Ads not relevant in IE 8 but fine in Firefox

[rickallen]

I've noticed Google ads are different in IE and Firefox. I'm using IE 8 and the ads are crap on my sites. Totally unrelated to the content of the page. When I view the page in FF they are fine. I've also tested Opera and Chrome with good results.

I've seen this mostly on pages that have not been scaned by Google like new content. Weird that all the other browsers pick it up the relative content right away, but not IE.

Anyone else seeing this? If so is there a way to fix it?

Here is a domain park site I put together that uses an RSS feed (sort of). If anyone could look at this and verify what I am seeing I'd appreciate it. Check out a couple of articles and compair the ads in IE and FF.

[link removed]

Thanks,
Rick

[edited by: incrediBILL at 5:19 pm (utc) on June 2, 2009]
[edit reason] removed URL, see TOS #13 [/edit]

[incrediBILL]

Hi Rick and welcome to WebmasterWorld, you're not allowed to drop URLs here but I did take a look and saw the same ads in Firefox as I see in MSIE, they looked fine, so perhaps you have am MSIE cache issue, try clearing all your temp files and such.

[londrum]

this isn't really to do with your post, but you did inspire me to do it...

i thought i'd test out what is shown to people who have blocked the interest-based ads (with that firefox extension that google provides) and those that don't.

all the ads on my site are pretty well targeted at the moment.
but when i uninstalled the firefox extension and had a surf around the web for a while, i went back to the site and the exact same ads we're still showing. i couldn't see a single interest-based ad on my entire site.

i don't reckon it's even running for the lowly publishers yet.

[rickallen]

incrediBILL, thanks for letting me know about the URL. I wasn't sure about that and won't post one again.

I thought this was a browser cache issue too. So I went through the whole process of clearing my cache and history, closed the browser and re-opened with same results several times before posting here. Irelavant ads with IE 8, but fine with FF.

Did you use IE 8 to look? I didn't notice this with IE 7. From the behaviour I have seen this only seems to happen on pages that Google hasn't scanned yet. For example if a new article gets added to a site.

BTW, mysite doesn't get a lot of traffic and Google just doesn't scan it that often. So a lot of the pages are not in Google's index.

Would you know of a well known news site or something running Adsense that I could test this on with my browsers?

Just the name no URL ;-)

[tim222]

Could this have anything to do with IE8 Compatibility View? It seems like a long shot but you never know...

[rickallen]

I'm not sure about that and I have no way to test it except on my site. But almost every site I visit shows the broken page icon for compatibility view. Even this site.

Just imagine the impact if IE 8 screws up google ad delevery.

It would be helpful if someone could test their site with IE 8 and FF on a page with new content that Google hasn't picked up yet.

I'm pretty sure that this is not just a problem with my setup. I've tested it on my home and work computer that have different IP's, ISP and configuration. One is connect direct to a cable modem and the other is on a network. I get the same results on both systems.

[incrediBILL]

Actually, I used IE7 so maybe it's an IE8 issue, anything is possible.

[rickallen]

Bill, smart move I think until they get the bugs worked out.

I've got to find another site other than mine to test this on. Something is up.

Just to be clear the ads aren't even close.

On an article on my site that deals with going green IE 8 displays ads about loosing belly fat. FF has ads about building solar pannels.

[incrediBILL]

I just remembered that I have seen this same issue on a page my wife built recently but it resolved itself within a couple of hours.

It appeared to be that one browser was connecting with a different Google IP to AdSense than the other browser, and it makes sense that one of the AdSense servers might be serving up different ads because it wasn't aware of your content yet, just a guess.

[rickallen]

Yeah Bill, This is kind of what is happening. It for sure happens on pages that would be new to Google. It's almost like FF does a different request to Google for the ads that allows Google to quickly scan the page to deliver the relevant ad content, but IE 8 screws something up.

I just need to confirm this on some other sites. If this is not directly related to my site, hosting or whatever it could have a big impact on revenue. No body is going to click on those ads I'm seeing in IE 8.

Thanks for all the comments everyone. I will do some more testing and report back.

[tim222]

On an article on my site that deals with going green IE 8 displays ads about loosing belly fat.

I went to Google's sponsored links search and was able to find an ad that has keywords related to going green, preventing cancer, saving money and losing weight. It looks like they're trying to cover a wide range of keywords.

So it's possible that your seemingly unrelated ad is loaded with keyword hints that include "going green"

Could it be a "feature not a bug"? Is it possible that IE8 has a way of using Google's keyword hints in a way that other browsers are not?

[google.com...]

[rickallen]

I guess the key word here is "going", since most of the people I know that are already "green" are pretty skinny. LOL.

Anyway, it's hard to tell. For sure the ads are different. They usually are even when you reload a page, but this is "not even close" different. If IE is trying to improve Google's ads I wish they would just stay out of it.

[rickallen]

Follow up. I posted this same issue on another forum and actually got an interesting reply. He says that advertisers can target ads to demographics that may include specific browsers and this can cause different ads depending on what browser you are using.

I suppose that is a possiblity, but I doubt it would be as radically different as what I am seeing. This is extreamly hard to test on another site since it only applies to ads on a page that has not been visited / scanned by Google yet. Like when I post a new article on my site and imediatly go check it.

One other thing I have noticed is the first delivery of ads on this new page is pretty slow in IE 8 and displays trash for ads. It's like Google is trying to check the page for content. FF on the other hand is pretty fast the first time it visits and shows relivant ads.

I'm not suggesting a conspiricy, but it would not be the first time MSIE has tried to "fix" something in a new release and screwed it up. Since IE still represents 68% of the browser market as of Jan 2009, I'm wondering if this is going to be a problem.

If anyone runs a blog or news site with adsense try posting a new article and visit the page with IE 8 and report back the results. Maybe I'm the only one seeing this. It would be cool to know if this is just my issue.

Thanks,
Rick

[rickallen]

Final Conculsion:

I've tested this as much as possible by visiting other sites and viewing ads that are delivered on my own sites.

IE 8 ads are not relevant to page content while Opera, Safari and Firefox are relevant.

This only happens under specific conditions:

1. Google does not have the page listed in it's index.
2. When going directly to the page URL with a link in the browser address bar, by clicking on a link from another site directly to the page or clicking on a link in an email if IE 8 is your default browser.

If the page is accessed through a Google search the ad content is relevant in IE 8.

As stated above, on a page directly related to "going green" on my site, IE 8 will deliver ads like "loose belly fat" etc where FF shows "build a solar panel".

Granted most people will reach a site through a search engine. Since Google has the largest search market share the ads will display fine.

However I have noticed recently that Google does not do a through scan of all pages on my site and I suspect this is true for many others. While Yahoo still indexes most of the pages in my site.

If a person accesses the URL with Yahoo or through a newsletter, IE 8 will not display relevant ads under the conditions outlined above.

At least these are my findings, hopefully somebody else can test this. Also note that I have not tweeked the settings in IE 8 since most people will probably use it as is out of the box.

[netmeg]

I have various computers that have IE8, IE7 & IE6 installed, as well as FF3. On my sites, I see the exact same ads in all of them.

[rickallen]

Are the pages you are looking at indexed by Google and are you going directly to the page by typing the url in the address bar?

Can you test it by putting up a new page and looking at it before Google has a chance to scan it? This is where I am seeing it.

[netmeg]

Yes, and no.

I wouldn't expect good targeting on pages that haven't been scanned by Google, nor indexed yet.

[rickallen]

Me either, but Firefox nails it first time every time which I didn't expect. Also Google only scans about 1/4 of my site so 3/4 is probably showing garbage to IE 8 users.

Thanks for the input NetMeg. I appreciate it.

Solution is to get Google to scan more of my site. Conversion really sucks at this point and now I understand at least one reason why.