Getting Related Ads from AdSense

[fivecents]

My AdSense isn’t related to my pages and I’m wondering how I can fix that, if I even could.

The site has been Search Engine Optimized and I’m starting to rank well in Google as the sandbox is wearing off. I’d hate to reword my website for AdSense to show related ads, but I don’t think I have any other choice, do I?

Obviously I would want to go against the SEO I’ve done, or spam the AdSense engines or my visitors, but does anybody know what text aspects AdSense looks at for ads that I might be able to fines and change?

I’ve paid for and tried some AdSense literature, but they don’t cover this.

Thanks for any help.

[CaseyC]

I am interested in others' responses as well. We have been experiencing some of the same issue lately. I talked with a support person for Adesense, but he was of little as to why our ads are not as relevant. Just said that Google has a special system for matching ads. We have had to remove text links from some of our pages, as the ads were keying off the text links and pulling ads not related to content.

The support person also told me that Google knows which type of ads pay better and convert better, so they will try and put those on a site. I guess they sometimes forget to put relevancy into the equation.

[Jenstar]

How "unrelated" are the ads? Is it the difference between showing purple widgets and green widgets? Or is the difference more comparable to ballet and big rig trucks? Are they picking up the "unrelated" ads from something on the page, even if it isn't the primary keywords the page is about?

Sometimes people want what they perceive to be better targeted ads simply because they believe they would pay better than what it showing, but part of the algo for displaying ads will show the highest paying ads available at the time the ads display for the terms it deems the page is about.

Also, if the content changes, it can be targeting to something that was there three weeks ago, because the mediabot does not visit as frequently as the regular googlebot, for example. This is a problem that a lot of bloggers have on their index pages - if they wrote about popcorn three weeks ago, and it has long since left the index page, they might still be showing popcorn ads today. So it was perfectly targeted for the day the mediabot came by.

[fivecents]

Though not as unrelated as "ballet" and "big rig trucks", the relatedness of the ads are comparable to "ballet" and "feet".

Sure, ballet does involve using feet, I wouldn't want ads about athlete's foot on my ballet dance website.

Using the above metaphor, I've used the word "feet" several times on the website in minor places, let's say "large-feet style" and "small-feet style".

Since my first posting on this topic, I've gotten around the problem by using images for the text. My ads relatedness has greatly improved.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I have had that problem too and found one source of problems most people is probably not aware of (including AdSense reps) - frames. Some of my media partners frame my sites (and they are allowed to), but because my site is not using frames I am not using the frame version of the script. In fact, I don't know if anyone is framing these sites - I don't monitor it, and bevcause my partners are allowed to do so I have no frames breaking scripts.

Now, I found that the mediabot get confused about the framing from other sites. I did a test and set up my own framing from another domain and sure enough, within hours of the first "visit" by the framed version that other domain got visited by the mediabot and probably picked keywords from it.

Most websites don't have frame busters and so, anyone can frame it if they want. If AdWordsRep is around maybe you can tel me if it is generally a good idea to have the google_page_url = document.location; variable in all your AdSense scripts to avoid the mediabot to pick up (wrong) keywords from a framing domain?

The worst example I have of this was in the "ballet and big rig trucks" category - completely unrelated. I noticed because on this one page the CTR was MUCh lower than any of my other pages. About a week ago I changed everything so this page is not (as far as I know) being framed anymore but I still get totally unrelated ads... It seems that the initial keywords stick ...

[Jenstar]

It seems that the initial keywords stick ...

It takes about a month for the page to be re-indexed by the mediabot, so you could have problems with the targeting until the next time mediabot indexes it.

[Gargen]

i have the same problem http://ihategargen.com/ yea my site has nothing to do with any of the adsense stuff on the first page but all the other pages have correct, related ads, what can i do about this, and what is a mediabot is that just another word for crawler or spider like googlebot

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

The mediabot is just the name of the spider Google uses for the AdSense program. There is really not much you can do now except for waiting. It should not take more than maksimum a month before the mediabot check with your page. After that you should begin to see more relevant ads

[Gargen]

a month ok thx i think i can wait that long cause these ads are paying out nothing

[Watchdog]

but the same ads are showing all the time...as if they don't have enough adword users for the site...another concern is many forget the value of your ad being seen all the time and just the oposite my google revenue as plumeted by at least 75 percent...it was for many months a great source of revenue, but I now wonder if I should give them the space fore the little return...

I'm hoping I can learn something here in this group and save the resource of revenue..

[SMSConsult]

I find it interesting that your revenue from AdSense has been declining given the increasing competition among online ad services.

I am not sure what type of page views you are getting, but if you are getting enough to get the attention of a AdSense rep I would talk to one of them. If not I would look to JenStar for help or it might simply be time to test another ad system - e.g. AdBrite, Quigo, or hold out for Yahoo's version of AdSense.

There is not a high cost to trying out multiple services and one may just have a better mix of advertisers for you - or if you are right and the people viewing your site have already seen the mix of ads provided by AdSense's contextual algo perhaps another ad service will serve your site a different/fresh mix.

I would be interested to know if this works out for you as I am in the process of making reccomendations to my largest clients on which online ad sercives to be working with.

[Watchdog]

I operate TheSheetMetalShop.Com, (this shouldn't be spam, because other then all trying to learn how to generate additional revenue, my site is industry specific and more then likely not too many tinners here) I have an online library for the sheet metal industry to enjoy and learn from. The collection is constantly being added to and the books are very popular, my message board is beginning to grow and I do reach different types of advertising, depending on the content in the forum one is reading…My search engine rankings are great in google and yahoo, alta vista, to name some…I also write for a related trade magazine and this gives the website an additional amount of exposure to the industry. Put this with being the only site of it's kind, I think we can be doing more in terms of revenue...I have two sponsors, one has been with me for the past 3 years and the second one has just signed up...Google "Sheet Metal" and my site is in the first ten..same with yahoo

How do I get my PDF's included in the search engines?

I'm thinking of selling ad space on the pdfs, has anyone done this type of marketing...