Which most determines the adsense ad served at a forum

the forum catagory, the thread title, or first words of post

[SlimKim]

Please elaborate on the role (if any) each plays in determining which ads are served by adsense when using vbulletin or phpbb forum software:

(1) Forum Catagory
(2) Title of thread
(3) Opening statement of first post in the thread
(4) Subsequent post in a thread and what portion of these post, does the first few words of each post have a greater bearing on the ad served?
(5) Other - please comment

Thanks :)

[webwright]

I'd say:

1) Title of Page (The Title TAG)
2) Anything in H1 tags
3) Anything on other H tags (h2, h3)
4) Keyword density (kinda outside of your control! ;-) )
5) Placement of keywords on page (high versus low)
6) Theme of the site in general (i.e. if you have a 500 page site on Ford Mustangs, a single page on Viagra might still throw mustang ads)

G'luck!

-t

[bstrackany]

IME title, h1 tags, repeated emphasized keywords, & theme of the site seemed about equal.

Try to make your forum pages read more like an article or blog. You can also try section targeting & reinforcing keywords about the forum category.

In general, I have a hard time getting relevant ads. Post subjects often aren't descriptive enough, and the main keywords aren't normally reinforced enough in the content to kick in for google.

I was surprised by the "site theme" issue -- I have a site that's 50% about "X" and then 5% about 10 other themes. So on a lot of pages about "Y" I still see a bunch of ads for "X" that sometimes become ads for "Y" after a few refreshes. I get a crappy CTR as a result. :(

[Heartlander]

Search for the tool that gives you a view of how search engines see your site, and it will reveal much.
Remember that after grabbing from your header, it goes all the way down the left side (if you have a column there), THEN goes for the content- which in this case is the forums list.

Remember this as well- those "New Topic" and "Reply" buttons get indexed- before the post content does.

I have found that putting a banner just below the Title of the the Topic gets the best results.

[Heartlander]

Search for the tool that gives you a view of how search engines see your site, and it will reveal much.
Remember that after grabbing from your header, it goes all the way down the left side (if you have a column there), THEN goes for the content- which in this case is the forums list.

Remember this as well- those "New Topic" and "Reply" buttons get indexed- before the post content does.

I have found that putting a banner just below the Title of the the Topic gets the best results.

[aeiouy]

I have found by making the title be the topic of the thread, and using targeting to get it to focus on the body of the message, that you can get very specific targeting to a message if it is on a specific topic. Regardless of what your site targeting is.