AdSense-Tips –
CPC and Content Optimization · Competitive Ad Filters

There appear ads on your website that don't correspond to it's content or that advertise for competitors you don't like. If this is the case an entry in the competitive ad filter may stop this.

This works very easy: You just enter the URL the ad links to. Keep in mind that two of these filters exist – one for AdSense for Content and one for AdSense for Search.

Important

If you want to enter an URL from one of these ads do display the URL by moving the mouse pointer over the URL. The Internet Explorer will display the URL in its status bar. Retype it! Never click on the ad. Google could recognize that this click comes from you and you – the AdSense participant – are the one who profits from this click. They say that Google may act extremely rigorous in some cases and doesn't accept any excuse.

Note

As the name says Competitive Ad Filters exist to avoid competitive ads. But you can use them if Google AdSense displays ads that don't correspond to your website's content, even if the content has been optimized several times. I don't know if this confirms with Google AdSense Program Policies but haven't heard from another case.

If non-corresponding ads are displayed you always should have a look at your site's content first and improve it if possible.

An example

You write about your hobby Oldtimer. Nevertheless not only ads from car dealers are displayed, but some from a restaurant in Nowherecity. After re-reading the page you notice that they appear because you mentioned that you love to cook and live near Nowherecity.

Now you have to decide whether you a) want to filter these ads with a Competitive Ad Filter, or b) will change the content and refrain from telling the world what and where you love to dine or c) leave everything as it is.

My advice: Leave it as it is and look into the AdSense reports a few days later. Maybe that hundreds of people click on this restaurant's ads just to meet you there. You would be pretty silly to remove these ads in this case. Otherwise you still can apply some changes.

NEW: Mark content (11/9/2005)

Finally Google gives you a chance to decide which part of a page contains text that is relevant for the ads to display.

Relevant text may be included in tags like this:

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->

Text and HTML code that is relevant for Google AdSense

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

The non-relevant part is marked this way:

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

Text and HTML code that is not relevant for Google AdSense

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

Using these tags you advise Google AdSense to pay attention to or to ignore the text between the tags.

Attention

Some server software and some HTML editors (e.g. MS FrontPage) may remove these tags while transferring your pages in the web to save some bandwidth because they recognize them as comments.