Forum Moderators: martinibuster

Message Too Old, No Replies

Ads Sometimes Way Off Target Since Saturday

Off and On Relevance with no change to page code

         

Webhog

9:56 pm on Oct 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I am a first time poster, long time lurker. I run a very small pet related sited. Since Saturday, the ads on my home page have sometimes been way off target. Ex. link unit with "kidnapping" (why do they even show that?), child safety, etc. My 250x250 showing international life insurance. Yet 20 minutes later they can be back to the normal "on target" ads. They have always been pet related, on target, until saturday.

Anybody else experiencing this? Any idea how to fix it? People going to a pet site are not looking for child safety devices.

Thanks

hunderdown

10:08 pm on Oct 16, 2006 (gmt 0)



Have you tried "section targeting" to fine tune what text is being looked at?

On your home page, you could have some navigation text or just a couple of random words that the bot is targeting. use "section targeting" to tell it what sections to ignore or pay particular attention to.

Do a search on that phrase within AdSense HELP and you'll find out what to do.

Chapman

10:45 pm on Oct 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



While section targeting may correct the problem Webhog is having, I'll bet this cropped up after a long period where the targeting was good.

I noticed the same thing even while the outage on Saturday was still ocurring. Many of my pages that had stable ads for over a year started displaying ads with little relavance. I was even moved to throw some of them into the filter... but as we were still in outage mode that wasn't an option. :-(

Anyway, over the past couple of days I've been using the preview tool to seek out renagade ads and submit them to the filter. I would suggest this as your first course of action... unless there are just too many. I found that eliminating a dozen or so brought my targeting pretty much back in line.

Chapman

Webhog

11:25 pm on Oct 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks for the info. I will try your suggestions. It seems related to the maintenance as this is when the ads started to go haywire. The homepage code and ads have been stable for months until saturday. The strange thing is that the ads change radically hour to hour. One hour dead on good ads, the next, totally off target.

Chapman

11:36 pm on Oct 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I believe that there is still maintenance (read: problem solving) going on which would account for what you're (we're) seeing. Sometimes it's a few days before any previous stability is revisited.

BTW, Welcome to Webmaster World!

Chapman

europeforvisitors

12:24 am on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)



I noticed that, too, but only on my home page, where I was getting ads for Savannah, Hong Kong, and Nashville on a page about European travel over the weekend. (Advertisers weren't in short supply--ads on my other general European-travel pages were fine.)

This kind of goofiness happens every few months and usually gets fixed after a while, although it's annoying enough that I often pull the AdSense code from my root directory until things have settled down.

Webhog

12:53 am on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks for the welcome. EFV...yes it seems to be only my homepage. The internal pages have good ads so far.

ken_b

12:58 am on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Webhog, Welcome to WW and the Adsense forum.

This kind of goofiness happens every few months and usually gets fixed after a while, although it's annoying enough that I often pull the AdSense code from my root directory until things have settled down.

That's been my experience too. I sometimes pull the ads from my homepage if it gets too bad. On rare occasions I think I've pulled the ads from a sub-index page also, but maybe only once or twice in nearly 3 years.

OptiRex

2:11 am on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)



Webhog

For regulars, do not read!

As is usual with these Googley (non-cricket) things, my account seems to get hit first by updates and, obviously, comes out of whatever "alteration" is done first.

Mine first went screwy late last Wednesday and was off-target for all kinds of things until Saturday morning when it returned to "normal".

Was Sunday good because Google's algo "found" all my lost clicks etc, I have no idea, is Monday being the best day I've had since May a result of the "screw-ups"...no idea!

Unfortunately we have to live with whatever Google throws at us, the worst part about it is their denial of "having done anything different and their crappy canned repsonses".

The best thing though is being able to come here and have a great big bellyache about it all and read all the posts from people who are not suffering...until tomorrow:-)))

Chapman

2:45 am on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Monday being the best day I've had since May

Sadly, I've not been able to recover from Saturday, however, my Wednesday and Friday were super (go figure?)! Everything AdSense, for the moment, is severely depressed despite an elevation in traffic. I'm hoping, as the week progresses, that the record days from the first of the month come back for the second half.

The best thing though is being able to come here and have a great big bellyache about it all

Yup... let me have a Triple Bellyache with cheese! Gotta love WW: AdSense Division... Bellyaches 'R' Us!

Chapman

makes a little sense

3:08 am on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



To the OP,

Double-check your keywords. They might be misleading AdSense. Also, you might experiment with other keywords and/or add more to "trigger" adsense. I've had this problem with a few pages of mine.

Webhog

3:52 pm on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Sounds like maybe this is just a rough patch with adsense. I will wait it out for another day or two, then try all the suggestions mentioned. The good thing is..visitors are still clicking ads for the time being :)

Chapman

4:09 pm on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



It's been a decidedly better day in the AdSense neighborhood than it has been for the past couple of days! In fact, things are looking very rosey indeed!

Earnings, so far, exceed daily totals for Sunday and Monday. Ad targeting is very good and steady. Even eCPM seems to be a bit elevated.

I can't imagine it was my late night bellyaching that did it... probably just things calming down after whatever the issues were on Saturday.

Hopefully, things are improving for you as well Webhog.

Now off to do something totally unrelated... for a change.

Chapman

Pengi

4:58 pm on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I'm sure it must have been the bellyaching that did the trick Chapman. I must try it!

Chapman

5:09 pm on Oct 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Yeah... it probably WAS the bellyaching!

I'm sure a G representative saw it while he was monitoring us and opened up the "faucet" just a bit because he/she felt bad for me! ;-)

Chapman