20 replies to this topic

[nedguy]

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Or experience of something similar?

Just recently (only noticed it in the last couple of weeks) Adsense has been under-serving on my most popular page.

All my content pages have two adsense panels (1 x 2 ads & 1 x 4 ads). This page of travel news items is loading only the 2 ad panel and with filler ads that have little or no keyword relevancy. It is as if it can't find anything in its ad inventory to match the page.

All my other pages are getting the normal, full service of relevant adverts.

That includes the other two high-frequency updated pages (bargains & new products/ideas). All three of these pages are updated daily or several times daily. All three have rss feeds, but the travel news page has more subscribers and by itself accounts for 35% of my inbound traffic - so it's having a bit of an effect on my overall adsense clickthrough rate!

NG

Edited by nedguy, 27 September 2005 - 12:07 PM.

[nedguy]

OK. No replies.

I know this is a question from the publisher (adsense) as opposed to advertiser (adwords) end, so it may not be in the appropriate topic, but it's intriguing me (sod that! it's costing me money!) so I'll try asking just once again, just in case somebody has an idea.

I'll put the question a different way..

Look at this page, www.travel-lists.co.uk/holideas.html

Two google ad panels. Small one on the left. Big one on the right. Showing keyword relevant adverts.

Now, look at this identical page, www.travel-lists.co.uk/headline.html

Same page coding, same fairly high update frequency. But, no adverts in the right hand panel and irrelevant adverts in the small left hand panel - anti-spyware software or emergency smoke masks!

What I'm puzzling over is...

is it me? Have I let a coding error or something creep into the Travel news page?

or is it Google? Is this page being deliberately under-served or something?

I've asked Google, but not heard back yet.

Any ideas or similar experience? anyone?

NG

Edited by Jill, 29 September 2005 - 09:14 PM.

[oneofthe3lions]

I had a look but you seem to have taken them out anyway on the headlines page

[nedguy]

Taken them out?

This might be significant - perhaps we are not seeing the same thing?

Can you not see the Google ads?

[Raphael]

I'm seeing what you are - 2 sets of ads on the first page, only 1 set of ads on the second. I couldn't tell you why though, I've never played with any adsense code, so it's all greek to me.

[nedguy]

Thanks Raphael. Glad I'm not hallucinating!

(It occured to me afterwards that oneofthe3lions may have looked for the google ad javascript in the source code and not found it where he/she expected it because it is a css driven 3-col design with the middle column content coded first - the ad code snippets are at the end of the file).

I've had a 'standard reply' from Google now, which doesn't come close to explaining the inconsistencies.

I've asked them to simply...

1) Go to any page on my site.

Top left hand corner, in the nav panel. Under the heading 'News'.

2) Click on each of the three buttons: 'Travel & Holiday News' , Latest Ideas & Products' , 'News of Offers & Deals'.

3) Spot the difference.



My logic tells me the problem lies with me. But I just can't see it. So my 'Watergate' instinct tells me there's something not right here.

I'm wanting somebody to tell me, it's my coding or content - in which case I can fix it.

I really don't want to find it is Google - because it could take forever to get them to admit it and sort it.

NG

[oneofthe3lions]

What I was saying was that on the headline.html page there are no ads ddisplaying at all on the right side of your page... altho I do see two javas in your source code. the right column one is not displaying at all

[tempy]

Adsense is odd. I once had a page that would refuse to display any adsense ads until I changed the filename. If I changed the filename back, the ads would stop, if I changed the name to anything else, the ads would start appearing again.

[nedguy]

How very interesting Tempy, and disappointing.

I just tested it out. I made a copy of the page and renamed it...

www.travel-lists.co.uk/StupidAdsense.html

It works perfectly. Full & relevent ads.

So now what?

I do NOT want to have to rename my most popular page, especially since I don't think I have the ability to create a 301 on my hosted service.

[tempy]

It's certainly an odd one.

The other thing that I've found to work sometimes is to just build the page again from scratch (perhaps slightly moving some elements around) and paste in some new adsense code.

But in the one case I described, I simply had to change the name of the page. Nothing else worked.

I have no idea what causes this. Similarly to you, it just displayed one block of ads and not the others. I can only assume that something has got confused at Google's end.

Edited by tempy, 01 October 2005 - 11:13 AM.

[ewc21]

I had mine display charity ads most of the time for a content0rich page targetted to a special topic. I am still trying to dig some FAQs. Pls send me a link if you find some useful info on this one.

[oneofthe3lions]

I kinda started my own post on a 'similar' annoyance.. I Have 3 boxes of ads on certain pages and the midle box and the right box always display the same ads.. it looks daft...
It may be that the middle ads are so close to the right ads that they pull that as perfect relevancy or something..
Seems there are no answers really and we are stuck with the glitchy bits.. I wil keep trying to move it slightly etc but when I have added the code by hand to every page as opposed to 'pulling it' it requires a hell of a lot of work tho

[oneofthe3lions]

I had mine display charity ads most of the time for a content0rich page targetted to a special topic. I am still trying to dig some FAQs. Pls send me a link if you find some useful info on this one.

Ewc mate... if you go into your options somewhere in Google adsense you can of course turn off those 'charity ads' .

[nedguy]

Well, good news.... sorta

I was just building myself up to renaming the file when I looked again at the problem page and for the first time in weeks it is suddenly displaying proper & full ads!

I'm hoping something I said caused somebody at Google Adsense to look more closely and do...well, something techy.

But my instincts tell me this may not be the end of it. If the software/algorithms are that flaky they can easily go wrong again.

So I'll watch it for a while before celebrating and if I learn anything useful about this Google glitch I'll pass it on.

[ewc21]

Hey, thanks for the info oneofthe3lions mate... I will check it out but maybe don't want to turn it off at the moment.

Yes, it's a mystery how renaming files and the way ads are displayed correlate. I bet this is just a coincidence.