The Tlog - a technology blog

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

AdSense’s competitive ad filter is, as the name suggests, a way to prevent some ads from appearing in your blog/site. While it’s targeted towards companies, especially commercial sites, in order to prevent absurdities such as a Coca Cola ad in Pepsi’s web site :), it can also be useful for blogs - even personal ones. There are two reasons for it: one which will apply to some people, and one which should matter to everyone.

• It’s possible that you find some ads offensive, insulting to your site or to your readers, or simply totally in opposition to what you’re trying to say in your site. For instance: an atheism site will probably include words like “religion” and “god”, and those words will attract many religious ads - for churches, faiths, and religious web sites in general. That brilliant piece you wrote denouncing astrology will probably have many ads for horoscope sites around it. A technical article about Firefox and its advantages over Internet Explorer will probably get ads for IE toolbars, IE “optimizers”, IE spyware removers, and so on. It’s likely that you simply don’t want those ads - just like you don’t tend to see “free viagra” ads in the New York Times web site. (at least, I don’t think you do - I don’t visit that site :))
• Independently of the above, there’s a more pragmatic reason for preventing some ads from appearing in your site: you want ads to be clicked on! Think about it: what earns you money? It’s not showing the ads, it’s having people click on them! So, naturally, you want them to be relevant, sure, but you also want them to be of interest to your readers. Since they are your readers, it must be because they like the way you write, or because they agree with you, or because they are interested in the subject, or because they find useful information or tips in your blog. Therefore, the banners shouldn’t be in total opposition to what you write. Using an example from above: if you have a blog about atheism, your visitors aren’t likely to click on a banner for “The Holy Church of XXXX”, right? Or maybe you get ads, from time to time, that are obviously hoaxes, and that nobody with half a brain would click on. So, if you can prevent that one banner from appearing, you improve your chances of getting a “clickable” one in that place.

Now, how to use the filter? The AdSense competitive ads page has the following tips, which should be self-explanatory:

Examples:
example.com 			block all ads across all subdomains
sports.example.com 		block only ads across the 'sports' subdomain
sports.example.com/widgets 	block all ads below a specific directory
sports.example.com/index.html 	block all ads for a specific page

But one important thing about this: it’s the URLs that you should type, right? But which ones? AdSense banners tend to have URLs on them, but they may not be (and usually aren’t) the real ones, they’re just there to attract attention. For instance, an ad may say “www.free-spyware-remover.com”, but it may link to a completely different address from that. And it’s that real one that you should add to the competitive ad filter.

How to find it? One way is, indeed, by clicking on the ad yourself. But Google may not like you if you do it too much - especially if always from the same IP address. So, don’t abuse it.

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Related posts:

1. Blogging tips #13: Making money from your blog - Adsense: the basics
2. Blogging tips #12: Making money from your blog - About AdSense
3. Blogging tips #23: Making money from your blog: Change your ads
4. Inside AdSense: changing channels
5. An AdSense Case Study