

Ask HN: What is the Story behind all those unrelated Adsense Ads? - Multiverse

I have been away from the whole publisher thing for a few years. Have been selling products. Spent a couple of millions on Adwords. So I know both sides of the fence pretty well now.<p>Lately I started a new content website about a product category. Let&#x27;s call it &quot;widgets&quot;. A topic that you pay around $2 per click on adwords. I did a real investment into this. Having it developed over 6 months. The site took off quite nicely. Has about 100000 visitors a month already. It get&#x27;s a lot of praise and I believe it has the potential to become a major player.<p>So I thought to myself: Time to monetize my new baby. Slapped on some Adsense ads and was expecting to make money.<p>Yeah right. As it turns out, Adsense makes me about $5 a day!<p>Can you see me scratching my head? How can a site that every day thousands of people use to look for &quot;widgets&quot; make only $150 a month in ad revenue?<p>Looking at the ads it&#x27;s quite obvious. The ads are non-related, cheap &quot;Are you single?&quot;, &quot;Free file sharing&quot; and alike. At least in the languages I can read. I tried from a couple of computers from around the world.<p>Ok, so:<p>a) People go to Google, look for &quot;widgets&quot;, see a WALL of $2-per-click ads for &quot;widgets&quot;.<p>b) People go to my &quot;which widgets to buy&quot; site and see &quot;Windows Vista Driver Download&quot; and &quot;Google Business Email&quot; ads which have almost nothing to do with &quot;widgets&quot; and pay only $0.2 per click.<p>Why?<p>Looking around the net this seems to be the way it is everywhere now. Whatever I google, the system in place seems to be the same: The search results are filled with relevant ads. But the ads on the content pages are completely irrelevant. What&#x27;s the story behind this?
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Multiverse
Here is an example. Searched for "Screwdriver Reviews" on Google. Saw tons of
ads from Sears, Amazon, Msdirect etc. All for screwdrivers.

Now I click on a content link in the search results and get this:

[http://i.imgur.com/5Xk6bvX.png](http://i.imgur.com/5Xk6bvX.png)

This was from a computer in the USA with no cookies set. Just so you don't
think it's because Google somehow figured out I rather need an asian bride
then a screwdriver.

What's going on?

