Using Features Wisely - Keep your filter list small

Keep your filter list small

Is your account filter list working a little too well? Consider reducing the number of filtered ads. While filtering is a quick and easy way to prevent unwanted ads from being displayed, keep in mind that filtering decreases the number of ads that can appear, thereby decreasing your potential earnings as well. In order to increase the variety of ads served to your pages and to make the most of every opportunity for additional revenue, try removing URLs from your filter list. Also, instead of filtering out the top-level domain of an ad (which will prevent any ad from that domain from appearing), filter just the exact destination URL.

Tip for becoming a filtering expert: review our Competitive Ad Filter Guide, where'll you'll find instructions and advice on filtering ads like a pro.

Competitive Ad Filter

Google AdSense provides the functionality to block specific ads from appearing on your pages. Although Google ads are highly targeted to the content of your page, there may be situations in which you don't want to display particular advertisements -­ for example, you may wish to block ads leading to competitors' sites.

The competitive ad filter works by blocking ads that link to specific URLs. This way, you can easily block all ads that are linked to your competitor at www.example.com. By entering a top level domain such as www.example.com, you'll also block all ads that link to subdirectories below that domain. The following rules apply to the competitive ad filter:

• Entering example.com will block ads to example.com and example.com/sub
• Entering example.com will also block ads to www.example.com and forums.example.com
• www.example.com will block ads to www.example.com but not to forums.example.com or example.com
• example.com/sub will not block ads to example.com/products or example.com/sub/index.html

Generally, it's a good idea to leave the 'www' off of URLs in your filter list to provide for broader filtering.

Using the Competitive Ad Filter

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In 5 easy steps below, we'll show you how to set up your competitive ad filter from within your AdSense account.

• To edit your competitive ad filter, log in to your AdSense account at https://www.google.com/adsense.
• Click the AdSense Setup tab. A row of links will appear beneath the tabs -­ click Competitive Ad Filter. This page will display the URLs currently being filtered for your account. If this is the first time you've used your filter, the text box will be empty.
• Choose the appropriate product sub-tab and click Add / Edit Sites.
• Copy the URL from the ad into your filter list. There are a couple of ways to find this URL - both methods are described in detail below.
• Click Save Changes to add these sites to your competitive ad filter. It usually takes about 4 hours for your changes to take effect, so you'll continue to see ads for these sites on your pages for a little while. If filtered ads are still appearing after 12 hours, please contact us.