AdSense Works: Improving your ad targeting

AdSense Works: Improving your ad targeting


You have an article posted to your blog on "Chicken soup for soul", but the ads displayed on your website or blog through AdSense are totally unrelated to the subject matter. Stop blaming the AdSense system.

The problem lies on the page itself. On the same page you might have "About me", "Previous Posts", "Archives", "Comments", "Syndication", "Blogroll" and what not. In your "About me" section you might have noted your interests in scuba diving. Someone might have spammed your comments section with links to porn sites. You might have previously written about your trip to Hawaii. With all these extra fittings taking up more than 50% of your web page real estate the Adsense Bot is sure to be confused as to what is the subject matter resulting in irrelevant ads on your page.

So does it mean you can't have anything else apart from the subject matter on your post page besides the article "Chicken soup for soul"? Not at all!

Google's AdSense has a feature called Section Targeting which does the trick. All you need to do is tell the Google AdSense Bot whats your subject matter and it will do the rest. This needs tweaking a couple of lines of HTML code on your page, article or template.

Just open the web page in an HTML editor or Notepad and place the cursor near the beginning of the article and copy/paste the following code:

<!-- google_ad_section_start-->

Now place the cursor near the end of the article and copy/paste the following code:

<!-- google_ad_section_end-->

Save the page, publish it and voila - you're done!

Following is an illustration to implement Section Targeting in a Blogger Template:


<div class="post">
<h3 class="post-title">
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<$BlogItemTitle$>
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
</h3>
<div class="post-body">
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-3670182834510257";
google_ad_format = "336x280_as";
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
google_alternate_color = "FFFFFF";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
<p>
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<$BlogItemBody$>
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
</p>
</div>
</div>
Similarly you can also designate sections you'd like to have ignored by adding a (weight=ignore) to the starting tag:

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore)-->

Place the Section Targeting comment tags in as many sections you want. Google calls it - Suggesting the AdSense Bot. Google on the other hand suggests that you need to have ’significant content’ in between the tags or you’ll end up with irrelevant ads or PSAs.

When Google's AdSense Bot finds these comment tags in your page HTML code it considers only the matter in between the start and end comment tags and ignores the rest. So be sure to close the comment tags. Also be warned of misusing this feature to emphasize irrelevant content as it might go against Google's program policies.


1 Comment:

excellent... it worked like magic!