Adsense is picking up imaginary/wrong keywords

For a while now I've noticed that my page at http://www.spainexpat.com/spain/information/visas_in_spain_for_work_or_holiday/ has been showing ads about Australian Visas, Russian Visas, US Visas, etc. WTF? I just don't get it. There's nothing on the entire page about Australia or Russia. I thought I'd just try blocking those advertisers with the ad filter (then maybe the Spain Visa ads will come up right?)... but that didn't work either (not to mention it'd just bring down the CPC)...

So then I go into my Adwords account to use the Keyword Checking tools. Sure enough there's tons of competition for Spain Visa, if you type it into google you'll see there's plenty of relevant advertisers out there for it. Then I headed to the Site-Related Keywords tool and this is basically the list (abbreviated):
working visas Add »
working visas in australia Add »
us working visas Add »
new zealand working visas Add »
canadian working visas Add »
working visas uk Add »
work visas Add »
australian work visas Add »
australia working visa

Why would this be happening? Where is it getting keywords like "us, new zealand, canadian, australian"? Those aren't even in my meta keywords or anything. In the mean time it totally screws up the relevancy of my ads.

So I did another experiment. Going to http://www.google.com/search?source...-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2005-09,GGGL:en&q=spain+visa
I go to the first site with adsense implemented (natural results), http://www.learn4good.com/travel/es_visa.htm (somebody tell me how they can rank so high with so little content and keyword frequency, backlinks?). Sure enough, their ads include Russian visas too.

What's up with this? Any ideas? Should I be writing to Google (I fear the generic, "we cannot guarantee the relevancy of the ads and they are based on our ability to crawl a site... blah blah blah")?

Thanks guys, any input would be really appreciated. Or sympathy for that matter.

 

You have my sympathy - that is dismal.

It's because Visa is mentioned a lot and there isn't any adverts to serve up on visas specifically for Spain.

I would think about reducing the number of 'Visas' in your <title> or removing Visas alltogether and then changing it so it's more generic on moving to Spain, then you may get adverts on moving to spain - relocation specialists and such.

If you are targetting Visas for Spain as a keyword/SEO then keep 'Visas for Spain' in the title but change the rest of it.

"Visas for Spain - Moving to Spain, Holidays in Spain" so that it's not so heavy on Visas.

Have a play.. that's all I can suggest.

Pete

 

Hmm, I think I see what you're saying. You mean that the page is too much "visa" and not enough "Spain visa", yeah?

Interesting, but the problem is that when trying to compete with other sites, I feel like I need those keywords in there for SEO purposes. Check out some of my competitors (that google link ought to show you a few) who just go nuts with keywording their titles, and it seems to work for them.

Thanks though!

 

Email google about this, they were very happy to help the relevency of ads on my site, even escalated it when they couldn't fix it, sorted now though.

 

Really? That's awesome.

Thanks DaVe!

 

Not really - if there were Visa adverts for Spain then AdSense would serve them, but there isn't any in their inventry by the looks of it..

Search Google for Visas Spain and look on the right - nothing except a few government information adverts which aren't worth as much CPC-wise as those Newzealand Visa adverts.

I just searched on Google for Spain Visas and you came up (number 2 I think, nice!) and noticed the adverts on the left (tower adsense) were adverts on spanish property and stuff which is the best you can hope for really given there aren't any spain visa adverts to display.

Pete

 

Hmm, that's funny. In my search for Spain Visas (yeah, I am #2, cool!) I get 6 perfectly relevant ads for eu-immigration, spain visas, schengen travel insurance... all totally relevant.

Also, when I checked my Adwords account for the keyword popularity of spain visa, I get a medium amount of competition with an average CPC of over $2... I guess the advertisers aren't targetting your country? Are you in the UK? That could be why, since none of y'all needs to worry about getting a visa here .

 

Yup I'm in the UK.

Google does serve up adverts also based upon how you reached your website, so if you came to your site using the keywords 'Spain Visas' from a search engine, the ads will also be tailored to that - this may be why you get the right adverts when coming from your search instead of just loading the page up.

So in that case.. just keep Visas for Spain in your title and remove the other stuff like Holiday Visas, Student Visas (because they are probably looked at as none-spain visa adverts).

Good luck!

Pete

 

I forgot to mention that the Title as you're seeing it was a recent modification. It used to say Visa in Spain, Holiday, Retirement, Student. Or something like that. I was having the same problem back then.

As DaVe pointed out, I've emailed google and hopefully can sort it out with them.

Actually the ads didn't change on my site when I mentioned the 6 relevant ads, those were the skyscrapers on the google search results page. On my site they were still Florida Villa UK, Russian Visas, etc. Sorry, I should've specified more clearly.

I'm gonna wait to hear from Google, then as a last resort try removing the other words from the title like you suggested, and perhaps change the URL...

Thanks again Pete.