Google Offers AdSense Publishers New Filtering Options

AdSense publishers who want more control over what ads appear on their sites are in luck; today, Google announced that it’s upgraded a category filtering feature, and is extending the feature’s beta to countries including the U.K. and the U.S.

Do you have something against dating sites?  Drugs and supplements?  Politics?  No problem.  By just checking a few boxes, you can block related ads.  In fact, you can block ads from up to five categories, which shows quite a bit of flexibility on Google’s part.

Google will also show you how the different ad categories contribute to your income, which should prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot (and/or checkbook).

Otherwise, Arlene Lee of the Inside AdSense Team stated on the Inside AdSense blog, "To give you a better sense of how many ads you’d be filtering, we’ve now added an extra column to show you the percentage of ad impressions on your pages which fall into each category."

And all of the numbers are now calculated based on stats dating back 30 days, not just 3, to increase their accuracy.

Visit the Ad Review Center if you feel like tinkering with these ad filters.  Publishers in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S. should all have access to the beta.