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The Unintended Consequences of Google Adsense

google_sm.gifGoogle Adsense is a service of Google that places ads on your web site and pays you for it. It tries to choose the ads to be relevant to the content of your site. This can have interesting consequences, two examples of which I have noticed recently. My online friend jasonk has recently expressed his disfavor regarding Barack Obama and the Dixie Chicks. Now the banner ad on the web site is showing ads for both. Tonight I looked at the ScreenIt! review page for the film Jarhead. ScreenIt! reviews list all of the content of a film that someone might find objectionable (violence, profanity, sex, etc.) so that you can make an informed opinion about whether you want to see the film. The google ads linked to nude screensavers and the like, things that ScreenIt! presumably would not want to promote.. Obviously Google Adsense hasn't learned how to distinguish between whether a site is promoting or panning a certain subject. Or maybe its a better business decision for them to ignore that distinction.

Comments

How do you get Google to put adds up?

Kenny,I think Jason's ads are put there by GoDaddy in exchange for hosting his blog for free.This link tells how you would do it for blogger.Unless your site generates a lot of traffic (GKB, etc.), my guess is that the annoyance of ads isn't worth the small amount of revenue they would generate.

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