Hi,

There doesn't seem to be much activity on this site, but maybe someone can help?

I have a private site - http://www.vinylsurrender.com , a music based site. All adsense looks and feels OK, except on the main page which is littered with 'disaster relief' ads, as though no relevant content can be found. It used to be OK, now it's just odd and annoying and gives visitors useless information. The rest of the site is fine. I've tweaked and mucked around with the page layout, the wording, the page itself - renaming it, but to no avail...

Can you do me the favour please of looking at the main page and giving me any ideas as to what I can do? Some of you might have more experience at this. Thanks alot.

Richard.

I realize the word surrender is part of your domain name, but I see the words 'surrender' and 'bomb' on the home page a lot. There's also a mention of the word 'abuse' in the phrase 'click abuse'

Google might be taking those as the words to deliver the ads. Maybe try downplaying 'bomb' and playing up more music references.

Good point Steven on 'bomb' and 'surrender'.

That could explain why I'm getting 'white flag messages' and 'disaster' all over the place. I really have weighted the wording on music related terms, but that is a good point and I will have a thorough look at it. I'll experiment and get back to you.

Thanks for taking the time out

Glad to help. It was the only thing I could see that would indicate those ads, though I still think Google could do a better job understanding what your site is about. I think it's pretty obvious it's a site about music.

Hi again,

Well, I took all the 'surrenders' out, and as many 'bombs' as I could and it's not made a jot of difference, yet.

Do you have any other ideas?

What I might have to do is strip the entire page down to the raw elements and build from the bottom, but it seems like a lot of work just to pander to Google's ropey interpretation bot. Why can't they just let adsense users submit a simple meta tag or similar with the keywords they want to be associated with. Sorry, it's been a long day, but I get bored with having to watch my wording (watch my mouth) in order not to offend **** Google. They could make life SO much easier, so much.

Richard.
Other ideas?

They actually do have something like a meta tag, but it's for premium members only. And premium membership is invite only.

You might have to give it a little time before you see any changes, but there are a couple of other things to try.

One is section targeting, which allows you to turn on and off places in the page that you want mediabot to use when deciding what ads to serve the page.

You can also try blocking the ads through AdSense itself. Keep blocking the urls you don't want to see and hopefully you'll get something better.

You probably want to keep Vinyl Surrender in the title on the home page, but maybe making it VinylSurrender as one word instead of two might help.

You can also try adding more music related words particularly near where the ads appear. So instead of just trying to get rid of the words that might be causing the disaster ads to show try adding more words related to the ads you do want to see.

Maybe a title like:

All-time Music Charts | Artist Charts | Album Charts - VinylSurrender

would get more music words into the title.

Steven,

Thanks for your time on this, I appreciate it.

Good idea on the title, but changing those words is going to affect SEO for certain keywords so I'm not messing around with that in a hurry. The use of 'chart' three times as well is not going to help matters much, probably worsen it. The word 'chart' has strong links with stock exchanges, management planning etc....and needs to be played down. I've played around with the title enough and that 'chart' word is bad one. Thanks for the ideas though.

I've tried 'section targeting' too, and it makes no difference. In fact, I'd warn none-too-savvy users to keep clear of it. Google takes weeks to process the information and then if you change any text on the page you need to watch that you don't change these tags. It's more awkward than useful, but yeah, good suggestion - I'll read the posts.

What I find strange is that the rest of my site is fine and VERY relevant, just the home page causing the problem. Last night, I stripped the index.php file down to the basics, cleared out EVERYTHING, renamed it to indexXXX.php (or something), splattered the page with words such as 'music' 'songs' 'top hits' etc....and wollop - adds about peace and disaster and water treatment. My feeling is that Google have me indexed for certain keywords for my main page and unless they change their indexing I'm going to continue getting these crap ads. Well, it might resolve itself over time, but in the meantime it's time to strip out Google ads from the main page, unfortunately.

I'm sure you already know, but you can only block 200 ads! Pain isn't it? Oh well, when I start getting more than about 150 visitors a day perhaps I'll get that Google 'invite'.

Frustrated actually,
Thanks a lot for your help. Good work

Richard.

I know what you mean. I understand not wanting to change the title and I haven't really had much luck with the section targeting either.

AdSense may just be placing a lot more emphasis on the domain name on the home page and I guess you could always drop the ads on the one page.

I was having a hard time figuring out what was going on too when I looked through some of the other pages of the site. Google can figure out those are about music, but they can't quite get it on the home page.

One thing you could try as a last resort is contacting AdSense. I think there's a contact form for them somewhere in the help files at AdSense. I've been in touch with them a few times and they've generally been helpful. I don't always get the answer I want, but they usually respond withing a day or two and have been helpful.

Hi Steven,

Have a look again at the main page - do you now see relevant music ads?? I hope so, because I can. Lots of tweaking later and we have a result (for the time being). Maybe those Google guardians have been listening.

Obviously, there's nothing I can do about specific word targeting, i.e., if someone votes extensively for 'Oasis' let's say, then there will be loads of ads about 'Desert vacations' and 'Mirage cruises' etc.... The 'Cure' is the worst one - anything to do with them and it's time to get the ***** extension viagra pills out (anything medical in other words).

I'm rambling..., but happy that I've now got context relevant ads (once again). Thanks for your help.

Richard.

I'm still seeing the same ads I was before, but it's possibly I'll see the music ones later. I've noticed on my own site I'll see a certain set of ads when I first look at a page and then a day or two later I see more relevant ones.

I think you seeing the ads is a good sign though. I'll check on them a little later tonight and see if I notice the music ones.

i saw JOB ADS, and SECURITY ads on your site. probably you need to enhance the keyword, and seo it in the way its much related to music only.

I haven't seen music ads yet on the home page, but I am seeing a different set of disaster related ads so something has changed. I'll check again periodically.

Hi

Yeah, it's back to 'disaster relief', 'international studies' and completely irrelevant ads - not even a sniff of album or music or similar sites.

I'm still tweaking though.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Richard.

Hi Again,

If you take another look at Vinylsurrender.com you should hopefully see more music related adsense material (just remember not to click them OK, ho ho). That final piece of tweaking seems to have done the trick by removing a wedge of text from the main news section. OK, it's never going to be perfect and I'm stilling gets tons of 'disaster relief' adds, but I hope now the site looks OK.

The whole point of contextual advertising, in my opinion, is to make a little extra money AND, most of all, give site visitors more options when looking at the screen. If the ads are about non-topic subjects it's really going to turn visitors off, making them feel that it's just one of those made for Adsense sites, giving the site a whole rubbishy look and feel. I don't want my adverts to stand out, just fit in with the content of the site, visitors coming across them naturally, hopefully finding something worthwhile and useful - that's the whole point - to add content and value.

Thanks all for your help. Thanks Steven.

Richard.

I'm still seeing disaster relief ads in the upper left. The right sidebar is all hunger relief ads and the bottom is showing me ads with pro peace messages.

One new ad I'm seeing is the top ad in the upper left. It's a disaster ad geared toward Colorado and since I'm in Colorado it made me wonder if there's some kind of IP targeting going on.

I'll keep checking though since I think some of the changes could take a few days for mediabot to catch on and change the ads.

Richard I'm glad to have helped or at least tried to help. I'm not sure if any of my suggestions have had an effect yet. I do think it's good you've seen some music related ads and it might only be a matter of time before I do too.

Everything has been fine now for a about a week. If you look at the side and the bottom you'll see it's all music and entertainment related. 'Bout time. Thanks all for your help.

My biggest fear is making any dramatic changes to the front page in case it invites any rogue advertising. A learning process........

I'm seeing the music ads too now. Glad to have helped even if that help was just keeping you occupied while AdSense caught up with the site.

Steven,
Thanks for your help and thanks for your modesty.
You really did help me get out of a swampy situation.
Once again. Thanks!!
Richard.

Its working fine now I guess. :?