Insensible Ads by Google AdSense
-
OK here is my question – why did WordPress’s so-called “discreet and effective” Google AdSense [http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/x] put a big honking “Rockford Coupons” ad in my post about noms en ligne [http://sitearm.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/wordpress-ads-by-google-screenshot.jpg]?
In my other online presences, Google ads at least RELATE to the topic of the email, or search words.
WordPress, can’t you adjust the tuning or something? Google is your competitor for blogging services – maybe they are trying to sabotage you? As evidence, my friends and I have noticed that the weird ads disappear on refresh, such that you have to take a screen shot first time to catch them in the act. The minute you try to send the link “as is” to complain, the ads are gone, poof!
Insensible Ads by Google AdSense
Ads by Google, Ads, Google, AdSenseThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
-
heh heh I’m not falling for tHAt on – “sacred path” indeed – I’m interested in other member’s thoughts on this topic. I’m fine with the staff.
-
I have upgraded my main site to no ads – I have also seen some sites with a disclaimer that the ads are not placed by the blog owner – my personal conspiracy theory is that the real dumb annoying part of the ads is to encourage people to upgrade to the no ads thing – but you could be also right about the annoyance factor from a competitor –
-
Yep, you don’t want to “fall for” the one route that’s most likely to result in actual change.
If you want to know what other WP.com bloggers think, use the search box. They have not been shy.
-
What does it matter what others users think? They don’t make the decisions. This isn’t a democracy and never has been. It isn’t up to them whether ads are placed on their blogs or not. WordPress decides what is going to happen and what is not. They might consider what bloggers think, but in the end it is their decision.
As Raincoaster says, this has literally been discussed to death in the past since mid 2006 with no change, and there have even been mobs with pitchforks and torches form in the forums with no change.
You don’t want ads, then get the no-ads upgrade.
Simple.
-
@sitearm
Both raincoaster and TSp have told it like it is. There is not democracy here – lol :D
I recommend that you consider hiring a web host and getting a free software install from wordpress.ORG. Then you can make all your own decisions because you will have total control over your template, blog and all advertising. http://support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/ -
@All; Thanks for your suggestions where they were helpful, and thanks but no thanks for your condescending comments, where they were condescending.
For those that car, before I posted this question to the so-called “helpful” forums, I DID indeed conduct a forum search on “AdSense” and did not find any “discussions to death.” Instead I found two posts over two years old, with zero helpful replies.
More to the point, in the four years I’ve blogged using WordPress I’ve seen ONE ad on my blog, the one I attached as a screen shot. I use WordPress because it is better than Blogger. If it gets to the point I have to pay to avoid ads, I will be happy to do so.
I do not care if WordPress is not a democracy. However, in my experience, WordPress being an ad spammer is not old news, it is NEW news. Hence my blog post.
Cheers!
-
I DID indeed conduct a forum search on “AdSense” and did not find any “discussions to death.” Instead I found two posts over two years old, with zero helpful replies.
A suggestion about a more efficient way to search for “AdSense” on wordpress.com
(or to search for any other term):
Paste this into the Google search box:
site:forums.wordpress.com adsenseAs for this ‘issue’, you have received an authoritative answer from thesacredpath:
heh heh I’m not falling for tHAt on – “sacred path” indeed – I’m interested in other member’s thoughts on this topic. I’m fine with the staff.
It’s unclear what else you are looking for.
Please keep in mind that most of us who ask and answer questions here are your peers, fellow bloggers who volunteer to help–courtesy and mutual respect goes a long way to make communication useful.
-
@1tess – Thank you for your note. Here are replies to your question and comments;
1. What I was ** really ** looking for was why WordPress AdSense put an ad for something called “Rockford Coupons” on a blog post about the modern and historic use of pseudonyms. I have not found any coupons for pseudonyms in Rockford – has anyone else?
a) So – this AdSense ad made no sense whatsoever. Yet, when Google puts ads in my emails sent referring, for example, to Texas, it puts ads in about, for example, “Visit Wonderful Texas.” That made sense!
b) So the WordPress Google AdSense implementation seemed to me to be “off”. Hence my question AND meant-to-be-humorous (sorry!) remark about maybe Google, a known competitor for blogging to WordPress, was sabotaging WordPress.
c) And if WordPress is serious about using AdSense to increase WordPress revenues, then I would assume WordPress wants its installation of AdSense to be working as well as the installations do, for example, in Gmail and Google Search (which is very well indeed).
2. I see that your title says “Moderator” so I assume you have some official capacity to give what you called “authoritative” answers. Is that right?
a) However, the title of TheSacredPath was, like mine, “Member.” I found his first reply, “to contact staff directly,” useless. I assumed he was either clueless (like me) or perhaps someone who had not read my note but simply pasted in “contact the staff,” acting like a form of robot administrator.
b) The reply telling me that WordPress Google Ads were all old news I found as simply officious. It asserted there were posts all about this issue – but provided no links.
c) Your own response, while appropriately chiding me to be polite and appreciative, also did not speak to my question.
4. I will continue to occasionally post questions in the WordPress forum. But there are some issues here.
a) WordPress Help explicitly suggests ** using ** WordPress FAQs and User Forums. So WordPress is counting on us to be of help keeping WordPress a front contender in social media tools – yes?
b) My suggestion for more helpful replies would be to ** avoid ** telling people to “contact staff directly.” Also avoid telling this has already been discussed and leaving it at that.
c) Instead, either reply with a direct link to an answer, or say nothing and ignore them.
d) Why? First, it seems to be clear that WordPress does NOT want staff to be contacted by tens of thousands of users directly. Instead, use the FAQs and User Forums – or, of course, buy a premium account with support-for-pay included. Second, if, as a volunteer moderator/mentor/helper on the WordPress User Forums, you really DO think a new question IS worth bringing to the attention of staff, you might better directly forward it yourself to a staff member whom you know and who knows you as someone experienced and worth listening to.
5. I hope this is making sense, Like you and other WordPress users and volunteer helpers, I have a lot invested in social media tools as key enablers and I prefer WordPress to the blogging alternatives. When a tough question or issue comes up, I hope to find WordPress able at providing quick help. Or at least quicker than Gmail or Facebook or MySpace seem to be. One of them is going to get it right, and it might as well be WordPress.
Cheers!
Site -
@sitearm, staff are the only ones that can address this issue of inappropriate ads on a post. Moderators here are just bloggers that have a few forum related super powers such as the ability to close threads and delete spam and such or block the occasional hot head or whatever. They aren’t a part of staff. They just voluntarily moderate the forums for staff.
As far as staff not wanting people to contact them, this is exactly the sort of thing that they want people to contact them with simple because none of the volunteers here, nor the volunteer moderators have any knowledge of how all of that is set up. If there are adjustments that need to be made to their ad implementation, then staff are going to want to know about issues like this, and the best way to do that is to contact support using the support contact form so that it is logged into their ticket system.
-
To answer your original question, the reason you got Rockford ads is probably because they were geo-targeted to the location of your IP address.
Because we don’t show ads on every page here, sometimes when you see one you might be the first person in the world do to so, so Google hasn’t spidered the page to find out what it’s about and target relevant ads yet, so they’ll often show something more generic like the Rockford one you took a snip of. Next time they serve an ad on that page, it’ll probably be contextual to the content of the page rather than demographically targeted at the viewer.
I don’t think Google is trying to sabotage us, that’d be against “do no evil.” :)
The good news, relatively, is that Google does a pretty good job of quality control and the ad you took a screenshot of is for Groupon, of course a very well-known internet business, so it’s not serving anything sketchy there. The ad goes away when you reload because our ad engine tries to serve as few ads as possible, including trying to not show any to your regular visitors.
As a few folks have mentioned already, you can completely eliminate ads from your site with the no-ads upgrade which is a steal at $30/year.
Merry Christmas!
- The topic ‘Insensible Ads by Google AdSense’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 