Targetting is way off

Ads have got gradually worse and worse over time

[glitterball]

Hopefully the Mods don't get too upset about this as I think that I need to be a little more specific than widgets.

I run several destination guides, one of which has seen a huge CTR decline over the last year or so. All of my other guides are doing fine - better CTR than ever.
I know that there are still plenty of advertisers, however I am seeing nothing but irrelevant Ads on my problem site.

The problem is this:
Instead of seeing Ads for "MyCityName Hotels", I am seeing Ads for "OtherCityName Hotels". This applies equally to all of the other categories; e.g. I am seeing "OtherCityName Car Hire" rather than Ads for car hire in my city.
Again, I know that there are still advertisers, as in many cases they are the same ones that I see on my other sites - just with the wrong destination.
The targeting is fine on nearly all the other sites - however I have noticed that another site dedicated to "MyCityName" also has the same very badly targetted Ads.

I'm starting to think that it's not my site at all, but rather that something is broken in Adsense.

[sid786]

My tip: Try out double click admanager if adsense serves poorly targeted ads.

I have a local site that serves relevant ads thanks to the admanager. Well, I don't know how -- admanager just does it! :)
Also, tweak the site pages and add more of your 'city' information?

[glitterball]

I've switched over to doubleclick ad manager as you suggested, however I can't see any difference - still seeing the same stupid Ads.

I don't think that I need to tweak my pages to make them more relevant - the site has been #1 for the cityname in the organic results for several years, so Google seems to be able to pick up the theme of the site okay.

All of my competitors are showing idiotic Ads as well - I think that there is something broken somewhere to do with the name of the place.

Unfortunately it seems to be impossible to contact Adsense to even report this.

[purplecape]

AdSense has some tags you can use to tell the bot to emphasize or ignore sections of a page. You might try using that--might spark a refresh. (I used it on my home page to "hide" off-topic content and it worked.

And sorry, I can't remember what the code is called but if you go to AdSense Help you should be able to find it.

[wyweb]

AdSense has some tags you can use

<!-- google_ad_section_start --> (CONTENT STARTS HERE)
<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) --> (SENTENCE TO IGNORE)
<!-- google_ad_section_end --> (END OF SENTENCE TO IGNORE)
<!-- google_ad_section_start --> (START OF CONTENT AGAIN)
<!-- google_ad_section_end --> (END OF CONTENT)

I use these extensively and have had pretty good luck with them.

Others have reported no change at all.

[Jaideemaak]

I have been seeing exactly the same problem for a long time. For example, the words 'hotel' or 'guest house' will result in ads for hotels and guest houses from all over the globe, including from the other side of the planet. These are no use at all to people who come looking for information about the very specific destination I am giving information about.

I don't even want another location in the same country. I want the specific location within the country. This really shouldn't be too difficult to figure out. There is plenty of city information in the pages indicating the location.

At one point, I started trying to filter out the useless ads using the AdSense Preview tool but quickly ran into the 'whack-a-mole' situation so just gave up.

I reported this problem in one of the AdSense surveys I was invited to participate in but nothing appears to have changed.

[glitterball]

There is nothing off-topic or that I would want to be ignored on those pages and Google's organic results like the pages.

I'm struggling to explain why this could have happened - the sites earnings are now one tenth of what they used to be while traffic is down about 20%.

The only thing that I can think of now is that it is some forced localisation that didn't happen before (lots of our users are English speakers living in a non-English speaking country).

[purplecape]

Or interest-based advertising, maybe?

[glitterball]

It's not interest-based - I'm seeing Ads for hotels in places that I have never even searched for on the other side of the world.