Ads not showing intermittently

[wizarddave]

On the main page of one my [relatively] high-earning sites, I'm currently having the problem that the first ad placement in the page (a 468x60) is working just fine, but the second placement (a 120x240) is coming up blank intermittently, but blank more times than not. It started last evening, and I was having the same trouble about this time last week.

A message to G last Friday night didn't get answered until the following Monday (understandable) and when they did answer back, the problem had magically corrected itself and they had nothing to add to the mystery.

Now it's happening again... I did message G again last night.

Clearing my browser cache doesn't help, it happens with both IE and FF, the preview tool shows plenty of ads available, and it's only this one site of my many sites on AS, and only the home page of this site (sub pages all working fine).

Can anybody shed any light on this problem? This happening to anyone else?

It's very frustrating to have a big 120x240 blank space on my home page!

Thanks.

[ann]

When I get that I re-upload the page...then it starts working.

Gets the mediabot's attention.

Ann

[wizarddave]

Been re-uploading all morning. Intermittent problem still exists.

I seemed to recall alternate ads only worked on the first placement, so I never bothered doing them before. Now, I see AA's work in all placements, so I've added AA's for both my placements on the homepage and at least I'm not getting 120x240 blank spaces any more...

Still wish I knew why that placement is failing to show an ad intermittently...

[dollarshort]

I imagine its the ad servers being overloaded, I was overseas not long ago and it happened much more frequently during peak traffic.

[allthewhile]

I occassionally have this problem on both of my sites as well. Code doesn't seem to work with certain css/html/script configurations or it just won't load. I also get random psa's on normally perfectly targeted pages.

[Powdork]

I had the same problem a while back. The ads were focusing on a small patch of content out of the whole page. I tried Google hints and they seemed to fix it forever but, as always, it was while a number of other factors were also being tweaked at the same time.

[route66]

I added some new pages yesterday and the ad units are collapsing even though they are *not* set up to collapse. I don't get a PSA or a blank space. They collapse! Link units on the newly added pages work fine. Ad units on all of the other existing pages work fine. Why it's happening to only the new pages is a head scratcher.

[wizarddave]

Well... problem is still happening for me, but it's only gotten worse. Now *both* of my placements on my home page of one site are intermittently not showing ads (but more not showing than showing). I've got alternate ads in there, but I'd really like to have AS back in there... Hopefully G will help me with this tomorrow like they did last Monday.

[wizarddave]

Oh, no! Could this have been the result of a Stop Word?

The problem started on Friday, I just now noticed a story blurb I posted on Friday described a character in a movie as "a happless, suicidal industrial designer". Could the word "suicidal" have caused the ads on that page to be killed?

I just now removed the word from the page. Anyone know how long it takes for a page killed by Stop Words to be restored after the page is fixed?

[RS_200_gto]

We have the same problem, AdSense off target or PSA are showing up.

We contacted the AdSense Team, and here is the reply:

Thank for your reply.

I've reviewed your page again and was consistently able to see targeted Google ads appearing.

If this problem persists, please reply to this email and include the details listed below.

-What browser version are you using?
-What operating system version are you running?
-What is the exact URL that is causing you trouble?
-What is the specific error message you are seeing?
-Does this problem occur every time you view the page?
-When did you put our ad code on your site?
-What ad blocking or personal firewall software do you have installed, if any?
-What is the date and time you saw this problem?
-Can you send us a screenshot showing this problem?

We'll be happy to further investigate the issue for you.

[wizarddave]

My missing ads are back, apparently without human intervention from AS (since it's still the weekend). This is approximately 10 hours since I removed the Stop Word I mentioned in the thread above.

Does anyone think it's likely that my removing the Stop Word from the page made the problem go away, or do we think it's a coincidence?