AdWords Site Targeting Missing the Target

Over the past few months I've been experimenting with the AdWords site targeting (CPM ads) option available through the AdWords interface. While the technology looks promising, the interface and selection criteria need some work.

For the purpose of this analysis I used the site tool to select sites based on a term I entered. The wording above this tool says:

"Please enter one descriptive phrase or URL per line. Terms can be one word (like tennis) or a phrase (like Formula One racing).For sites, use the format example.com or subdomain.example.com.For site sections, use the format example.com/section. "

I typed in the term "photography" and was rather surprised at some of the suggested url's that were returned. Here are a few questionable ones from the returned list:

Display url = url displayed.
Actual url = url you're taken to when you click on the display url.

Display url: photo.net
Actual url: http://www.photo.net/gallery/photocritique/filter-4027413033d
Summary of page: "The requested URL was not found on this server."

Display url: netfotograf.com
Actual url: http://foto.netfotograf.com/dslr.asp
Summary of page: The page contains a total of 7 links and an Adsense block. Hardly a page suitable for Adsense, much less for a site targeted campaign.

Display url: girls.buzznet.com
Actual url: http://girls.buzznet.com/cat/
Summary of page: Questionable content according to the Adsense TOS. At the time of the writing there are full nudes displayed on the target page.

Display url: multiply.com
Actual url: http://images.acorbusie.multiply.com/
Summary of page: "Multiply is temporarily unavailable as we perform site maintenance"

Display url: meetspot.com
Actual url: http://www.meetspot.com/
Summary of page: This is a dating site - not related to photography at all.

Display url: fftl.net
Actual url: http://www.fftl.net/news.php
Summary of page: No clue on how this would be photography related. Maybe the term picture or photo is mentioned somewhere in the site.

There are also about a half dozen something.50webs.com sites that are pure garbage.

This seems to be a common trend regardless of what industry or term you try and target via the AdWords site targeting tool. There are decent sites returned but a lot of garbage is intermixed within the results.

Another problem area has been typing a url into the site target tool only to have it say site targeting is not available, even though you were just at the site and saw Adsense ads running. I've found that if you click on the "advertise on this site" link in the Adsense block on the site you'll be able to get a site targeted campaign up and running, but, you can't accomplish the same thing through the site Targeting tool in AdWords. Try diybookfestival.com as an example. Site targeting works fine of you go to the site and click the "advertise on this site" link, but you'll get a site not available message if you type the url into the site targeting tool in your AdWords account.

Site targeting is a cost effective way for marketers to get the right message in front of the right person, but, Google's site targeting tools still need some work before they are up to most AdWords user's expectations. Until the AdWords site targeting tool is up to par I'll continue with a method that's worked well for me so far:

1) Define target term
2) Search Google (set returned results to 100 instead of 10)
3) Scrape the results.
4) Quickly review the returned sites/urls.
5) Input desired urls into the AdWords site targeting interface.

Sites that don't run Adsense will be automatically filtered from the results. What you'll be left with are the top returned sites in your niche that run AdWords ads (Adsense) and are available for site targeting. Not a perfect science but in my opinion a better way to target on topic sites that will see (via organic search) traffic in your target area.