WebProNews

A recent update to the AdWords Site Exclusion tool allows advertisers to keep their ads out of broad categories of sites along with excluding individual ones.

The change also brought a new name to the feature. Goodbye Site Exclusion tool, hello Site and Category Exclusion tool.

This revision should make it easier for advertisers to keep their ads out of sites where they feel the incoming clicks fail to convert at a satisfactory rate. The Inside AdWords blog said category exclusion can be used with any type of campaign running on the content network: keyword-targeted or placement-targeted.

Now that they have the feature available, Google really hopes advertisers won't use it heavily. The blog post cited points where the company feels category exclusion will be overkill.

For one, since Google makes content network sites follow AdSense policies, advertisers already have that protection in place. Google also suggested that blocking a category may keep ads from appearing on what would be relevant pages for the campaign.

We don't think too many advertisers will buy these arguments, as category exclusion has been a hotly-requested feature. Advertisers who see category exclusion have too much of an impact on their campaigns will likely back off from it, anyway.