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.

This guide is separated into two sections:

1. Using the Competitive Ad Filter
2. Finding the Ad URL

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 filter list, sign in to your AdSense account.
• Click the AdSense Setup tab.
• Click the Competitive Ad Filter link. 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 30 minutse 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 a day, please contact us.

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Finding the Ad URL

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To block an ad, you'll need to enter either the display URL or the destination URL into your filter. The display URL is the URL shown within the text of the ad. Not every ad features a display URL; depending on the ad format you're using, you may need to use the destination URL of the ad in order to properly filter it.
There are two methods of getting the destination URL of an ad: the AdSense Preview Tool, and viewing the link Properties. We suggest using the preview tool, due to its ease of use and additional functionality.
AdSense Preview Tool
The AdSense Preview Tool is an addition to the right-click menu of Internet Explorer 6.x browsers. It offers the ability to view the ads that would appear on your page, and to display the destination URLs of these ads with only a few clicks.To download the AdSense Preview Tool, and to read more about its features, please visithttps://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=160.

To find the destination URLs:

• Browse to the page containing the ads you'd like to filter.
• Right-click anywhere on the page. From the pop-up menu that appears, selectGoogle AdSense Preview Tool. The tool will open in a new window.
• Select the checkbox adjacent to each ad that you'd like to block from your pages and click Show Selected URLs. The destination URL of the selected ads will appear.
• Copy and paste the URLs into the competitive ad filter text box in your AdSense publisher account and click Save Changes.

Note : It may take up to 30 minutes for ads linking to these URLs to be filtered from your pages.
View the link Properties
The full destination URL of each ad is contained within the link properties. You can look at the code of the link to find the destination URL:

1. Right-click on the ad title and select either Copy Shortcut (IE) or Copy Link Location (Netscape).
2. Open a text editor, such as Notepad, and paste the selection into the text editor. To paste, select Paste from the text editor's Edit menu.
3. The destination URL of the ad is the text between 'adurl=' and '&'. As an example, the copied URL will appear as follows (the example has been shortened with ellipses):
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/adclick?sa=l&(...)&adurl=http://www.blogger.com/signup.g&client= or http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/adclick?adurl=http://www.blogger.com/signup.g&sa= The destination URL in the examples above is http://www.blogger.com/signup.g
4. Copy and paste this value into the competitive ad filter text box in your AdSense account and click Save Changes. It may take up to 30 minutes for ads linking to these URLs to be filtered from your pages.