Improving relevancy of Ads

helping Google display relevant ads, can it be done?

[gn_wendy]

I am having some issues with AdSense displaying what might be defined as 'irrelevant ads' and killing my eCPM.

We display content ads, but it seems Google is picking out the wrong content - or at least not what is relevant to a person visiting the page.

Is there a good way of 'helping' Google. The page is optimized for searches for [widgetstuff] and [widgetisation].

The content on the page however is [widgetstuff - blue widgets]

The visitor is the interested in the [blue widget] but AdSense serves up content similar to [widgetstuff] such as [widgetthings] and [otherwidgetstuff]

[purplecape]

In my experience, Google tends to go to that kind of "broad match" scenario when the algorithm concludes Google and you will do better with that. Of course, sometimes the algorithm is wrong.

Have you tried "section targeting": [google.com...]

I have been able to use this to exclude certain sections of a page (such as navigational links) and emphasize others (title, first paragraph of an article) and get better targeting. Don't try to use it on a word-by-word basis. Don't expect miracles. And don't expect it to work overnight--let it run a few weeks.

[gn_wendy]

Thanks for the reply!

I wasn't sure about how well it worked and what experiences people had using the section targeting. I previously decided against implementing it, but since then there has been a lot more content added to the pages.

Don't try to use it on a word-by-word basis.

How much content is a recommended minimum to include in a section?

Don't expect miracles.

What could I be expecting? Is the worst case that Google ignores the tags or can I actually do damage?

[purplecape]

I haven't experimented with it enough to tell you what the minimum might be. I've only used it with paragraphs, and for those, it seems to work.

Can you actually do damage? Sure, if you (for example) tell it to ignore the main content on the page and emphasize three words that aren't the real focus. But if you use common sense, and tell it to ignore a tangential paragraph and emphasize a lead paragraph, I doubt that it would. I can't tell you for sure, of course, as I haven't got enough experience with it.

Test it. Try it on a few pages. See if it makes any difference.

[wyweb]

Section targeting.

Had the same problem you're describing and implemented targeting. Also used the "ignore" feature and had almost immediate improvements.

Others have reported seeing no change whatsoever so your milage may definately vary.

It worked for me though. One of the few things that has worked with regard to adsense.

[gn_wendy]

Thanks for the input.

I now feel confident to start testing on a live site.

[purplecape]

I'll tell you one place I used it where it made a big difference -- my home page.

I didn't want to put standard ads there, and I had tried an adlinks unit, but wasn't getting good words showing up. So I used the targeting code to tell Google to ignore a couple of sections and emphasize a few others.

Within a few days the words in the adlinks unit were right for the page and indeed for my site in general. Almost doubled my overall earnings for my site....