AdSense Ads That have Nothing To Do With Advertisers Site!?

[webnoob]

i have some ads appearing for a specific product, but when you go to the site their website has absolutely nothing to do with what is being displayed on the ad.

why would they do this? they are fooling my users into thinking they are visiting a site related what is shown on the ad, yet it's not the case.

[anton23]

Contact G Adsense in the link provided in the ad.

[webnoob]

well, they are paying google. would they even care? i didn't think there were such rules restricting them from doing this.

i never heard of this issue before but it seems these people are using these keywords to trigger these ads on my site.

[anton23]

Fill a complain and expect to see what happen. Probably google do care, but I don't know the ToS of AdWords by heart.

[Brett_Tabke]

Be sure to ask them to check if the site is cloaked or could be day parting.

[david_uk]

Advertisers bid on keywords then place ads. I have no idea if there is any obligation on them to link from the ad to a page that has relevant content or not. Does an advertisers ad have to be relevant to your site if that advertiser is targetting your keywords?

I'm guessing not, as I often see ads on my site that are unlikely to contain relevant keywords but are indirectly relevant to my site topic. Therefore are likely to appeal to my visitors.

If the ads aren't relevant to your content in any way, the most effective way of dealing with these misplaced ads is to block them.

[FromRocky]

i never heard of this issue before but it seems these people are using these keywords to trigger these ads on my site.

Note that the ad selection for the content network is based on a collection of keywords or theme, not on the individual keywords.

[incrediBILL]

Drop their URL in the ad filter, bye-bye.

I find it hard to believe people have time to even check the ads, must be a small site ;)

[MediaSpree]

Adwords ads can also go to specific pages on the site but only display the homepage url in the ad. I assume you typed the URL directly into the browser and did not click your ad so maybe when a user clicks the ad they go to www.example.com/bluewidgets/widgets.html instead of just example.com like the ad displays.

[jomaxx]

The URL that appears in the mouseover text is not necessarily accurate. As mentioned in another thread just now, be sure you are getting the correct URL from the preview tool before filing any complaint (although as Bill says, there's no particular need to contact Google at all).

[musiqqueen]

I've been seeing this quite often also.