Display relevant Ads in Blogs: Just suggest Google

Google adsense folks have unveiled another useful feature for Adsense publishers - Section Targeting.

The concept is simple but the advantages and possibilities are endless.

Consider a possible scenario that could confuse Adsense Bot and serve irrelevant ads on your page. You have just written an article in your blog on "Web Hosting". Great, but on the same page you have others sections like "Previous Posts", "User Comments", "RSS Web Feeds" and your "Profile".

Your personal profile may say that you are a die-hard soccer fan, user comments might contain spam and links to Viagra stores, the Previous Posts may contain totally unrelated topics like "US Outsources Teachers" or "Google releases Dance 2005 pictures".

Your article on "Web Hosting" may occupy just 50% of your precious blog Real estate while the rest is grabbed by everything else.

What do you do then. Here comes Google Adsense Section Targeting to your rescue. Just tweak your HTML a bit and force Googlebot to focus only on specific content.

Some things to note before implementing Google Tags:

1. Don't cheat Google why targetting wrong content - Google is smart enough.
2. Though a bit risky but always include user comments in the Tags.
3. Don't worry if your Google earning drop the first day, experiment for some time.
4. Always include the Title of post within the tags.

Here's how you do it. Just open your Page HTML in notepad, point your cursor to the beginning of your article and insert the following line:

<!-- google_ad_section_start-->

Then point your cursor where your story end and inser the following HTML line

<!-- google_ad_section_end-->

Save your HTML and publish it to the web. You are done. It is so simple.

So it is just like saying - "Hey Google, please don't read my entire page for determing the Ads that you want to serve. I want you to focus just here".

You can use section targeting to make suggestions about as many sections of a page as you like. In Google jargon, you are making a suggestion to Google Adsense Bot. Google suggests that you need to include ’significant content’ in the tags or you’ll end up with irrelevant ads or PSAs.

Here's a sample illustration of implementing Section Targeting in Blogger Templates. (Use at your own risk)

<div class="post">
<h3 class="post-title"><$BlogItemTitle$></h3>
<div class="post-body">
<p>
<!-- google_ad_section_start-->
<$BlogItemBody$>
<!-- google_ad_section_end-->
</p>
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-2252540629893746";
google_ad_width = 336; google_ad_height = 280;
google_alternate_color = "FFFFFF";
google_alternate_ad_url = "http://rcm.amazon....
google_ad_format = "336x280_as";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
Save to <a href="http://del.icio.us/login/?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>">Del.icio.us</a>
<a href="http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=<$BlogItemTitle$>&u=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" target="_blank">Furl It </a>
</div>

The content between the Google comment tags is emphasized and the rest may be ignored while displaying Google Text Ads or adsense units. Remember to use this feature carefully. Double check that you have closed the Google Start tag. Incase you need further help on implementing section targeting in your Blogger template, feel free to contact me. Good luck.