Adwords advertiser wants to be on one of my pages

Is there a way to help him target it?

[buckworks]

I've just been contacted by someone who wants to trade links with one of my internal pages. His site is too far off-topic to be a suitable link on that page; the only thing in common is some regional overlap.

However, I suggested that because I run Adsense on that page, he could target the page by adding some unique-to-that-page word combinations to his Adwords account.

Now it occurs to me to wonder if there's something I could do from my end to help even more. I'm thinking about putting a unique nonsense word in the keywords metatag that he could include in his listings to improve his chances of appearing on that page.

Good idea? Bad idea? Has anyone tried anything like this? Does Adsense even read the metatags?

[JohnKelly]

I know the Google search engine pretty much ignores meta tags, so you might have to place visible text somewhere on your page... but they may consider non-relevant text a violation of the AdSense TOS.

[Sanenet]

Strikes me that would be against TOS... isn't that tampering with the display of adverts?

Couldn't you just go for the good old "I'll stick up a link, and so do you" method?

[dmorison]

I'm doing an experiment at the moment; except it's the opposite of what you want to do.

Google keep showing my ad on a kids site, and having checked out the site it is immediately obvious why this one particular page happens to call-up my ad. Anyway, i've tried adding some keywords from this page (including the core domain name (minus the .com) as negative matches to see if that makes any difference.

It's only been running at 2 or 3 referrals a week so it will be a few days before I know if it's worked.

[buckworks]

Couldn't you just go for the good old "I'll stick up a link, and so do you" method?

No, because the page's content is tightly themed and his link would be too far off topic for a regular link exchange to make sense.

[loanuniverse]

dmorison:

Checking to see if it works should be as easy as visiting that site and seeing if your ads show up after you apply the filters (giving enough time for adwords to catch up)

I would look for something in the byline to use as my negative. Is there a copywright notice? what is the name in the notice?

[dmorison]

Checked a couple of times (didn't want to go mad; it's not like it's a massive problem or anything) and nothing showing up; but I don't know how frequently it was showing anyway.

[hyperkik]

Why not just negotiate a fee for him to sponsor the page, remove the AdSense code from that page, and replace it with the sponsored link to his site?

[cyberprosper]

"Why not just negotiate a fee for him to sponsor the page, remove the AdSense code from that page, and replace it with the sponsored link to his site? "

- That was what I was going to say. I highly recommend this. A) You will make more money B) You will spread some of your revenues around and be less reliant on the ever-so-fickle Adsense program.

[buckworks]

Why not just negotiate a fee for him to sponsor the page

I'm concerned about staying rigidly on theme, because the site is starting to get links from scholarly sources and in order not to sabotage that I need to keep a lid on anything "salesy" or off-topic. Adsense feels like pushing the limits far enough.

Fictitious example: If you had a site about learning to swim, and your goal was to earn respect and get links from sports and fitness sites around the world, an ad for roofing supplies just wouldn't fit your big picture even if the manufacturer did happen to be located in the same city as a swimming club you mentioned.

The more I think about it, the more I think that doing anything special to help this fellow target the page would be a misfit, but I'd still be interested to know if the idea could work.