If you advertise on Googles content network (as discussed in last weeks post), you know that sometimes your
ads show up on undesirable Web sites.

Why are some sites undesirable? Often its a question of site quality and material (”content,” for lack of a better word); other times its more that particular sites just arent appropriate for your target market. Either way, you dont want to waste your time and money in these areas when you could get much better return on ROI elsewhere.

Thats where site exclusion comes in handy. Googles site exclusion tool is simply a means of excluding your ads from certain Web sites where you dont want them displayed.

For example, our PPC team recently discovered that some of our home insurance ads were showing up on a Florida home insurance information site. Since these leads arent desirable for agents on our network right now, we cant make any money from them—and we certainly dont want to advertise in that area. By using the site exclusion tool, we were able to ban our ads from that site (and others like it) and limit our exposure to that particular market.

So how can you ban your ads from undesirable sites?

Once you know of particular Web sites you dont want your ads to appear on, excluding them from your campaigns is really easy. Just sign in to your account, click “tools” at the top of your campaign summary page, click “site exclusion” under the “Optimize your ads” header, and select the campaign you want to list exclusions for. Then just type in the site names, and click “Exclude Sites,” and youre all set. You can go back to that same page at any time and add site names as you find your ads in inappropriate places.

One important note: Excluding sites can only be done on the campaign level; so if your account contains multiple campaigns, youll need to create a list of excluded sites for each campaign to completely filter out unwanted traffic.

Can Google give you a list of all sites that are eligible to show your ads so you can filter them yourself? Unfortunately, no. (But it would be nice, wouldnt it?) Because the content network is continually growing, new sites are added continually. So its up to you to make note when you see one thats undesirable for your purposes and add it to your list of exclusions.

Now even better news: Google has made one recent upgrade regarding site exclusions. You can now exclude an unlimited number of Web sites on each campaigns list to help you refine and filter your targeting across the content network. This is good news for those of you who find this tool especially helpful, as we have.