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Adsense - wrong targeting based on just a part of the domain name

Is this possible to filter out this one word?

at2000

10:47 am on Jun 23, 2010 (gmt 0)

Junior Member

joined:Dec 30, 2008
posts:50
votes: 0

Hi,

I have a site with domain name like widgetsmix.com (actually both words are different, this is just an example). The problem that I'm experiencing is adsense very often shows ads targeted for word "mix", which has nothing to do with the site, it's really from absolutely different niche. As a result, CTR is close to 0.

Is this possible to tell adsense to ignore word "mix" when searching for targeted ads? I couldn't find a way to filter out some words in the control panel...

Thank you.

netmeg

11:57 am on June 23, 2010 (gmt 0)

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netmeg is a WebmasterWorld Top Contributor of All Time

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You can't. I have the same issue, and it took AdSense quite a while to get it right (over a year) I think they pay attention to what people click on, and figure it out from there.

That said, assuming you have your domain in text on your site, you can try using the section targeting code on your domain name to tell it which part to pay attention to and which not. I've done that. I don't know if it worked or not, I ended up with better ads, for whatever reason. But it's impossible to know if it was because of that.

You'll always get ads like that though. There's just no getting around it. You'll never be able to block all of them. If you absolutely can't get relevant ads (and remember, what you see is not necessarily what your users will see) then you'll have to either consider a new domain name or a different type of ad provider. Any contextual ad provider will always have this issue.

at2000

12:25 pm on June 23, 2010 (gmt 0)

Junior Member

joined:Dec 30, 2008
posts:50
votes: 0

Thanks netmeg! I had this feeling that pretty much nothing can be done... You mentioned section targeting code, can you please give more details? I tried to remove ALL occurrences of this word from the page, so it was only in the domain name, and still ads were targeted for this word. When I tried to use a different domain for the same page (actually just removed this word using hosts file), these off-targeted ads were gone. So if there was only a way to tell adsense to stop looking at the domain name... I like this domain name and really don't want to change to another one just because of this :(

netmeg

4:47 pm on June 23, 2010 (gmt 0)

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joined:Mar 30, 2005
posts:13012
votes: 222

Well in theory, you find some likely spot to stick your domain name (I'd put it high up the page) and do something like this:

GoodWordNotSoGoodWord.com

Now, that has to be in your actual text (i.e. between the <body> and </body>, not in the <head>)

And I have *no* idea if it really works. I used it on mine, and I eventually got the ads I wanted. But whether or not this helped there's no way to know. But it probably won't hurt.

incrediBILL

4:56 pm on June 23, 2010 (gmt 0)

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AdSense support can apply a negative filter for keywords but there's nothing directly available to the end user.

at2000

8:05 am on June 24, 2010 (gmt 0)

Junior Member

joined:Dec 30, 2008
posts:50
votes: 0

Thanks netmeg and incrediBILL! I added these tags into domain name, which I put into breadcrumbs. If it doesn't help in 2-3 weeks I'll contact AdSense support to add negative filter for this word.