Adsense targeting question

[RoySpencer]

When we added a new weather forecast section to our pages recently, the targeting (we wanted) by Adsense became much worse...presumably because the keyword density became lower for the keywords we wanted Adsense to use.
And before you say "well, google is now targeting the new mix of content, which is how it should work", let me explain. We have a weather web site with separate pages for about 60,000 locations in the U.S. When the *location* (city, state) keyword density was higher, we got ads for hotels, businesses, etc., specifically for those cities. Now, the *weather* keyword density is so high that we only get ads for other weather forecast web sites and weather measuring instruments. Any suggestions?

[Quadrille]

Add some text, preferably near the top of the page, that will dilute the emphasis, and add some 'local interest'

Adsense's system is not that far removed from Google Search; you'll need to optimize your pages for your chosen (adsense) keywords ... if that crosses your Google search needs, it might be difficult - but it has to work with what it's got.

[RoySpencer]

thanks for the advice, Q.

[dragonlady7]

Y'know, cheesy as it sounds, I helped the targeting on my site by filling in the meta keywords and description tags. I found every little bit helps...

[RoySpencer]

dragonlady's-heaven-;)
So google mediabot uses these meta tags, even though google doesn't(?)

[Quadrille]

Heaven is right ... you could optimize the page for a keyword for Google, and optimize the keywords for adsense!

Thinking about it, wouldn't it be just perfect if Google came up with a META tag just for adsense, to remove all risk?

<meta name="ADSENSE" content="Ford, Lincoln, Corgi">

Mind you, how long before it got abused and advertisers objected :(

[RoySpencer]

I've put out some test pages, with the content changed in different ways. I want to find out how the heck adsense is giving me the ads I'm getting, and how to influence it.

We've also been bugging Google about it, and all they can say is that adsense is keying off of the content we have on the page.

[dragonlady7]

>google mediabot uses these meta tags, even though google doesn't

I don't think it's that google doesn't use those tags, it's just that Google doesn't give much weight to them.
The same may be true with Mediabot, but since the bot is far more concerned with what's on the page-- or, you see the results of its concern much more directly, in the targeting of the ads-- then the little weight it does give to those tags is far more significant. Think about it-- You've optimized your page to display ads for, say, a blue widget. The page isn't optimized enough to show up well in Google's SERPs for "blue widget", but Adsense doesn't care where you are in the SERPs. It's solely trying to determine what the topic of the page is to display ads, so it doesn't matter how well-optimized your page is in relation to every other page on the Web. All it cares about is whether your page says "blue widget" or "blue feathers" more often. Will meta tags be enough?
More likely than them being enough to pull you up ten spots in the SERPs.

So, with Adsense, every little bit helps even more than in Google's regular SERPs.

Am I crazy, or does that make some level of sense?

[RoySpencer]

yes, that makes sense...but does it make adsense?:p

[Chatmag]

I've been having the same problems trying to target individual pages. Some come out ok, others don't. My basic problem is my domain name chatmag.com

Most of the ads served are all "chat" related, and not targeting the individual pages, such as nfl football chat listings as an example. When I see an ad relating to football, click thrus go up; general ads don't do as well.

I changed a few pages, deleting the word "chat" from the navigation list, and got a bit better results.

I had emailed Google, and they said they were working on some new targeting method. I like the idea of a meta tag for adsense, but can see the possibility of abuse. Maybe the adsense tag would correlate to the rest of the page, as part of an overall look, not just relying on the metatag itself.