Adsense Ads—Determined by Filename
November 6th 2008
Sometimes the Adsense ads that Google chooses to show appear to have no relation to your site. I once kept getting an ad for deodorant on my site for bird feeders. (But then I realized the brand of the deodorant was Dove—also a type of a bird).
But today I discovered that the filename of your webpage is a big factor.
True, Google examines the content to determine what to show, but it must also look at the page name.
I copied an existing webpage (for dolls) and edited it to be for Christmas ornaments. I noticed that the Adsense ads still had to do with dolls no matter how many times I hit refresh.
In an effort to reset it, I changed the name of the file.
Not only did it change right away, but I noticed that even when I made very small changes to the name, it affected the types of ads that were shown.
When I had the words “kinkadechristmastrees” in the name, a lot of the ads had to do with trees:
tree pruning
buy hickory trees
When I changed the name to kinkadechristmas.html, I got ads relating to church:
Christian dating
God at work
St. Brigid’s Parish
church yellowpages
etc.
I also noticed that it gets smarter if you wait a little. Later looking again at the kinkadechristmastrees.html page, I now saw these types of results:
artificial christmas trees outdoor Christmas trees
Home and garden cheap
(and yes, there was one Thomas Kinkade Christmas ornament ad).
So I guess the moral is
But today I discovered that the filename of your webpage is a big factor.
True, Google examines the content to determine what to show, but it must also look at the page name.
I copied an existing webpage (for dolls) and edited it to be for Christmas ornaments. I noticed that the Adsense ads still had to do with dolls no matter how many times I hit refresh.
In an effort to reset it, I changed the name of the file.
Not only did it change right away, but I noticed that even when I made very small changes to the name, it affected the types of ads that were shown.
When I had the words “kinkadechristmastrees” in the name, a lot of the ads had to do with trees:
tree pruning
buy hickory trees
When I changed the name to kinkadechristmas.html, I got ads relating to church:
Christian dating
God at work
St. Brigid’s Parish
church yellowpages
etc.
I also noticed that it gets smarter if you wait a little. Later looking again at the kinkadechristmastrees.html page, I now saw these types of results:
artificial christmas trees outdoor Christmas trees
Home and garden cheap
(and yes, there was one Thomas Kinkade Christmas ornament ad).
So I guess the moral is
- After you set up a new page, wait a bit to see what kind of ads Google serves.
- If they don’t become relevant, try changing the page name.
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