How about adding + and - qualifiers to improve targeting?

[Play_Bach]

Targeting is so off on my site and there's no way I can drill down to the wrong category that's been dominating my ads for months to be able to even block them. So I was thinking, what if there was a way we publishers could add + and - qualifiers to our accounts to help AdSense zero in on our niche? For example, let's say my site has nothing to do with autos. In my fantasy AdSense setup, I could add -autos and AdSense wouldn't serve any autos ads. Obviously, an infinite list of qualifiers could be problematic for AdSense and abused, but what if there was a limit, say of five? Could something like this work? (not that there's a snowball's chance in hell it'll ever happen!)

[piatkow]

I agree, one of my sites has a topic of niche music + location. When I get niche music or wider music ads people click. What doesn't get the clicks and which swamps my ads is location + other topics. People looking for a gig aren't interested in finding an accountant or hairdresser in the same town whatever Adsense may think.

[DaStarBuG]

Become a Premium Publisher and you get some say into targeted topics.
The "downside" to this is, that you need around 10Mio PIs/Month to become one

[Play_Bach]

@DaStarBuG
Short of scandal and my site somehow going viral, it's very unlikely it's ever going premium, there just aren't that many people involved in the niche. What's odd is that AdSense targeting used to be so much better. Not sure what happened, but the ads I see today just don't line up anymore. My suggesting AdSense add qualifiers comes about simply because I can see how irrelevant the ads are on my site and there's apparently nothing I can do to help turn it around.

[Play_Bach]

Any other suggestions to help improve targeting? I'm all ears. Thanks!

[manny123]

Become a Premium Publisher and you get some say into targeted topics.

@DaStarBug any idea how to become a Premium Publisher or do you just have wait for them to tap you once you hit 10 mil?

[DaStarBuG]

Google will contact you

[JCKline]

Play_Bach, I think this is what the blocking in the "General Categories" of the new interface is for, but unfortunately their is a blocking limit. I did notice "autos" can be blocked there.

[Play_Bach]

@JCKline

Yes, unfortunately the sub-category I'd like to block (autos was just an example) is buried in the Shopping category and is not an option. I posted about it here back in April
[webmasterworld.com...]

Allowing publishers to use qualifiers makes sense to me probably because that's how I drill down in searches. Seems like something along similar lines could be used to help improve targeting by giving AdSense additional feedback about what ads site owners see as a poor match.