AdSense Chris Gray on 24 Apr 2007 02:52 pm
Use Section Targeting to optimize your AdSense Ads
I decided to monetize this blog over the weekend (no better time to start than now). I started by placing a few Google AdSense ads in the header and sidebar. After placing my ads and letting Google do it’s thing for a day or two I started to notice irrelevant ads on my index page.
While reading up on how to implement AdSense ads I ran across a neat little trick called Section Targeting. Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of content that you would like Google to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site. By placing a few special HTML (comment) tags around content you would like to emphasize or downplay, you now have greater control of how Google matches ads to your site.
To emphasize a section of a page you would use the following syntax:
<!–– google_ad_section_start ––>
“The content you would like to emphasize goes here…”
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>
“The content you would like to emphasize goes here…”
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>
You can also identify sections that you would like Google to ignore by adding a (weight=ignore) to the starting comment tag:
<!–– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) ––>
“The content you would like Google to ignore goes here…”
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>
“The content you would like Google to ignore goes here…”
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>
I surrounded each post and comment tag in my WordPress template with section targeting tags. It is too early to tell if section targeting is helping generate more relevant ads (due to the fact that it could take two weeks or more for Google to fully index this site)…but I thought I would give it a try in the meantime.
Follow-up to come…
on 05 May 2007 at 3:32 pm 1.Vince Cordic said …
I added section targeting to my blog shortly after adding adsense, and it definitely helped. The ads still aren’t perfect, but much better than they were.
Before I added section targeting all the ads were for domain name registration, probably because of one post I had about domain names. All those ads disappeared shortly after adding the section targeting.
Looks like your ads are fairly targeted now as well.
on 06 May 2007 at 2:09 pm 2.Chris Gray said …
Vince,
It’s good to hear another user’s experience using section targeting. I have seen so many posts on how to implement this feature but nothing on results.
I think my biggest problem is lack of content…but I do think section targeting helped.
Thanks for the comment.
on 16 May 2007 at 10:39 am 3.kbrown said …
This is an innovative web site. I am interested to track the progress.
on 19 May 2007 at 7:00 pm 4.Chris Gray said …
kbrown,
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I am not sure how truly “innovative” that this blog is but I do hope others (especially webmasters new to the world of SEO) may find it useful. Thanks for stopping by.