These past days, I've had a conversation with another lensmaster who asked me to check out their new site and asked for feedback.
At first sight, the site looked great and is probably going to get traffic and generate sales. Though I provided a few suggestions the lensmasters isn't obliged to follow, just my personal thoughts. However, one thing that disturbed me on this site were the displayed Google AdSense ads.
These ads weren't related to the site topic at all. Worse, the site is a site entirely dedicated to babies and children and all ads were oriented to adult clothing and marketing stuff. Why on Earth would I see adult and marketing advertisements on a site that's keyworded for kids? Haven't Google AdSense ads always been displayed in regards of the site niche? The narrower the niche, the more focused the AdSense ads?
Hm... Indeed, it had always been the case. And that is why my AdSense earnings were great these past years. Sadly it's been almost one year that those earnings dropped although I haven't really paid attention to them, focused on my Squidoo endeavours more than on my own sites performances.
But now that I don't Squidoo any more - apart from one update here and there - I can pay more attention to my personal sites. Although the AdSense earning drop catched my attention, I wasn't able to put a finger on the motive.
This is where this conversation with the other lensmaster had become useful. I asked him if he made sure to add related topic keywords only to his pages and he confirmed. Then he told me that unrelated ads were probably introduced by Google AdSense new... Hm... What a disaster!!!
The basic reason for putting AdSense ads on a webpage is that whenever the visitor doesn't get the exact information they're looking for, they can click on one of these ads and be directed to another kind of closely related information.
Let's say that I'm looking for cat plus size sexy Halloween costumes for women. I land on a page that doesn't provide me with the exact costumes I was looking for - and believe me, Google search results rarely provide me with what I ask, especially since the algo changes!
Let's say that I'm looking for cat plus size sexy Halloween costumes for women. I land on a page that doesn't provide me with the exact costumes I was looking for - and believe me, Google search results rarely provide me with what I ask, especially since the algo changes!
On the page that is of low interest, I can still find AdSense ads that might provide me with related advertisements which, in turn might lead me to the right page if I click on them. These ads should be closely related to, at least:
- Plus size Halloween costumes
- Sexy Halloween costumes
- Plus size Halloween costumes for women
- Cat plus size costumes
This was Google AdSense's purpose. And that is why AdSense was so useful for marketers. In any way, we could offer useful information to our visitors while at the same time, earn a nice income from doing so.
However, these days, Google displays ads which are based on our personal searches. Worse they seem to base those ads on the searches we did the most!
So if I understand, the ads for adult clothing I saw on the children site I visited were based on searches I did for clothes? Hm... I ran these searches long before June when I was looking for summer dresses and swimsuits. Since then I searched for Halloween stuff - though I don't search a lot on Google any more, they never provide me the results I expect*. How strange.
If this is the new AdSense way, there's a big problem. Let's say that one is running searches for car repair information for three weeks and that, once our car problems are fixed, we search for beauty products. Does that mean that car repair ads will be displayed on beauty product sites????? What's the point? Our previous search is over and who's the idiot who's going to click on car repair links on a beauty product site?
I state that I'm no fool and won't do that!
One visits a beauty product site to find beauty product related ads. If one sees something totally unrelated to the site topic, chances are that one may consider the site junk or the site owner not paying attention to their readers and potential customers and would more likely leave the site without doing anything.
If this is Google's new ad algorithm, I find it really annoying since all I want to display on my sites are closely related ads so that when someone isn't satisfied with the information I provide I can at least offer them related alternatives and, by the way, earn some cents or dollars for doing so.
My AdSense earnings dramatically dropped since the introduction of this new algorithm.
And seeing that my own AdSense dropped, I wonder what about gigantic sites like Squidoo. I often saw unrelated ads on the lenses and was wondering the interest. This makes me better understand the earning drop; which isn't entirely tied to the number of locked or deleted accounts and lenses. It's also due to the unrelated ads which catched many lensmaster's attention as well. I think that is where a big part of the ad pool disappeared.
My AdSense earnings dramatically dropped since the introduction of this new algorithm.
And seeing that my own AdSense dropped, I wonder what about gigantic sites like Squidoo. I often saw unrelated ads on the lenses and was wondering the interest. This makes me better understand the earning drop; which isn't entirely tied to the number of locked or deleted accounts and lenses. It's also due to the unrelated ads which catched many lensmaster's attention as well. I think that is where a big part of the ad pool disappeared.
As a matter of fact, why would you click on a home mortage ad when you're looking for tonight's dinner recipe? Why would you click on adult clothes when looking for baby diapers? These unrelated ads keep people off from clicking on them. That's it.
After all, it's probably not Squidoo's only fault... It might have something to do with Google that stopped seeing humans behind their advertising and general business revenue, but only bank notes. This is also something that might hurt Google's revenues in the near future - if not already done (which wouldn't surprise me). And something that would make the giant fall from its pedestal like a stone.
09/05/2013 Update - It seems that there's a way to turn this new Google feature off: I unchecked the interest-based advertising feature from my Adsense dashboard so as to prevent my readers' most searched keywords from appearing on my unrelated pages.
From google's perspective, this feature turned on would allow me to earn more money and attract more visitors. I'm quite unsure about it: if people come to my sites to read articles about the 4th of July, they certainly aren't looking for buying baby diapers.
I should read AdSense's newsletter more often, I wouldn't have had this problem since the introduction of this feature. I'll also probably uncheck all related feature in the near future - but before I must see if there's an improvement in my earnings. Then I'll also take a closer eye to the ad tests and replacements Google offers by default - once again not sure it's sooooooooooooooooo effective for publishers.
09/05/2013 Update - It seems that there's a way to turn this new Google feature off: I unchecked the interest-based advertising feature from my Adsense dashboard so as to prevent my readers' most searched keywords from appearing on my unrelated pages.
From google's perspective, this feature turned on would allow me to earn more money and attract more visitors. I'm quite unsure about it: if people come to my sites to read articles about the 4th of July, they certainly aren't looking for buying baby diapers.
I should read AdSense's newsletter more often, I wouldn't have had this problem since the introduction of this feature. I'll also probably uncheck all related feature in the near future - but before I must see if there's an improvement in my earnings. Then I'll also take a closer eye to the ad tests and replacements Google offers by default - once again not sure it's sooooooooooooooooo effective for publishers.
* BTW. These past months I've been highly frustrated with Google search results! I will only take an example but could talk about dozens of such vain searches. While looking for a "studio for rent in J..." the first pages returned "all inclusive/HB/FB/Breakfast hotels in J & more".
No what I wanted. I needed to find "studio for rent in J..." only. Nothing else. I had to browse sometimes up to 10 result pages before finding +/- accurate information! Most first results were paid ads and tour operators. They couldn't provide me with what I needed since they offered hotels only.
Next results were other search engine results on Google's page results. What the...??? Next were comparison sites that would provide me with hotel comparisons. Another useless type of links to click on - and so much time wasted!
Hey Google, I want to rent a studio, I do NOT even want to know about hotels! Don't you understand that? No since all that matters for Google is the money THEY earn from their advertisers - no reason to bother satisfying their audience as long as their customers pay.
Next results were other search engine results on Google's page results. What the...??? Next were comparison sites that would provide me with hotel comparisons. Another useless type of links to click on - and so much time wasted!
Hey Google, I want to rent a studio, I do NOT even want to know about hotels! Don't you understand that? No since all that matters for Google is the money THEY earn from their advertisers - no reason to bother satisfying their audience as long as their customers pay.
Frustrated, I ran a pretty successful search on Bing. It provided me with the info I looked for right from the first page. And their search result pages are as attractive as Google's ones.
Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66
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