Targetting tool can make targetting worse!

[david_uk]

Apart from the usual made for adsense, scrapers and other junk that adsense targets unless you block it, of late the targetting on my site has been OK.

I was curious about the new targetting tool, and I did wonder what it might do to the ads shown on my page. I emphasised a couple of paragraphs, and the page must have just been spidered.

Interestingly, it's picked up the word "newsgroup". It's only mentioned once, and the main keywords get quite a lot of mentions. However, the bot has decided to remove all the adverts adsense KNOW WILL CONVERT, and earn them/me money and replace them with junky ads for newsgroup readers.

I know it's because I've asked it to place emphasis on these paragraphs, so I've removed the emphasis, and I'm going to jiggle some keywords and hopefully get back the ads they used to target!

The moral of the story is that if your page isn't broken don't try to fix it!

[ann]

David,

Put the word newsgroup in a graphic which google can't read.

Ann

[david_uk]

Thanks for the idea.

The targetting worked fine before the spidering, so I'hm hoping that having removed the targetting hints the bot can target as before. In the meantime, I've removed the word newsgroup from the text.

So I guess that if the targetting on the page is poor, then the hints tool is going to help - if it's OK, then maybe it's best to leave things as they are.

Interesting experiment.

[incrediBILL]

Did you have any more clues for the targetting to lock up on like a heading?

[mike schmitz]

Use Google's ignore tag.

[ElvisFan]

Can some one help me with this new targeting tool.

Okay my issue is that most of my pages are Elvis related so most of my text offers up crappy Elvis related ads such as "Elvis Wedding" and 'Elvis Impersonators" not only do they pay pittance but are of no interest to most Elvis fans which are baby-boomers who travel, buy gifts and cars and spend money on their grandchildren...

I have several topics such as cars and homes owned my Elvis... where my articles are although Elvis related I would like to target "car" and real estate" ads...

Any suggestion where would be the best place to insert the target tool... as only the <h1> header </h1> and the first line paragraph offers slightly off Elvis target content.

Thanks... all suggestions welcome on how to re-write my headers to target ads of interest to my baby-boomers visitors...

[david_uk]

Did you have any more clues for the targetting to lock up on like a heading?

I selected a paragraph on the page that seemed to me to be the most relevant one describing the site. The heading contains the prime keyword people use to get to my site.

Having removed the tags, changed the banner a couple of times to get the spider to re-visit, adsense targetting is even screwier! I'm now seeing ads for domains for sale. Hopefully it will stabilise soon.

[dutch_dude]

Put the word newsgroup in a graphic which google can't read.

That's ugly, put such words in a span tag something like this: ne<span>wsgroup</span>. Visitors wont even notice, but the word does not exist anymore for bots.

[david_uk]

Thanks for this solution. I've implemented it.

Cheers!

[bumpski]

The question is then will Googlebot go, "Hmm"

<Spam> wsgroup </Spam>

Googlebot won't care about Adsense, but it might lower the SERP position for the page.

[dutch_dude]

Why would it trigger a spam filter? Span tags are used often for styling text. This trick has little use in SEO, apart from maybe converting a plural to a singular if you need keyword density.

Anyway, I never noticed a problem on ranking pages where that trick is used.