Want more targeted adsense ads? My test results say change your url.

I wanted to see what factors google used when displaying adsense ads. What I discovered today was a little surprising. According to google, the adsense ads that show on a page have everything to do with the content of the page. According to my test results, not so much....

I put this idea to the test by targeting the term "dvd film rental". I created 5 different folders on my site named 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Each folder contains three html files named dvdfilmrental.html, dvd-film-rental.html, and dvd_film_rental.html. I wanted to see if the hyphens or underscores had any effect on the ads that were showing. I also included the noindex and nofollow attributes in the meta tags to keep the pages from being indexed.

MY RESULTS

The files in folder 1 do not have a single word about dvds or dvd rentals on the page. The title of the page is wholesale knives and the content is all about wholesale knives. Any guess about what type of adsense ads are showing on the pages? If you guessed DVD Rental ads then you would be correct. This result makes the four other tests a mute point, but I'll include the data for these tests just in case the ads update in a few days and actually start to target the content.

http://www.brentcrouch.com/1/dvdfilmrental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/1/dvd-film-rental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/1/dvd_film_rental.html

The pages in this folder contain the same article about wholesale knives. They also contain the page title DVD Film Rental. Just like the previous test, they are displaying dvd rental ads.

http://www.brentcrouch.com/2/dvdfilmrental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/2/dvd-film-rental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/2/dvd_film_rental.html

The pages in folder 3 contain an article about dvd rentals. I titled all the pages Wholesale Knives. Just like the other results, they are all displaying dvd rental ads.

http://www.brentcrouch.com/3/dvdfilmrental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/3/dvd-film-rental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/3/dvd_film_rental.html

The pages in folder 4 contain the same article about dvd rentals. I titled all the pages DVD Film Rental. If you guessed I was seeing dvd rental ads you would be correct.

http://www.brentcrouch.com/4/dvdfilmrental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/4/dvd-film-rental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/4/dvd_film_rental.html

This folder contains pages in the format I would normally use for a keyword I was targeting. They all contain the dvd rental article and are titled DVD Film Rental. I also included meta keywords and descriptions tags that contain my targeted keyword dvd film rental. The ads on this page are no different from any of the other folders.

http://www.brentcrouch.com/5/dvdfilmrental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/5/dvd-film-rental.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/5/dvd_film_rental.html

I decided to create one more group. This time I used the exact pages and content used in folder 5 which are perfect for targeting the term dvd film rental. I just renamed the pages to see how the ads changed.

I'm not sure how to explain the results from these pages. Even though the content is related to dvd film rentals, I expected to see ads relating to merchant accounts. This wasn't the case. All of these pages showed ads related to investing? I'm not sure how this fits into the rest of my results?

http://www.brentcrouch.com/6/merchantaccount.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/6/merchant-account.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/6/merchant_account.html

I renamed these pages once again without changing the content. These pages all showed credit card ads.

http://www.brentcrouch.com/6/creditcards.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/6/credit-cards.html
http://www.brentcrouch.com/6/credit_cards.html

MY THOUGHTS

I'm anxious to see if these results change over the next few days. My first impression is that ad targeting may be more reliant on the page name for new pages only. I suspect over the next few days the ads shown will be more consistent with the content of the page. If the results you are seeing are different from what I posted, it could be that has already happened.

It also appears it makes no difference to google if you separate your keywords with a hyphen, underscore, or no separation at all. The ads showing in each folder were the same reguardless.

I'm not sure of what to think of the pages named merchant account from folder 6. The results from these pages were different from what I expected. Could it be that since the term "merchant account" is a fairly high paying keyword that google is more cautious of where they place those ads?

Any thoughts?

Good Luck,

Brent Crouch

Posted by: Brent Crouch on 10 Aug, 20073 Comments »