Just to be clear, it’s the advertisement they’d try to have removed. 
We switched advertisers while we were still on vBulletin. I’m not involved in the ad side of things here, but my understanding of it was that Google was ranking us lower in their mysterious algorithm because we were using those bottom-dwelling scum-of-the-earth type advertising brokers. It was one of many things (like the much-hated Sultanstheme) that was done to try and improve our Google ranking.
It had nothing to do with the switch to Discourse.
Actually, that depended on which mod fielded the complaint. Catch the wrong mod and, well, maybe not such a good day to be you. 
That certainly seems like a fair trade! Is that the kind where you get a slide show but each pic is on a different page?
Do you know what the theory was behind that? I’m not seeing how a different theme would improve Google rankings. And wasn’t using Sultana voluntary for posters anyway?
Mobile friendliness, probably.
~Max
Shows how much attention I pay to the ads!
Yeah, exactly. That’s one model. There are some that are just scroll based, too, since the relevant metric is ad-views, not page views. But there are so many ads loading and so much javascript running that a rule of thumb for these things is that it probably makes your phone hot to the touch and the battery drop like a stone.
Thanks again for all the info on ads you shared in this thread. And thanks for dumbing it down so even I can understand most of it. Some very interesting stuff.
Google makes it very clear that it ranks your site lower if you do not meet Google’s criteria for being “mobile friendly”. Sultanstheme, for all of its flaws, met this criteria, so making it the default theme allowed Google to classify us as a mobile friendly site.
The fact that Sultanstheme was horrible and most people switched away from it doesn’t matter. The regular SDMB theme was not considered mobile friendly by Google and therefore could not be the default theme for the site or we would rank lower.
Some people actually liked Sultanstheme. FWIW, I wasn’t one of them.
Of course, I remember that now. 
I was trying to come up with a reason Google would care about which theme a message board used. I’m guessing that doesn’t come up for them much lately. I can’t remember the last time I saw a site that wasn’t mobile friendly. Thanks.
I did because it was the only theme that fit on my page without me having to turn the phone sideways or pinch and zoom constantly.
But it still sucked, and I hated that I needed it. It was like the only umbrella available in a rainstorm, except the umbrella is chartreuse and fuschia with a picture of Borat in dirty boxers, the handle feels slimy and pokes your palm with weirdly-placed spikes, and it all smells like rotten fish. It’s better than the alternative but still only as a last resort.
Discourse has always displayed just fine on my phone without any adjustments so yay. It’s the plain old black umbrella.
Are you sure you live the Seattle area? That sounds much worse than going without an umbrella.
I did just get back from a trip to Mexico…