So here's the thing, I'm almost finished my new site, wrongstars.com. The site's only purpose is to give out joke horoscopes everyday so the bulk of the text is the horoscopes which are going to change every day. The site's been up and under construction for a few weeks and I'm having a hell of a time getting Adsense to target ads correctly. At first it showed nothing but astrology ads which wouldn't have done much good since it's not really an astrology site. Then I learned about sectioning tags and I blocked off the zodiac words like Aries, Gemini, etc. Thought I had it there but then it picked up on the words "maple tree" in one of the horoscopes and now I get nothing but tree ads The googlebot isn't smart enough to get sarcasm, which is the foundation of my site. When I ran proxy sites in the past I had some success placing free articles on the sites for Google to look at. But that won't really look right on this site. The horoscopes change too often and are too random to draw the right kind of ads. I know camoflauging keywords in the background is against the rules but it just occured to me.... What if I make up kind of a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says something along the lines of "This page is for amusement only, it falls into such and such a category.." and I could put appropriate keywords in there. After sectioning off the horoscope section so googlebot zeroes in on the right text. Might be walking the line but heck, if Google is too lazy to take direction we gotta do something What do you think?
I'm wondering why you are blocking out astrology ads, since your site is a fake astrology site. And as you block off more and more text the Adsense bot is going to have a harder and harder time serving ads - and you aren't allowed to put a bunch of unrelated keywords on your site. You might actually be better of using a different advertising program - maybe affiliate ads or similar - where you can pick and choose what ads show, since you don't want Adsense ads that are relevant to your site's content.
It's kind of a grey area. Yes the site is a fake astrology site but I don't really envision hardcore astrologers coming to the site day after day. I'd put my site more in the category of say Dilbert.com or the like. People looking for a quick laugh in the morning may not necessarily be interested in getting a tarot reading or something. And you're right Adsense could end up being completely wrong for this site, I guess we'll see. As for putting irrelevant keywords in the disclaimer, well they won't really be irrelevant, if I say the site is for amusement and entertainment purposes well that'd be accurate. Haven't come up with exact wording yet but I have to restrict the googlebot away from the horoscopes because if I don't the ad genre will be trees one day and Burt Reynolds the next for as long as the site exists. It's too random.
So, here's the thing. People who come to your site day after day are really unlikely to click the ads, in my experience. The people who click tend to be first time visitors coming in from the search engines - remember that by clicking the ads they will be leaving your site for someone else's. So how are people going to find your site? If people searching Google for astrology terms end up on your site they'll be glad that there is some "real" astrology in the adverts And that's why maybe Adsense just won't work well with your site. If you think most of your visitors will be young, you might do much better with dating site or ringtone affiliate ads, anyway.
Well this morning I expanded the site intro and the disclaimer while restricting the horoscopes. I'll give Google a few days to rescan the site and see what they come up with for ads, if they're still lame I'll look for an affliate ad service. Do you have a recommendation? You may be right about people coming to the site looking for legitimate astrology and then immediately clicking an astrology link to get away. I was thinking about that last week. For the time being my site is probably one billionth on Google's list so I don't think that'll be an issue right away. For starters I'm planning to promote the site on the various forums I frequent and eventually build up affiliate links on related sites.
God I hate Adsense. The quality of my ads actually improved after I restricted everything horoscopish. Then I put the word horoscope in my page title because it's essential to my SEO and the next day it's 90 percent horoscope ads again. GAH! I tried to use the restriction tags in the title but they show up IN the title.
But as you point out, your site is about horoscopes, so Adsense is working as designed by giving you horoscope related ads! If your initial traffic is going to be college-age people coming from forums, rather than Google users looking for horoscopes, you might do better using dating affiliate ads or other affiliate ads that would appeal to your audience. Or have both dating ads and the Adsense ads and see which make you more money. You are assuming that your visitors won't like the ads Adsense is serving up, but you won't really know that for sure until you test it.
Well for the moment my page doesn't show up at the top of Google's list even when I search for it by name I think it'll be a long time before anyone looking for horoscopes accidentally stumbles on the site. I'm getting my link into various humor-related sites, odds are anyone who clicks on it won't care much about the astrology ads....unless they mistake them for part of the site maybe. I guess I will experiment with an affiliate program.