Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing

Ok. I really like Google as a company. I think that, in general, they make some really good products and they have capitalized on an entirely new kind of market.

When I first decided I wanted to make a blog, I thought maybe I could cover the hosting fees using Google AdSense. It was pretty non-invasive, offered relevant links for my readers, and I could (somewhat) control the look and feel of the content.

However, there are some things about AdSense that really don't work. Like the fact that you cannot explicitly block a certain kind of ad from showing on your website. Say, for example, something you find incredibly offensive.

The first time this happened, I had written an article about photographing your pet rabbit. When I went back and looked one day, I noticed that the ads were promoting the sale of rabbit's feet and fur. I found this really annoying, so I emailed Google. They told me they could do nothing, so I removed ads from that page.

Now I run a blog that primarily talks about nature and endangered species and such on perlgurl.org. I recently went to look at some of my articles on the endangered grizzly bear and guess what, it's bloody happening again and now I'm really quite pissed off. Guaranteed bear hunting, Grizzly Bear Skins, Grizzly Bear Rugs.

I'm going to have to turn Google AdSense off on my site. I don't trust it anymore not to push products that are completely inappropriate. I love the fact that it runs public service announcements like Red Cross but I cannot handle the fact that it's trying to sell endangered species skins as rugs. I don't care that it's legal with some species because they're really walking a fine line - you can sell a grizzly bear skin, but you can't kill one in the lower 48 unless it's a problem animal.

So I'll just have to pay for my own hosting, I suppose. It's a shame such a great idea falls just short of being usable, some simple categories of allowable ads would likely fix this kind of problem I have to wonder if people just don't read the ads that end up on their sites or if they just ignore them or not care. Well, I care. So there it is.

Posted by sorsha on October 20, 2005 4:15 PM | Permalink