Troubleshooting AdSense

[Will.Spencer]

I have quite a few pages which are not showing AdSense ads and I am trying to troubleshoot to determine why.

A page which is showing an ad:
Winter Survival (http://www.fortliberty.org/military-technology/winter-survival.shtml)

A page which is not showing an ad:
Survival Kit (http://www.fortliberty.org/military-technology/survival-kit.shtml)

The obvious answer is that no AdWords advertisers are matching on "Survival Kit", right?

Here is why that explanation doesn't make sense:

If you look at the AdWords advertiser interface for the cost of the three relevant match terms, you find:

survival $0.66
survival kit $1.70
winter survival $0.38

Therefore, one should be able to conclude that there is *significantly* more competition for the phrase "survival kit" than for the phrase "winter survival" -- and yet we see the exact opposite of the expected results!

Additionally, the "Survival Kit" page does not return a match for the single word "Survival." Conclusions are more difficult to reach from this phenomena.

Anyone have an idea as to what I am doing wrong?

Note: This is just one example scenario. I can post others, if necessary.

[Mr T]

Is it a new page? My guess would be that maybe Google 'MediaPartners' bot hasnt been yet, so its showing your default ads?

[Will.Spencer]

Both of these pages have been there several days and I see the Google MediaPartners bot hitting them.

The log entries look like this:

64.68.86.138 - - [07/Apr/2004:23:09:20 -0600] "GET /military-technology/survival-kits.shtml HTTP/1.0" 404 16709 "-" "Mediapartners-Google/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

64.68.86.138 - - [07/Apr/2004:23:24:59 -0600] "GET /military-technology/winter-survival.shtml HTTP/1.0" 200 18614 "-" "Mediapartners-Google/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

[john_loch]

Both of these pages have been there several days and I see the Google MediaPartners bot hitting them.

The log entries look like this:

64.68.86.138 - - [07/Apr/2004:23:09:20 -0600] "GET /military-technology/survival-kits.shtml HTTP/1.0" 404 16709 "-" "Mediapartners-Google/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

64.68.86.138 - - [07/Apr/2004:23:24:59 -0600] "GET /military-technology/winter-survival.shtml HTTP/1.0" 200 18614 "-" "Mediapartners-Google/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

Take a closer look at your first log entry. Notice the 404 ?
Your link is survival-kit.shtml not survival-kits.shtml... (notice the s)

Check your linkage :)

While you're at it, you might want to toss a "Revisit-After" meta tag in there.. I'm afraid I have no idea how to encourage MGB to revisit your page tho..

[Will.Spencer]

d'oh! My bad... but Mediabot really is visiting the real page... I swear... :-)

Here's another entry from the server logs. :)

64.68.87.66 - - [07/Apr/2004:23:09:08 -0600] "GET /military-technology/survival-kit.shtml HTTP/1.0" 200 19077 "-" "Mediapartners-Google/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

[Will.Spencer]

Here is another example set, with two pages that have been around much longer:

This is a page with ads:
http://www.fortliberty.org/military-technology/firearm-gun-silencers-suppressors.shtml

This is a page without ads:
http://www.fortliberty.org/military-equipment/firearm-gun-silencers-suppressors.shtml

The two pages are pretty similar. The page with technical information gets an ad, the page where people go to actually shop doesn't get an ad. How backwards is that? ;-)

[john_loch]

Hi Will,

I took a quick look, and kw density is far greater on the working page. ie firearm, silencer, suppressor, etc.

Although present on the page that's not giving highly targetted ads (the ads are targetted - just not tightly), the density is less, thus you wind up with less relevant ads.

Also, consider this:

Your description metatag on working page:
<meta name="Description" content="Military Technology: Firearm Silencers and Suppressors">
Your description metatag on failing page:
<meta name="Description" content="Equipment: Firearm Silencers and Suppressors">

Notice the term Military Technology: augments the arg, while the term Equipment: is quite general. In fact, I'd be inclined to swap your kw/desc content around altogether as well (within reason). That plus density should improve things for you.

Remember, the traditional seo mentality doesn't -always- apply to adsense. In my own experience, adsense works far more closely with on page criteria.

I know there are others lurking about here with considerable experience themselves - their oppinions may differ - perhaps they'll offer their thoughts :)

PS: This would be an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the significance of content/keyword metatags to adsense. Will, you may just like to try leaving the pages you mentionead above the same, except for the desc metatags.. ie change the loose one to -Military Technology: Firearm Silencers and Suppressors-. Then check to see if the ads become more tightly tageted.

If MGB only visits once a week, this may not be viable for you (revenue) - but otherwise, its always good to see for yourself.

[hans]

1. military-technology

may be Google has no plans to support or finance or promote "military-technology" and thus war ...
- may be they are right because there WAS enough war on this planet and still is going on too much war !

by changing YOUR folder names / structure in something peaceful and still meaningful - like .. rescue equipment or so ( if that is TRUE intendtion ) - may help you to get more ads and better ads as the rescue equipment market may give less money per click but more customers because more needed and more interest ? it may be worth a test - by placing the very same page iinto a NEWLY created folder of different peaceful name and then call Google ads by reloading page and see the real results ( google in a sandbox may work differently ) - to see those results there is NO need to submit your NEW test page to Google or have it appear anywhere in a link-page on your site - Google ads are served simplky on a as-called bases BEFORE that page is crawseled by regular Googlebot ..
hence after testing such procedure you may remove test-folder
or
adapt the successfully tested NEW foldername and renaming all part of old folder and assure
redirect with .htaccess

2. Mediapartners-Google bot is crawling the actual page from which the ad is called from ..
an easy way to induce a bot visit is
after publishing a NEW page
control that page in your browser
then RE-load the page again a few seconds later
and again a minute or two later

if needed another time .. NO CLICK on any ad - JUST reload page to recall Google ads

and after a few minutes after reloading an UNknown-to-Mediapartners-Google-bot-page

that Bot usually appears anytime between instantly ( 1-3 minutes was my shortest experience to very few minutes after first page load ( ads call ) and serveral minutes later .. so far never longer

doing above procedure you notice the result - suddenly the ads turn form default neutral ads to page relevant ad-topics.


3. yesterday i made a test with 2 pages each called from my place ( in PH ) and by a friend in DE ..
and there was a clear difference in nature of relevant ads shown
one page was DE lang - the other EN lang
the foreign language pages are served differently than EN paes !
and
calling one page from HERE gave relevant results for people living here
the call of same page in DE gave other relevant results for people THERE
in one language the ads where local-optimized - in the other language NOT local-optimized

hence what YOU see may be 100% different from what OTHERS see - which may be important to know when you think about filterig domains out ... because you never know what all world sees
and G by now has no measn / or intentions to show / verify that - may be they will so if requested by publishers


but even if no ad matching and no relevant ads available - then normally some humanitarian ads or charity ads appear ( on my pages ) ..

in your case
survival kit page called in alaska or canada or from any himalayan country may include such ads like snow/avalanche moutain or cold related survival
while in or near ocean countries may have underwater or ocean survial at sea ..

may be you test with a few friends from around the world to really know what's showing up

HERE your a.m. pages ( those with G adsense ) show relevant peaceful / industrial / OCEAN - safety relevant ads ( i am on an island - G knows THAT :) !! hence marine technology - safety ads

in NO way relevant to YOUR topic but relevant to safety

example your /winter-survival.shtml-page
the ads showing up are little relevant to the actual content of your page
BUT relevant to the menu on the left of your page ..
hence from my point of view Irrelevant to page content !

but may be if money is all that counts ..

BUT

if you want to get PAGE-content relevant
easy method to change and achieve 100% content relevant ads is
FRAME pages
content inmain frame
navigation in ( left ? ) other frame
hence 2 different pages
ONE - the actual content has the frame-code ( Google frame-code=
"google_page_url = document.location;" of that page
and shows really content related Google adsense
while in your case of having ONE-same navigation text each page modifies relevancy by that navigation ( anchor text ) keywords !
all my site is frames ( with few exceptions ) and works find that way

more accurate topic related G ads may mean more clicks on ads

[Will.Spencer]

John:

Good catch on the Description meta tag! All of my pages in that section had that same difficulty. I must have made an error with `sed` at some point in the past.

I'd be surprised if this is enough to guide AdSense onto the right path, but it should have all of the other expected advantages!

Using the Digital Point AdSense Sandbox, the page is still not receiving ads. But, I will reserve judgement until I see Mediapartners show in up my server log.
:)

I *could* also increase keyword density. I might choose "firearm" to increase. But... the page seems fairly dense already. I dunno. OK, I'll add just a few. It's *too* tempting.

[Will.Spencer]

After some attempts at optimizing for AdSense, none of the four pages mentioned above are now showing ads. <smacks forehead>

Another thing I have noticed is that the some pages will show ads sometimes, but not at other times. I can get an ad/no-ad switch sometimes just by hitting <REFRESH>.

[e10]

Hi,

Sorry if this sounds really dumb but it is a mistake I made myself and you might just want to check it...

When lifting the code, do it via Select All not Copy and Paste there are two lines of code that end the script. You have to scroll down to see them but if you miss them - no ads.

Cheers.

[shina21]

I have quite possibly the most redicolous adsense problem. My site ... www.site.com/ shows a public service ad instead of relevant ads ... yet my index page www.site.com/index.php shows relevant ads.

However, they of course are the same page!

I am looking to my log and haven't seen media bot revisit the page - however this is most annoying. I wonder, once media-partners has already evaluated a page .. how to get it back to re-eval?

Any ideas?

[hans]

shina21

but if your TRUE URL is secret
how can you expect help from anyone of us ?? !!

the domain "site . com" of course exists but has no G adsenses at all - because most likely it is NOT your true URL.
and your profile shows now details about your website either ..

if you like to get MOST efficient help you may as well have to give ALL correct information - else its just a waste of time and resources

[Will.Spencer]

AdSense seems to be a bit on the slow side when it comes to figuring out relevant ads, so I am now using AllFeeds.com to cover some of it's deficiencies.

[cindos]

I have the same problem as shina21. My site shows a public service ad instead of relevant ads ... yet my index.php page shows relevant ads. My site is in my profile. Anyone with any ideas?

[Will.Spencer]

Eight months later and I am still terribly confused by AdSense.

A page with ads:
http://www.fortliberty.org/military-equipment/firearm-gun-silencers-suppressors.shtml

A very similar page with no ads:
http://www.fortliberty.org/military-library/firearm-gun-silencers-suppressors.shtml


A page with ads:
http://www.fortliberty.org/military-equipment/body-armor.shtml

A very similar page with no ads:
http://www.fortliberty.org/military-library/body-armor.shtml


Hmmm... looking this over... this seems like a rash across a huge swath of that web site... oh my...

[smfseo]

I had the same problem when i first started on airtel broadband (http://www.indiabroadband.net/airtel-broadband/)
and its fine now. Also had this trouble on bsnl broadband (http://www.bsnl-broadband.com)

I have also noticed that some sites get ads instantly and some dont guess that depends on how many advertisers are available for that niche.