Secret Adsense Code, Available for the Few
Story Text:
Ok, so it appears that for some publishers, there are secret tags one can add to adsense code, some of which have been around for a long time according Jenstar at SEW.
Barry asks if this is another form of approved cloaking, and it's not unlke Google to have one rule for everyone, and a whole new set for those big enough, or public enough to warrant a little special coddling...
What i want to know is, what would happen if i were to use those tags on my site eh? Would i get away with it, would my account be terminated, is it even a breach of the rules?
Ok, so it appears that for some publishers, there are secret tags one can add to adsense code, some of which have been around for a long time according Jenstar at SEW.
Barry asks if this is another form of approved cloaking, and it's not unlke Google to have one rule for everyone, and a whole new set for those big enough, or public enough to warrant a little special coddling...
What i want to know is, what would happen if i were to use those tags on my site eh? Would i get away with it, would my account be terminated, is it even a breach of the rules?
- Y! MyWeb
It does seem sensible
to allow publishers to dynamically target their adwords. Maybe adding adsense 'tags' to a blog post in much same way as we do for technorati.
With most things that would lay the system open to abuse - but maybe they wouldn't need to build so much useless content, everyone can simply choose to display Mesothelioma adverts on everything they write...
Old news, almost
As far as I know the keyword tags have been around since or near the beginning of the program, mostly for premium publishers.
What makes this very interesting is Findatory's personalized advertising engine. There ain't a heck of a lot of detail (as one comment says "The holy grail in the long tail lies in the F'ind'ory code"), but somewhere along the line, the engine formulates a string of keywords dynamically inserted into the Adsense code and that change with each page reload. In his blurb Greg Linden hints that some form of individual data is used and the ads he sees are a " good match to my specific interests in business and technology."
The part where I get a bit confused is exactly what weight the Adsense algo gives to the kw tag as opposed to on-page text. Nathan Weinberg's post suggest that the Adsense targeting is much better with it, but when you look at his list of ads run and the keywords included in the tag, well, there is some but not a heck of a lot of overlap. I'm probably totally missing something here, but I don't really see much effect from the kw tag.
Adsense Sabotage
What would happen if I used those tags with my someone else's Adsense code on a site I just purchased in his/her name? Hypothetically speaking...