For some time, Google has had a way to filter web pages, called Google Section Targeting – using it, pages can emphasize one part over another, and bloggers improve the focus of their site.

This can be important, especially for WordPress bloggers. For example, I once wrote on another blog about a dog ebook. For days afterwards, no matter what I wrote about, the Google ads remained for dog-related items!

On other occasions, I’ve received emails from people asking why they get ads for blogging items, although they never write about blogging.

Google filtering can help with this.

Does it work? Yes – but for WordPress blogs, the key is to add them appropriately, to help focus the topic. For example, to place the tags around the articles themselves, you’d want to add code inside the WordPress ‘loop’ (such as found in <strong>index.php</strong>):

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
...the rest of the code...
</div>
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<?php endwhile; ?>

The “<!— google…” lines are the new ones to add. This will emphasize the articles, and deemphasize the rest of the page for Google’s search engines.

One exception arises here – what about the main page, where there can be several articles? In my case, the dog article stayed on the front page for a while, skewing the ads. Ideally, I’d like the topmost article only to stand out. For that, we can just replace those Google lines with a bit of PHP code:

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php static $ab_count=0; if (++$ab_count<=1)
echo "<!-- google_ad_section_start -->"; ?>
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
...the rest of the code...
</div>
<?php if ($ab_count++<=1)
echo "<!-- google_ad_section_start -->"; ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

If you use this code, and look at the source code of your main blog page (use your browser’s ‘View Source’ option), you’ll see these tags are only around the first article – helping Google focus on it.

Google also provide a demphasizing tag, to tell it to view sections as less important. Use

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->

to start a section, and

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

to end it.

Notice I say ‘less important’, not ‘ignore’ – in fact, Google is very careful to say they will still index the whole page, only that they will give greater or lesser weight to certain sections (check Google’s site and blog for more about this topic).

This code can be useful in certain areas – for example, in WordPress blogs:

• If your sidebar is affecting your listing (for example, by showing older article titles) then place the tags at the first and last lines of your sidebar.php file, enclosing them.
• If your footer has text in it, likewise use the tags just before and after any text in the footer.php file (but be careful to place all tags before the ending </body> HTML tag).

If you find yourself asking ‘why do my Google ads never reflect my topics’ consider adding Google Section targeting. It’s simple and free, and can focus your ads. And with more targeted ads, you can expect your click through rates to rise – and profits too.

[This is based on an article from the ActiveBlogging Report of March 2006 - for the article and much more, join ActiveBlogging Platinum today]