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Make Money Online With Google Section Targeting

written by John Chow on March 17, 2007

Get Traffic To Your Site!

On my last post about making money with Google AdSense, I talked about the Google Bid Gap and how having less ads could equal more dollars. Today, I want to talk about Google section targeting.

Google section targeting is an often unused resource for many bloggers. This is no doubt due to the fact that most blog owners don’t even know what section targeting is. If you want to make money online with Google AdSense, then section targeting is something you need to understand and use.

What Is Section Targeting

Are you having trouble getting Google to show more targeted AdSense ads on your blog? Most of the time, this comes about because the blog content isn’t highly targeted to the keywords you’re after. This is especially true for a blog because the posts can ramble from one topic to the next. Google tries its best to figure out what the general theme of a blog is and serve the most appropriate ads. However, you can help it out by section targeting your content.

Section Targeting allows you to recommend key sections of your article for AdSense to emphasize or downplay when selecting ads for your blog. In other words, instead of having Google spidering your entire page to select AdSense ads, you tell Google which parts of your content to target and which parts to ignore.

How To Use Section Targeting

The following HTML tags triggers Google AdSense section targeting:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>
This is the section of text I want Google to use when selecting ads for my blog. All the keywords and key phases should go here and I should stay highly focused on my theme, which is make money online, making money online, make money from a blog, blogging for dollar, root of all evil, John Chow has the best online moneymaking blog on the Internet, etc.
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

In the above example, Google will use the section of text I designated for the targeting of AdSense ads and ignore the rest the article. This is how most sites do section targeting. However, I find it easier to use the weight=ignore tag to tell Google what not to target.

By using the tag <!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –> on sections of my site that I want Google to ignore I can keep my AdSense ads on target to the theme of my blog. Have a look at your blog and see if their are pages with ads that are not related to what you’re writing about. The miss-targeted ad could be caused by just a small section of text. By enclosing that section with a section weight=ignore tag, Google will ignore it and use the reminder of your article to target ads. That should put the Google ads back on target.

The weight=ignore tag allows me to ramble about anything I want and still keep the Google ads targeted to the main theme of my blog, which is to make money online. If you want to make more money on your blog then you should take advantage of section targeting.

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Google Section code is a legal or not?

This google section targeting isn't working out for me very well. The problem I have is having too many posts on one page that don't have the same topic, so the ads are irrelevant. I wish I could tell google to look at the latest 2 posts for determining what ads should be used.

i tried it on my blog it works!! now i see more relevent ads on the blog!! thanks

That is awesome, I was just wondering how to get more relevant ads from adsense on my Page, I am going to apply that as soon as I finish this comment!

Holy Smacks, there is like a million comments on this post. Rightly so though, this is a great adsense tip, I will definitely be giving it a try shortly. Sometimes, I get funeral ads on my post...very strange. This Google ad sectioning idea should get rid of those morbid ads. :lol:

Thanks for the tips. Your so smart.

yeah this shouldn't be a big deal

Very, very useful post John, I will be implementing this technique as soon as possible.

Good information, thanks for sharing.

I used to do this technique! it's really effective!

John,

Rack it up to another informative and very useful post! I've implemented section targeting before, but never heard of the ignore section.

Thanks for the tip!

i think that if you give good content in your articles, good titles and good urls, you dont need that!

define good content? You mean specific to target a specific niche? If so, I would agree, but it depends on the individual blog

amazing tips. I will try to use it.

Didn't see that on the Google AdSense site. Thanks for the tip, now I can finally get rid of some annoying fire truck ad's.

I guess it is great for those who wants to eliminate unwanted ads (like me). Nice tip, and I should be giving it a try soon.

i now see with about 1-2 ad blocks.. increase in click value. some clicks generate over 1$ which is big for me

yea but it really depends on the costs of the keywords

$1 are awesome! Congrats on that.

:neutral:

awesome post, google says that it takes two weeks for update by adsense crawlers.

Two weeks?! I was hoping to see results within a few days

If you check the new post, John is in page two now. Can't wait to see when he is going to surpass problogger on page 1. :twisted:

yea me 2, but when I used it it was just a day or two

Awsome tip John. Tiny, easy, simple and actionable. Thanks.

yeah, john! nice tips! :mrgreen:

I would say it was a smart tip

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timeable

:grin:

Is it me or has John really turned it up with the tips after we all went off on him for doing too many Reviews?

Looks that way Gary, he's going back to what has brought in the traffic!

which is definitely one of his smartest moves of the month . . and that's saying a lot!

I still need 10 more comments so not being kicked out again. :twisted: I couldn't post for 9 hours and every body just ran and left me out. But seems like we are run out of comments that I could reply. Learn from you, buddy. :lol:

Hurry, catch up Aris cuz after the technorati post that John left, everyone's going to be shooting for the top commentator list.

No doubt, I can just see a ton of spam coming!

I think he'd be getting dugg like mad if he could.

He's going back to basics. That's the old JC that everyone wants!

Nah, he's always coming out with great tips. It's just that it's not as saturated with review's right now.

Thanks John! No idea this feature existed, hopefully it'll increase my CTR

Try including a leader board with adsense to increase CTR. We did and it doubled our percentage!

I remember reading this on the google adsense help but when John Chow says it..it's like "Holy words"!

This is some good info. I'm going to try to frequent your blog more often. You post some good stuff. :grin:

I wasn't aware of this..good to know. Thanks :mrgreen:

Another great tip. I was actually reading the Google adsense online help looking for tips to help keep my Google ads as relevant to my audience as possible. The section found here was faster than plowing through Google's help section. Thanks again.

I think that was the same reason why we love this source of all evils very much. :twisted:

Have to hand to you John...Great Post..as always

Another great tip - so when are you writing a book John?

He's planted the seed. I would expect it in the next couple months. Its going to take a bit to correct the typo's hehehe...sorry, I couldn't resist. :twisted:

Wow this is just what I have been needing. Great post, John. You rock.

Perfect advice! The adsense ads on my blog are at times strange to say the least. Will give this a whirl and see what happens. Thank you John!

Hey, when are you going to fill out that Yumcha page? The front page look nice. Did I missed the link to your blog?

Yumcha.com.au ---> Where you from Yumcha? I don't see to many .au around.

Ask and ye shall receive. Thanks John for putting this up after my Adsense Nonsense email.