First off, I have to say that this is not another rant on the ads. I see them so much in regular surfing that I didn’t even notice they were there until all the threads popped up in the BBQ Pit. Please keep this from turning into another one.
What content in the SDMB is causing ads for mailing lists (and Katrina releif) to show up? I can’t for the life of me think of any.
My theory is that the content on the boards is so bizarre and unrelated that the algorithims Google uses gave up and selected something at random.
I have not seen any documentation, yet, but the impression that I get from some of the background techie/staff discussions seems to indicate that Google takes a while to evaluate a site to determine which algorithms to use. It is our hope that relevant ad sites will begin showing up in the near future, but the current “lists” ads (as well as the Red Cross and disaster ads), are the default ads that Google throws out until their analysis routine has completed its cycle.
I notice that in a Cafe Society thread on CS Lewis, the ad is for a collected edition of CS Lewis … it’s probably easier for the Googlebots to work on things like familiar names, than it is to decide what to offer for more abstract conversations.
I’m actually kinda looking forward to them starting to work. It’s been a minor fascination of mine since they were added to see what keywords would create various associations. Sorta a little game/experiment on the Google A.I.
The C.S Lewis one is a bit of a no-brainer, but some of the really random stuff here, and some of the TMIey stuff could generate some funny or interesting ad links.
Honestly I’m expecting a new thread game to come about as a result, similar to the consecutive thread title game.
Might this be a problem the Google ad program has with database-driven sites? I mean, the thread, as such, doesn’t exist until all the posts are pulled from the database, so maybe the Adsense program is just reading the base template or something?
(FWIW, I doubt it’s something this basic, but I have wondered how Adsense deals with database-driven sites, so I thought I’d ask.)
Will people please stop posting about the ads for mailing lists? If mailing list ads are the Google default until it has accumulated enough data, continuing to talk about mailing lists will never get us ads that are more apropos. I for one have no interest in obtaining mailing lists, do not wish to be on any mailing lists, can only hope to be taken off all the mailing lists I’m already on.
My WAG is that Google has various tiers of advertising available for advertisers to purchase. The “default while we analyze a new site” may be a tier which appeals to retail and mailing list intelligence providers because so few sites actually talk about those topics that it won’t come up at all otherwise. So they get their names out there by default during an analysis period as a new site starts running Google ads AND whenever someone is actually talking about it. The “default while we analyze a new site for custom targeted ads” may be a package an advertiser can purchase.
You’ve got it all wrong.
Google doesn’t decide what we want to see, but what advertisers want us to see.
The guys who sell mailing lists think many of us are interested in selling things via the internet.
This is because the most active message boards are sales related, such as the auction and financial sites.
And many of the posters at those sites have something to sell or some service to promote.
So the list sellers want us. They want all people who post online because they want that subset who post to sell online.
Speaking of mailing lists, is there a wall of some sort between Google and members email addresses? Does the contract with Google allow them to sell information found during their searches? Will this be the end of all public email addresses on the Dope?
Actually, I’ve been rather amused by this. You see, I work for a bulk mailer and we actually do buy mailing lists. I knew there were advantages to being part of the clique!
One thing to keep in mind. There is a large intersection between companies that sell USMail lists online and people that sell email lists. A buyer should expect to hear “Oh, by the way, we also happen to have some email lists with those same demos, interested in a discount package?”
So it’s really quite sad to see the SDMB indirectly helping the business model of spammers.
Google’s old motto: “Do no evil.” has been ignored for several years now.
Apparently, Google establishes some defaults, based on their own criteria, that triggers the ads prior to the indexed ads kicking in. The little Google bots have not combed through the entire SDMB, yet, and their initial “default” sites were based on a human(?) review of www.straightdope.com rather than boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/. They have given Jerry the tech god some tools to help correct that issue and we hope to have some more relevant ads in place in the next day or so.
The spiders and bots should be crawling over posts, not user info, so there should be no capture by Googleof user addresses. (Heck, for most of you, even I cannot see e-mail addresses without putting on my Mod cape and saying the special magic Mod Word.)
