Broadening AdSense

May 21, 2006 1:02 PM

AdSense: Is it possible to force Google to broaden (or randomize) some of the ads on my Adsense for Content banner? I run a forum and I think I'm losing potential revenue because Google tends to serve up a lot of the same ads all the time. Can I put keywords into a meta tag to bring up new ads?
posted by chef_boyardee to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I think Findory feeds google keywords to use for ad placements on their site (check the source of a findory page), so I think you can negotiate some sort of arrangement to do something like this, but I've not seen anything about it in their standard package.

Google's interests and your interests are aligned on this. It is in their interest to serve up ads that get them (and you) paid.
posted by Good Brain at 1:26 PM on May 21, 2006

GoodBrain: Only half true. They're also concerned that the advertisers get quality clicks, otherwise their revenue stream will dry up. That's why this process is heavily vetted and most Adsense publishers aren't allowed to get away with some of the things more established publishers can.

chef_boyardee: You can use 'section targeting' in some cases to resolve it. Basically you 'mark' a section of the page for the Adsense crawler to use. This can help a lot if Adsense is picking up on the regular/permanent words on a page (such as sidebars, 'about this site' text, etc.) and you can force it to only pick up on the dynamic forum post titles, etc.
posted by wackybrit at 1:49 PM on May 21, 2006

Using irrelevent keywords to generate ads is specifically against the AdSense terms of service so you'd want to be very sure that whatever keywords you used were related to the page content.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:42 PM on May 21, 2006

I agree, wackybrit, I didn't mean to suggest that because some publishers can give adsense keyword hints, every publisher can. I was just saying that it isn't in Googles interest to serve up ads that aren't likely to be clicked on.

The adsense hints are worth looking into. Also, be sure that the google ad bot can actually crawl the forum pages, and see what google offers sites where a given URL might have content that changes quickly.
posted by Good Brain at 2:50 PM on May 21, 2006