I recently added Google's AdSense to my blog more out of curiosity than anything else. I really don't get the traffic to make much money, but I figured I'd try it out just to see how it works.
When I first added it, I got a lot of blog-related ads. I followed some of the tips about removing the word "blog" from the sidebar which seemed to solve that problem and things were working pretty well for a while. Now I'm getting a lot of junk. "Find your soul mate" kind of stuff that I really don't want. I visited Kalyn's Kitchen and noticed that the same thing is happening on her site as well, although perhaps not to the same degree.
It appears that this is happening mostly on the main page. When I click on posts that are elsewhere in my blog, such as a specific recipe or the permalink, the ads at the bottom of those posts are generally relevant.
Is this normal for AdSense or is this a recent problem? I certainly am not going to make much money on this, so I'm tempted to remove it if it can't even generate relevant ads.
Any tips or suggestions?
This Post was written by Alysha from The Savory Notebook
7 comments:
Thanks Andrew.
I had seen some of those tips and will try them, but I guess I was wondering if this was a recent issue for AdSense - for a while I wasn't getting any of these ads and now suddenly I'm getting quite a few. I was wondering if these problems had existed for AdSense users all along or if anyone else had experienced them only recently.
I'll try banning first and see how that goes........
Andrew, thanks for that tip. Can I insert that into a specific post (if I switch to posting in html) or does it only work in the blog template?
I did block Wal-Mart from my google ads after I got up one morning and I had a Wal-Mart ad. I was thinking of blocking the ads Alysha mentioned too. (LOL though because my brother told me that every time looked at my blog he was *very* intrigued by the ad that said "Who is your soul mate" and he wanted to click on it. I'm probably going to blog that one though if it keeps showing up.
Alysha, for me personally, I only noticed what I considered to be "weird" ads recently. I wonder if it has to do with how much google ad space that advertiser purchases. I know the day I saw the Wal-Mart ads it was on nearly every blog I saw that had google ads.
Thanks for the comments, Kalyn. :)
I've blocked the 3 that are showing up most for me, so we'll see if they are gone later today or tomorrow.
I just hope they aren't replaced by other non-relevant ads.
You'd think Google would have an interest in keeping the ads relevant to a website no matter how much ad space these advertisers purchase.
Again, I don't get near enough traffic to make any money, I'm just curious to see what happens.........
As I understand it a key element of AdSEnse is that it is targeted at the reader. Therefore, although you can block certain types of adds (based on keywords/urls etc) from showing up, you can only control it to a limited extent. A reason it is 'supposed' to work is because it is targeted at the user, therefore if I look at your site at exactly the same time as you, we will very probably see different ads - mainly because I'm in the UK and I'm assuming you're not.
I find the best way to pull in relevant ads is to simply use the targeting tags that Andrew mentioned. I haven't seen anything unusual pop up on Kung Foodie at all. You should put the tags into your template around the post content area.
Thanks Kat. I'll definitely try that.
I also blocked the same three ads Alysha did and already I'm getting ads like I'd like to have, not weird things.
Ack, I got a Sugar Daddy dating service ad today! I'd rather have Soul Mates on there than Sugar Daddy!
Thanks for the link David - I really like that site and refer to it often. I've done a lot of what he has suggested, but haven't tried the section targeting yet.
And your comment about having fun seeing what strange ads come up also makes me wonder - maybe these are the ads that people will actually click on? ;-)
Still, no Sugar Daddy ads for me, thanks.
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