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What is AdSense Section Targeting?

I've been working on getting my AdSense revenue to improve ever since I started reading your (awesome) book Growing Your Business with Google, and today a pal told me that I needed to immediately implement section targeting. Can you offer some insight?


Dave's Answer:

Your friend is definitely on the ball with this one! I haven't even had a chance to talk about it on my Google book blog (at findability.info) yet, though that'll be remedied in just a few minutes! :-)

More seriously, Google's allowing AdSense participants to help their system identify exactly where the content, the real key material on a given page, is located. The value? This better targets ads, which helps visitors since they see more relevant ads, helps the advertiser because it improves the targeting of their ads, and that, of course, improves things for us participants too, because we should see better click thru rates and higher revenue.

There are two different types of tags you can use, though I surmise that the basic pair will be fine for 99% of users.

Just before the beginning of your main content, the material that you want to have be used as the basis for targeting, add:

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->

then at the end of the passage, add:

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

Easily done, and doubly so if you're using a template-based system like a weblog, since you can just tweak your templates and rebuild your site, whether it's a dozen pages or a thousand.

If you have sections that you absolutely want Google to ignore, then change the 'start' tag to:

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->

That's it. Now, go implement it!

Oh, and remember that you won't see a change in ad targeting until the Googlebot next visits your site...



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Comments

Where would you put this comment for a blogger template?

Posted by: Satish Talim at September 9, 2005 7:41 AM

I clarified one aspect of Section Targeting with Google. Do check my blog entry.

Posted by: Satish Talim at September 14, 2005 9:15 AM

I heard about section targeting quite awhile ago, but somehow didn't pay much attention to it. But this morning I decided to give it a try and see what it gives me in terms of AdSense earnings.

I've enabled a new adsense-optimized theme (one of the WP-themes supplied by Dosh-Dosh) and used adsense section targeting. Now will add a tracking mechanism to get full stats, and perhaps I'll manage to increase my AdSense earnings by some 10% or even more :)

Posted by: Charlemont at July 12, 2007 10:44 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!









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