, brides, and dating to your filter to eliminate any advertisers who fit into those buckets

If you have a page about local Russian restaurants and you add words such as marriage and brides you won't filter out the fake directories aiming for the search phrase "Russian restaurants"

having said that a negative word filter would be very useful as part of a suite of filtering tools.

[edited by: Scurramunga at 6:41 am (utc) on April 25, 2009]

[jetteroheller]

Very important for this approach:

The AdSense preview tool should be expanded:

One part: ads You would see on this page
Part two: ads You blocked on this page, link to the reason.

So we could see what ads are blocked and what filter is responsible for blocking.

Without this, it would be terrible dangerouse to use such filters.

Maybe even a

actual filter
test filter

[farmboy]

One place where I could foresee complications is for publishers who have more than one site in their Adsense accounts.

That applies to a number of current/potential features.

FarmBoy

[netmeg]

I would love such a feature, just to improve targeting. Other than the diet blog rush a few months ago, my ads are usually ok as far as being appropriate; occasionally I get a weird one I don't want on my family oriented fireworks site. But words like 'fireworks' are problematic, because there's also an Adobe software product called Fireworks. So if I could do things like ban the software ads *from that site alone* the targeting would be much better, and I, Google, and the advertiser all win big.

[Rosalind]

I've been asking for this for a long time, but only on a per-page basis. In other words, something you put into the Adsense code you generate, in the same way you choose the ad colours and which parts of the page to ignore. It has to be that granular, or it won't be much use.

[signor_john]

I've been asking for this for a long time, but only on a per-page basis....It has to be that granular, or it won't be much use.

For a site with more than a small number of pages, keyword filtering on a page-by-page basis would be too granular to be of any use.

It seems to me that, if a "negative word filter" were introduced, it would work best if it could be implemented on an account-wide or a site-by-site basis, at the publisher's discretion. To use a hypothetical example, someone who owns both a bridal-clothing site and a Russian-literature site might want to filter "Russian brides" ads across the board, while someone with a matchmaking site and a Russian-literature site might want the ability to be keep "Russian brides" ads on the matchmaking site while blocking them on the literature site.

[eeek]

If a publisher shoots in their own foot, they'll learn eventually

But they are shooting my foot at the same time and it hurts!

[CWebguy]

Would that be Useful?

Sure, why not? :)

[diegoz]

I have suggested this implementation to Google years ago.

In my opinion it would be a very profitable implementation for Google as well.

As an example, I propose AdSense to my clients as I way to pay for my services, at least in part. The most common situation is that they refuse my proposal cause they don't want to see ads from the competition at their websites by any means. Keyword filtering would help a lot to prevent it.

For the same reason, filters should be applied site by site. I don't like to block a site on all the domains pertaining to my account.