google_hints

[stymiee]

Chris,

In your article "A Publisher's Guide to Contextual PPC Ad Optimization" and you mention giving Google hints about what kind of ads to serve on your pages by using google_hints="keyword1, etc"; in the ad code. You also mention requiring Google's permission to do this. I have a site where this will be very handy to do as the ads currently being served are too far off topic. How do I contact Google and is there anything I should mention when requesting permission to use this feature?

[Chris]

They contacted me, so I dont necessarily have experience contacting the.

What I would do is contact them through normal feedback channels, and ask permission to use the hints, what hints you'd use, and your justification for doing so.

[stymiee]

I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

[Erin]

Chris, do you find much of a difference when you use hints? I don't...

[Chris]

I did at first, now I've used them for so long who knows. It does seem to help targetting though.

[stymiee]

Google's response:


Thanks for your email.

As you may know, publishers are not allowed to alter the AdSense ad code
for any reason. Once you've generated the ad code in your AdSense account
pages, you may not alter any portion of the code or manually change the
layout of the ads.

In addition, at this time we don't offer the option to individually filter
out specific ads or types of ads. The only way to filter ads from your
site is by blocking all ads from that advertiser's site. Should we offer
the option to filter by type of ad in the future, we'll be sure to let you
know.

However, you're welcome to implement section targeting. Section targeting
allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you'd
like us to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site's content.
By providing us with your suggestions, you can assist us in improving your
ad targeting. We recommend that only those familiar with HTML attempt to
implement section targeting.

To implement section targeting, you'll need to add a set of special HTML
comment tags to your code to mark the beginning and end of whichever
section(s) you'd like to emphasize or ignore for ad targeting. The tags
and instructions for adding them to your HTML code can be found at
http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23168 .

Thanks for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

[peach]

I might have a go at it too. What did you write to them stym? Just so that I know what sort of email didnt cut it for them.

[stymiee]

I might have a go at it too. What did you write to them stym? Just so that I know what sort of email didnt cut it for them.
Are you saying I'm a bad writer? :p ;)

I don't have a copy of it as I submitted it through their online form. I did follow Chris' advice and was also polite and thorough. I am assuming they have a preference to use the section targeting. At least for smaller publishers like me.

[Chris]

That looks like a canned response to me. Probably didn't even read your email fully, look at your site, etc. See "change code", put in canned response.

[stymiee]

I agree. I'm assuming I'm just not large enough to bother with yet.

[peach]

I can imagine those google employees clicking on buttons and composing a nonstandard standard response email.

that's what it looks like to me.
-dont touch code code *check*
-filter stuff *check*
-section targetting *check*

the rest is all default template I guess.