Search terms and ad relevancy

Some issues about ad relevancy can be explained by understanding how visitors to a site arrived there. If a search engine was used, the search phrase affects Adsense ad relevancy.

Try this little experiment. Use Yahoo as the search engine. The reason for using Yahoo is that its inferior methodology favors top-level home pages, and not deeper, more relevant, content pages. Try the phrase "car auctions" and look for the link to www.auctionfire.com (no I'm not affiliated with the site, it's just a good site to use with this example). Click on the link and notice the Google Adsense banner at the top of the page. It contains ads about car auctions.

Now try some other searches using Yahoo for other types of auctions, such as "book auctions" or "stamp auctions." You may have to look a few pages down in the results to find the auctionfire.com home page. But notice that the Adsense ads in the top banner relate to the search phrase, although the home page or its content is not particularly related to that phrase.

Although not the only factor determining ad relevancy, search terms are definitely a significant factor.

 

i tired what you suggested, first by entering the URL directly and then by yahoo.

on both instances i saw ads related to auctions in general. i tried several search phrases in yahoo (book, car, etc) and they still show general auction ads.