I'd say of course there are AdSense algorithm updates.

There are times where the Adsense ads on the sites I have make no sense at all and CTRs plummet. For the past few days, it has dropped ridiculously and when I visit my sites, I'm being shown adverts for "Garage Installations" and "Bird Watching".

I had that recently, mature dating ads were appearing not only on my sites but others. One of my readers complained and I banned the ads. Normal interest based service was resumed.

I assumed that the advertisers had targeted certain sites for their ads to appear on without any interest-based reason. Excluding them from my sites wasn't easy though, as soon as I banned one, another look-alike appeared but perseverance paid off.

mature dating ads were appearing not only on my sites but others

That's all I seem to see on websites?!?! It's like Google has read my age, seen that I work online all day and decided that mature dating is what I'd be interested in! Jerks ...

Geolocation can be a factor.

Also, when they have a large stock of ads from a specific advertiser, and depending of the quality of your page CTR/PR/#visitors versus (sometimes) lack of good advertisement....

Everything has to go. Even though those ads might kill the publishers' (income).

I've noticed lousy ad targeting for the last couple of days. I'm seeing car ads on a site that has absolutely nothing to do with cars, and I have not visited a car site in months.

For the past few days, it has dropped ridiculously and when I visit my sites, I'm being shown adverts for "Garage Installations" and "Bird Watching".

You mean like (mostly) the last two weeks right? Yes. I'm seeing a lot of different numbers now. :( and not good.

The only thing I've ever noticed is the interest based ads following me around.

Among my searches yesterday were one for a particular recipe and another relating to an engineering question.

Funny seeing engineering ads on recipe sites and of course conversely...

Too funny...

I just finished reading this thread here, and I go check my email and got the following email from a reader of my site.

I don't like the ...we don't like young men we want you ... Ad that popped up....I don't mind all the ad banners I know you need fund it...the site ...but not with dating or escort services showing cleavage

This is not what I want to see.

In 18 months of AdSense, I have had a handful of similar complaints and blocked a handful of ads.

There's some BIG changes coming up in AdWords for mobile ads. Suggest you keep up there too. As I will keep repeating until I'm blue in the face, you cannot completely understand (and make the most of) AdSense unless you have at least some knowledge of how Adwords works - and the changes that happen there.

I'm seeing ads for Fecal Transplants. Those might work on medical pages but they are appearing on Linux kernel material.

There's some BIG changes coming up in AdWords for mobile ads. Suggest you keep up there too.

What is the major change netmeg? I can see a discussion thread about simplifying the control panel and amalgamating campaigns. Is that what you are referring to?

Enhanced Campaigns. It changes the way that advertisers can bid for mobile.

[searchengineland.com...]

Interesting that they grouping Tablets with Desktops. I would have thought they'd separate Tablets given that more people are carrying them around as they have become smaller and lighter.

Well I have event sites, and I notice that tablet behavior is very different from phone behavior, and I haven't done any direct comparisons yet, but it's probably closer to desktop than to phone.

But that said - AdWords is already way too complex for the average business owner. The smart advertisers and agencies are going to find ways around it, but the less savvy ones are going to end up spending a lot more on mobile (at least at first) than maybe they intended.

Basically you used to be able to opt out of mobile, and now you pretty much can't (unless you know enough to set your mobile bids to -300% of your desktop bids)

There's a bunch of free seminars coming up that explain how it all works, and I'm going to take all of them - partly because I'm an advertiser too, but also partly because I'm a publisher with a lot of mobile traffic, and I want to know how it's going to work from the other side. If you want to listen in, the registration link is here.

[google.com...]

(the ones that say "Enhanced Campaigns")

AdWords is already way too complex for the average business owner.

Why does nothing ever become simpler?

Google is actually saying it's simpler. It's just that simpler to Google != simpler to normal people.

t's just that simpler to Google != simpler to normal people.

They're obsessed with javascript and javascript doesn't make things simpler.

My Adsense has bombed this month, my CTR has fallen dramatically. I was chatting to a friend about this who had a phone conversation with an Adsense person a couple of weeks ago. Apparently he told her that it has changed and is now based on your browsing history/cookies? instead of keywords on the page.

This has got to be why my Adsense is so bad (as well as traffic dropping due to Panda). I was on a page yesterday and it was showing me ads for mattresses & storage solutions. I run a pet website. They were completely irrelevant. Incidentally, I haven't actually looked up info on mattresses in the near past.

They seem to be shooting themselves and their publishers in the foot right now.

I was chatting to a friend about this who had a phone conversation with an Adsense person a couple of weeks ago. Apparently he told her that it has changed and is now based on your browsing history/cookies? instead of keywords on the page.

That's not new. That's been happening for a long time. You can check what's being shown in the stats area. It will tell you how many ads were shown based on "Interests" (i.e. cookies) and how many were "Contextual" (i.e. about the stuff actually on the website).

Oh okay, I didn't know that. So it doesn't explain why Adsense has absolutely crashed in February :( I'm back to 2010 levels. I just don't know what's happened.

I believe Google periodically makes adjustments to the ratio of interest versus contextual ads shown.

My sites have proven to perform better when I have interest based ads turned off in Advanced Settings as the topics are quite specific.

Oh wow, I hadn't even heard of the interest based ads setting. I've just disabled it. Thanks :)