I was in this thread, and I saw an ad Considering Abortion? on the bottom. Since it seemed to relate to the episode (pro-life clinics posing as abortion providers) I clicked on it to get the dope straight.
Well, it forwarded me to the page, instead of opening a new window (which I prefer). So I went back to the dope and opened the link in a new window. Then I get this pop-up message:
You appear to be abusing our search engine listing. YOUR ACTIONS ARE BEING LOGGED. Please stop clicking on our search engine listings.
My questions: Is it the message board doing this? Google? The website optionline.org?
I’ve never seen this before. And why would anyone care if I went to a website TWICE?
And why would MY ACTIONS be LOGGED?
Anybody else get this?
Maybe it’s my pregnancy hormones, but it is making me mad.
My guess is that the website is paying per clickthrough, and someone opposed to their message may repeatedly click on their ad to cost them as much money as possible. They may have interpreted your two visits as an attempt at that.
I don’t get it. How can you abuse a search engine? (An ad is one thing, but a search engine is just a mindless tool.) And what did it have to do with abortion clinics? Whose search engine was it? Who’s “logging” your actions?
Note that the link has the argument ‘wcw’ in it, and that the pop-up indicates it’s from auditor.whosclickingwho.com. That website has some code in it that checks where you came from to track who is sending them the most links.
They don’t want people messing up their stats (which is why that message would appear for people clicking the same link twice), but they’re really being pricks about it.
I think they’re an excellent idea, because they raise money for the Dope that we would presumably otherwise be paying. They’re not intrusive like half the ads on every news website/search engine/email provider/etc. that explode all over your screen or raise thousands of popup windows. You can either click on them or ignore them, and you don’t end up getting pissed off and boycotting the advertisers because it takes you an hour to click through all the popups.
In other words, Dewey Finn nailed it. Repeatedly clicking on the ad benefits several entitities:
SDMB gets paid for the click by Google.
Google gets paid for the click by the the website’s publisher.
Those who dislike the ad’s message. The website’s publisher has a budget for it’s advertising set up in its Google campaign. If it gets a high number of clicks, its budget might get exhausted, which will cause the ad to temporarily stop running.
Competitors, not so much in this case, though. Competitors who bid less will see their ads run less frequently. If the higher bidding ad clicks out (see 3) the next-highest bidder will temporarily get the prime space.
If the SDMB becomes a serious source of click fraud, it can get in trouble with Google. There are services that will monitor clicks for click fraud (repeated clicks from the same IP address being the most obvious). Some of them probably also offer a warning such as the one you saw.
If you continue to have a problem with the administration of this board, which it constantly appears that you do, please put your complaints in the correct forum.
Questions about the operation of the board go in this (ATMB) forum.
You can abuse a search engine listing by clicking it repeatedly. See the links above for more details.
Google’s. The listing is a part of Google’s Adwords service. Advertisers pay for clicks on their sponsored listings in the Google search results. They can also choose to have their ads appear on the sites of subscribers (like the SDMB) to the Adsense program. The clicks cost them the same amount (theoretically) no matter whether they come from Gmail, Google search results, a Google associate, or an Adsense member.
