...to exclude sites from your content campaign, the Topics and Page Types tools.

The Topics exclusion tool provides you the ability to exclude your ads from pages displaying information on certain types of topics like Death & tragedy and Juvenile, gross & bizarre content.

The Page Types exclusion tool provides you the ability to exclude your ads from certain types of pages like parked pages, error pages, and forums.

If you find these categories limited in scope, you might also be interested in a whole host of other categories available for exclusion.

Locating Additional Categories

You can use category exclusions based on the categories available in Googles Placement Tool.

There are 27 top level categories including Travel, Science, Health & Beauty, and Social Networks. Additionally, there are many more sub categories if these 27 top level categories are too broad.

To find the list of categories provided in the Placement Tool:

Click on Add placements within a site targeted campaign.

View the list of categories used to organize sites for Site Targeting.

Preparing Categories for Exclusion

Use the Placement Tool as described above to identify the categories you want to exclude in your content campaign.

Make sure you note the top level category and any sub level categories leading up to the category youd like to exclude. If you exclude a top level category, any sub level category underneath your choice will also be excluded.

Record your excluded categories using the following syntax:

Level 1 Category>>Level 2 Category>>Level 3 Category

Example: Entertainment>>Music>>Lyrics & Tabs

Place the text category:: before each listing.

Example: category::Entertainment>>Music>>Lyrics & Tabs

Implementing Excluded Categories

When youve identified the categories you would like to exclude, and you have documented these categories as described above, youll need to go back into your content campaign and click on Edit next to site and category exclusion(s).

Paste the list of the categories youd like to exclude in the Add exclusions: field.

Example List:

category::Entertainment>>Music>>Lyrics & Tabs
category::Animals>>Pets
category::Arts & Humanities
category::Automotive>>Auto Parts>>Vehicle Tires

Save all changes and youre done.

Words of Warning

Make sure to pay special attention when excluding anything from an advertising network. Exclusions can be a great way to help you improve relevancy and ROI, but exclusions can also cost you exposure and conversions. As always, think things through and test, test, test.

Hopefully in the future Google will just include these categories in the Site and Category Exclusion section to make this process easier. Until then, happy hacking.

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