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Google Ads Section Targeting

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I've recently been exposed to this tag which informs the mediabot for Adsense where in your site, it should search for relevant keywords for displaying ads. It looks something like this:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>
… targeted content here ….
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

I think on this blog, since it's focussed almost exclusively on SEO or Adsense, most ads displayed are of those nature but the code could be very useful for personal blog owners, who normally writes whatever that comes to their mind and usually have lotsa links on their sidebars. Other good candidates for this code would be forums where you can target a specific part of the discussion for the ads to show.

I've done abit of research as well to see how it has affected other website owners and these are some of their comments:

  • Useful only for blogs and forums
  • You need to include quite abit of content so that mediabot can detect that you're not trying to cheat the system
  • It's important to include the title within the tags and they should also include both posts and user comments

  • Doesn't work for all blogs/forums/sites. You'll need to experiment with it.
  • Should exclude sidebars, headers, footers of a blog.
  • Google may take up to 2 weeks to notice the tags, and it doesn't guarantee the results
  • You are allowed to use more than one set of the tags

    • Also, before I forget, there's also an option to ignore parts of the site, this will be particularly useful if you do not want a certain part of your blog/forum/site to be searched for keywords

    <!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>
    …content…
    <!– google_ad_section_end –>

    So if you've decided to try this method, I'll try to give some pointers on the implementation in blogs and forums but since templates might defer, this is just a general guide:

    Wordpress

    The easiest way is to install this plugin called "Google Ad Wrap" by John of Urban Giraffe. Activate it and it'll automatically include all your comments and main post within the tags. No messy code editing.

    BlogSpot

    In your template, search for the term $BlogItemBody$, then include your tags as follows:

    <!– google_ad_section_start –>
    <$BlogItemBody$>
    <!– google_ad_section_end –>

    *Noted from Digital Inspiration.

    PhpBB

    I'm just showing one example for the topic pages here. For this example, I'm editing the file called viewtopic_body.tpl:

    Find:

    <a class="maintitle" href="{U_VIEW_TOPIC}">{TOPIC_TITLE}</a>

    Replace:

    <!– google_ad_section_start–><a class="maintitle" href="{U_VIEW_TOPIC}">{TOPIC_TITLE}</a><!– google_ad_section_end–>

    Find:

    <td colspan="2"><span class="postbody">{postrow.MESSAGE}{postrow.SIGNATURE}</span><span class="gensmall">{postrow.EDITED_MESSAGE}</span></td>

    Replace:

    <!– google_ad_section_start–>
                                    <td colspan="2"><span class="postbody">{postrow.MESSAGE}{postrow.SIGNATURE}</span><span class="gensmall">{postrow.EDITED_MESSAGE}</span></td>
    <!– google_ad_section_end–>

    That's it for now, if you want you can tell me if it really works on your site in the comments section!

    This entry was posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 6:59 am and is filed under Wordpress, Adsense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    7 Responses to “Google Ads Section Targeting”

    1. Simon
      June 25th, 2006 07:56
      1

      i just added this to my website, shall see how long it takes for changes to be noticed… i know for sure that it can only make an improvement. it seems that adwords only crawl and act on the content in my sidebar, so the ads arnt at all relevent to the content. with this method ive told it to ignore all sidebars and just focus on the content at hand. shall report back with any findings as soon as they become apparent :p

    2. teckie
      June 26th, 2006 16:10
      2

      thanks for visiting, Simon. I guess it should improve the relevance of your ads i guess but remember it might take more than 2 weeks for google to notice them.

    3. Simon
      June 26th, 2006 20:15
      3

      its working better, on new posts the changes are notable as the adverts are more targeted towards the content, while on the older posts adsence has yet to catch up :p nicely done.

    4. Edwin
      August 1st, 2006 14:27
      4

      I was looking all over the web to see how you implement the tags on blogspot. Finally i found it, thanks.

    5. Sherry
      November 18th, 2006 14:30
      5

      Thank you for the instructions for placement of HTML code for section targeting on blogspot.
      You're the only one I have seen make it this clear. I will be sure to link to you about this post.

      Sherry

    6. Haroon
      November 25th, 2006 23:11
      6

      will it work ?

    7. Haroon
      November 25th, 2006 23:13
      7

      Its Working thanx

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