PSAs triggered by file name

I have a medical related site about a condition, call it xyz condition. The files are named index.html, xyz_treatment.html, xyz_drugs.html, etc. All the pages except index.html are served relavent ads. index.html only gets PSAs.

Checking the preview tool says no ads available. Ok, so I have a problem with the index page I must fix.

I read a thread on WMW on how to diagnose the problem by cutting the page up and trying test pages each with new names, e.g. index-test1.html, index-test2.html. No matter what I did I still got PSAs.

So I took the page xyz_treatment.html which always gets relavent ads and renamed it index.html...PSAs!

So I renamed the original index.html to xyz.html...relavent ads right away.

What is going on? It doesn't like any page that starts with the name index.

So now I have relavent ads showing on the page named xyz.html, which is really my index page. Can I add a 301 to redirect from index.html to xyz.html without causing myself trouble?

 

Likely the term is a stop word and that is why you are not getting ads. There are stop words that will keep ads from showing.

 

No change at all in content. Only changed the index file name from index.html to xyy.html. The PSAs stop and relavent adds start showing. So clearly no stop word issue.

 

Contact google about the problem. They'll take care of it.
I once had a page that showed completly wrong ads and/or didn't get spidered. Google fixed it two or three days after I contacted them.

 

out of interest is the index page the start page of a sub-domain ?

do you have an htaccess file with an index call ?

 

try with index.html?abc=123
_note the querystring_

see what ad it shows. (if its PSA's, then wait for a couple of mins, and again use the above url with the query string, and reload the page).

Google indexes and shows ads based on the URL. URL works like a primary key.
*Maybe* when the google bot visited your page (index.html), there wasn't any relavent content. So, the PSAs.

It would take sometime for google bot to visit your index page again and only after that, relavent ads would be displayed.

 

greenway, no subdomains and no index call in the .htaccess

arjunprabhu, tried that just now, no change.

I initially thought that PSAs were being served because the index file is a little light on content, a short introduction and then navigation links to the meat deeper in the site. But all the experiments I have done (moving content to the index page, etc) changed nothing. Only renaming the light content index page resulted in relavent adds being served.

So, anyone see a problem with me putting in a 301 redirect so when visitors enter my site get redirected over to a page with relevant ads?

 

Actually I did have problem with PSAs on my "index" page only. I think it has something to do with the page being the first entry page of your site. I've tried many things before, finally I managed to get relevant ads on my page.

 

my44, when you say your finally managed to get relavent ads, did you do something, or was it just a matter of time, waiting for the mediabot to come around again?

 

It was a matter of time, I guess. I kept getting either PSAs or very unrelated ads about Kenya or Cabos San Lucas, LOL.

But didn't have similar problem when I launched my 2nd and 3rd website recently. Maybe google got it fixed?

 

This might help :
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=19134


regards,
Arjun
http://www.arjunprabhu.com/blog/

 

Two points..

Firstly, Google/mediabot will index the page, and work with what it has. Regardless of what you do with that particular page, it will continue with PSA's until the bot returns. Give it an as yet unindexed page name, and you'll see the ads you can expect when it's reindexed. It's no biggie, and simply means you have to wait a few days.

In future, before deploying in this manner, wrap a keyphrase (anywhere in the body of the page) in Adsense section tags.. learn more about them here. I only recently started doing this myself, and it's proven effective.

That should do the trick for you

Cheers,

JL

 

I thought Google fixed (chaged) this feature months ago. Back in April, the DP keyword suggesstion tool showed relevant ads based on your keyword query.

However, it stopped working not too long after and Adsense was removed.

 

I put in a 301 redirect so now references to index.html go to xyz.html. Exactly the same content, but index.html gets PSAs and xyz.html gets relavent ads.

I'm satisfied, sort of, since I'm not getting relavent ads, but still bothered by the issue.

So then I went back through another site of mine and checked up on a high traffic page (not the index file) that keeps getting PSAs after months of being online. I did the same thing, copied the page exactly as it is to a new file name and put in a 301 redirect...voila, relavent ads.

 

I had the same problem for months, and this is the only ANSWER that solves it. Thanks for the heads up, geomark. It's been really helpful.(added you some rep

 

I do have problem currently with PSAs, but only to one page in my website, ie: my sitemap. Despite targeted meta-keywords and meta-desc. I tried to reload the page a couple of times, still the same. I guess I need to wait for Googlebot to return.

I modified the page a few hours ago. That perhaps explains why this is happening.

 

I tried index.htm?id=1 and got relevant ads. To make this permanent, I implemented a 301 redirect, pointing my index.htm to index.htm?id=1. I visited my URL, and this time those relevant ads were gone, leaving their place to PSA's again..

Man, this is going to drive me crazy..Thousands of impressions and 0 clicks on my main page..

 

I ran into this with a Vioxx site. Most web servers let you control the default page. Usually the default defaults to index.html, index.htm and/or default.htm depending on the web server. I changed the default for my site from "index.html" to "vioxx-lawsuit-questions-welcome.html". I also did a 301 redirect from the index.html page to the new default page. Works like a charm.

 

This fix turned out to be temporary for me. After a couple of days the bizarre foreign language PSAs are back on my new index page (which was 301'd to a different file name).

Still waiting for a reply/help from Goog on what is going on.

 

You mean a spammy scraper vioxx site which is why adwords sucks...