Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I just find it really annoying that as web developers using Adsense, we have to do all these tricks and schemes to get the Google Ads to recognize what the topic of the site is.
Wouldn't it be better for all parties involved, if when creating the Adsense code, you could just type in what your subject or topic is, then all ads relating to it would be posted?
So if I have a chatroom for Animation, then I could just type in the word "Animation" and all ads relating to Animation would then appear. What's the big deal? :/
can you imagine all those photo rating / celeb type high traffic sites all wanting to serve topics from those hit paying lists...
<added> jomaxx put it more eloquently</added>
[edited by: mcavill at 11:00 pm (utc) on May 19, 2005]
I could imagine this functionality being enabled for a handful of trusted webmasters, but many if not most site owners would simply go shopping for the highest-paying ads.
Greed would soon corrupt any integrity in that model.
Think about it.. the jerks who would not choose something related to their site would end up with VERY low conversions and CTR making them show lower paying ads. They would probably be better off serving the correct ads instead.
Google could just give us a choice -- either bot generated or manual.
A better option would be to allow hints to help the ad-matching algorithm (not as a substitute for it). This has been discussed frequently in the past, so Google is well aware of it, but it appears that Google would rather let the bots figure things out on their own.
One problem with manual selection of keywords (or even with hints) is that, if targeted ads aren't available, the manual keyword selection or hints will be useless. So Google may feel that it's better to let its software find the best available ads for the page's content than to have publishers gumming up the works with keyword suggestions that may or may not work at a given moment in time.
...but many if not most site owners would simply go shopping for the highest-paying ads.
Sorry, but I think this is way too braod a brush stroke.
Sure there are those that would abuse the system if they had the chance. And there may well be many of them.
But to even hint that "most webmasters" would do this is way overstating things in my opinion.
Most webmasters are probably very honest folks just trying to make an honest dollar.
It would be nice to be able to put something like this in the AdSense code:
neg: "Bristol, England","Bristol, UK"
That way the Mediabot would know right away that the article had nothing to do with Bristol, England.
With negative keywords, it would be difficult to tell the bot what a page is about (game the system), but very easy to tell it what the page is NOT about.
I'd put money on it that malicious webmasters are already doing this by troubleshooting the bot until the off-topic ads they want appear.
So my point is, why make it such a PITA for the honest folks to get the on-topic ads?
It was mentioned that some elite Adsense members are able to change their ads. Maybe Google could allow non-elite members to send in a request for a change. Then they could verify if it's an abusive change or not.
It was mentioned that some elite Adsense members are able to change their ads. Maybe Google could allow non-elite members to send in a request for a change. Then they could verify if it's an abusive change or not.
They'd have to develop an algorithm, since it wouldn't be cost-effective to have pages checked by humans--and I imagine their programmers have higher-priority tasks to deal with right now.
I have a page on one of my sites that discusses various aspects of Bristol, England, but the ads on the page are consistently for hotels in Bristol, Connecticut. Completely off-topic and totally useless for the visitors.
Not off-topic for the person looking for info on Bristol Connecticut and who came to your page via a search. If you exclude the ads, he'll surely just click Back. With the ads, the only interesting thing to them on your page is that ad - giving you a great chance of getting a click-through. That is how it's supposed to work, isn't it?
The basic concept of the Google Ad is as a piece of "contextual advertising", i.e. it will show an advert, (if an advertiser has registered with Google relating to the topic showe), for the text which is displayed.
The advert may not be 100% accurate to the text being displayed. So change the text until it does appear correctly.
Blogs are a different kettle of fish. If you have a varied blog like mine,(<snip>), then the blog topic can change quite radically from entry to entry. However, I do have several keywords splashed around the blog which ensures that adverts for laser eye surgery occur - which I had back in January, and blogged about, and found that it was a reasonable high paying Adsense subject.
It's more sensible, I think, for us to "play the game" with Google, and adjust your webpages accordingly to ensure your desired range of adverts appear, than expect Google to change their systems for us.
[edited by: Jenstar at 7:25 pm (utc) on May 20, 2005]
[edit reason] No promotional URLs please, as per TOS [/edit]
In my opinion, however, targeting high value keywords isn't necessarily a terrible thing, if it's done transparently and honestly. As long as the clicks are 'qualified' and advertisers are happy to pay for higher priced keywords, doing so should make the big boys happy. As has been referenced in other threads, the big boys themselves do this by driving pages to high revenue click oriented content. In my opinion it's all a part of the process of ensuring user interest in the listings.
Not off-topic for the person looking for info on Bristol Connecticut and who came to your page via a search. If you exclude the ads, he'll surely just click Back. With the ads, the only interesting thing to them on your page is that ad - giving you a great chance of getting a click-through. That is how it's supposed to work, isn't it?
No, that isn't how it's supposed to work at all. The ads are supposed to be relevent to the topic of the page, not a word selected from the page at random. An article about Bristol, England is completely irrelevent to the city of Bristol, Connecticut, and one would expect the CTR to be virtually nil, which it is.
The mediabot should be "smart" enough to recognize the difference when the text has several references specifically to Bristol, England and not even one to Bristol, Connecticut. It apparently is not, so negative helper keywords would be a big help.
Let's say you have an article on Helen Keller that only offers a little bit of information. Your user, who is looking for HK info, might be inclined to look for other clicks, but GAS might summon AdSense listings for "Keller Graduate School," which is not of interest.
We've found that by allowing users to control the search query, people can increase their return over AdSense. Is it it open to abuse? Yes, but as I suggested earlier, it's pretty easy to spot, and therefore pretty easy to monitor if it's violating the spirit of the law and therefore hurting advertisers.
