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DazzlinDonna’s take on SEO news, tips and theories.
Google reads linked pages to show relevant ads?
Ok, maybe I’m way behind the times here, but this is something that I’ve never seen before. One of the sites competing in the v7n contest, shows scorecards for each competitor (i.e. how that page’s ranking is moving up or down). On the scorecard is the name of the site, today’s ranking, today’s movement, links to the site, PR of the page, backlinks, etc. It does not actually show the content of the competing site’s page, just information about it’s ranking.
So what, you ask? Well, here’s the thing. On my scorecard, the adsense ads are all about Buzz Lightyear, and sure enough, my v7n page mentions Buzz Lightyear. The scorecard does not! The only way I can see that Google could have produced those ads, was to go look at the linked page and then displayed those ads based on the linked to page, and not the page where the ads appeared! What??? Since when?
Here is a screenshot to show you what I mean:
Just to make sure this is clear. The scorecard is on someone else’s site. The ads are on the scorecard on someone else’s site. The ads are relevant to MY page that is linked to via that scorecard. The ads are in no way relevant to the scorecard or the other person’s site. See what I mean?
Is this new? Has anyone ever seen this happen before?
Here’s the url to the scorecard for my site.
I don’t know if you’ll get those ads or not, which is why I provided the screenshot. Let me know what you think.
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February 23rd, 2006 at 9:05 am
Hi there Donna,
Just a quick comment/feedback about the adsense setup @ NicheDynamics..
Firstly, I’d like to mention that it’s all in accord with G’s TOS for Adsense. The aim is to effectively extend the user experience by including advertising material that is relevant to the site being profiled. Because the scorecard is actually about the referring site, and because visitors to the scorecards will typically return to the referring site after viewing the scorecard, I felt it best to pursue content consistency. Basically, make the card an extension of the referring site, rather than a departure from it.
This of course, is all in aid of keeping the Revenue Sharing proposition in familliar territory for WM’s, while extending their reach a little.
As for the technicalities of it..
It’s simply because the link to the score card ends in a *fully qualified* URL.
For example, note what happens to the adsense content when you remove the ‘http://’ from the url arg passed
Hope that answers your question. Feel free to publish/reproduce this comment if you like. I suspect it may not be common knowledge.. (as is always the way - whatever works best for your audience)
Cheers,
JL