Odd Ads on Hubs - ???

1. 81

   Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years ago

   Is anyone else noticing really odd AdSense ads on some hubs?  I have a few hubs about HIV, and one has an ad with a mug shot of someone who's been arrested.  It's an ad for getting their records cleared up, or something.  Another hub had an equally unrelated ad, and I am now wondering if that can be causing some traffic drops. 
   
   Both of the ones I mentioned are exclusives, and some of those titles are odd, so I'm considering checking those (all my exclusives titles) in case they are off-base enough to have unrelated ads inserted.  I don't know if this would affect traffic, but we have heard it can impact rankings.  Even though we aren't the ones who select the Google ads.

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   1. 83

      Simone Smithposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Ads aren't just contextually matched to pages; sometimes they're responding to cookies you have based on where you've been. I, for example, see TONS of diamond and jewelry ads because I like to blow off steam by looking at shiny things online.
      
      So it might be that you've visited someplace online that has triggered something to make you a target for those odd ads.

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2. 90

   Theophanesposted 11 years ago

   I write about a lot of educational and off-beat topics that don't lend themselves to consumerism and most of those have some really weird ads. I think only one of my articles, about cages, actually had an appropriate ad... for a cage. I think it's a fairly common issue.

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3. 98

   SmartAndFunposted 11 years ago

   Uh ohhhh, Marcy....
   
   

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   1. 81

      Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Dang.  My life of crime finally caught up to me.  I'd better start looking at diamonds, like Simone prefers.

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4. 71

   WriteAngledposted 11 years ago

   Is there some way to block being followed round like this?
   
   I am still being persecuted by items I researched and either bought or decided not to buy a year ago! It is highly irritating to have what is now totally irrelevant material thrust in my face all the time!

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   1. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Check your privacy settings in your Google account and turn off tracking.

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      1. 81

         Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I just checked mine the other day, and when you read the fine print, Google now tells you that search engines pretty much ignore that now.  We can run, but not hide.

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      tamronposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes here is the link http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/a … wer=142293

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5. 61

   Hollie Thomasposted 11 years ago

   WA, I was still seeing ads for holidays in Kefalonia four months after my return. Adsense are very, very slow on the uptake!

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6. 60

   Kaffeeschnuefflerposted 11 years ago

   Terrible - negative sense - translation! Better leave it. It hurts my language feelings :-((

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7. 60

   theweaksendposted 11 years ago

   If you have a Google account(or are logged into Gmail at all) then sometimes you will see ads based on your recent searches. If you log out of your Google account you will see a considerably lower amount of these "personalized" ads. You will still see some, but those you can only get rid of by clearing your browser cookies on a regular basis, or by blocking them completely. I agree, sometimes Google is awful at deciding what kinds of ads you should be seeing but what they're doing is harmless and unless the ads are disturbing you I wouldn't bother with it. Your readers aren't seeing the same ads that you are anyway.

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8. 61

   Rebecca Furtadoposted 11 years ago

   Surprised that a hub about an STD got to display ads at all. I did one on comprehensive sex education and it got the ad ban. It is so stupid. There is nothing unseemly about talking about sex education.

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   1. 81

      Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I agree, Rebecca.  I think those filters are far more literal than we need.  I used to manage a City-owned HIV clinic, and we had (as, I assume, most clinics dealing with STDs do) containers of condoms for people to take.  The person who did our purchasing continually got frustrated because the City's Internet filters wouldn't let her go to the websites where she could place bulk orders for new supplies.

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   2. 90

      Theophanesposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I have had a number of articles with the same problem... They changed what they allow. Now it says you can not use actual medical terms for any reproductive parts and I even had one article ad banned because I titled it "battle of the sexes" - which is going beyond stupid if you ask me. I had to retitle it. But yeah... Between this and banning for petty cursing in my satirical articles I have been having a hell of a time here. It didn't used to be like this. There is nothing "bad" about what I am writing either - the reproductive lives of animals, the controversy over transvaginal probing, how suicide cults draw people in (had to take that one down entirely.) etc. Very disappointed in HubPages, it is slipping down a very slippery slope.

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      1. 60

         Becca's Blogposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Guess I won't write about reproductive cancers. GEEZ, Think they need to have human editor decide in Hub violate their content standard, not just a filter.

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         1. 90

            Theophanesposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            They'll usually allow for a Hub to be published and possibly even listed if it is educational but they disallow ads on ones that mention reproductive parts or other banned words. I was unable to edit out certain words in two of my articles Nature's Most Extreme Dads, and one on women's rights, so they are up now for the public to read for free. That being said I am not editing any of my old articles anymore because what used to be OK isn't anymore and they keep catching me for it... and it's seriously annoying me. There's only so many clever euphemisms I can use before I start tweaking.

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      2. 86

         Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Not really, it's just being ultra-careful.  One of HubPages's competitors, Wizzley, lost their Adsense for several weeks recently - and all because one member uploaded some graphic images.   
         
         If HubPages lost their Adsense, no one would be able to show ads here (it would halt the HP Ads program too) and that would be the end of the site.  In their shoes, wouldn't you be ultra-careful, too?

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         1. 60

            Becca's Blogposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thing is I wanted to do a series of hubs from the prescpective of someone who have worked in a Women's clinic . I will not be able too. sigh.. too bad . I will just blog it somewhere else. I hate Yahoo Voices because the publishing platform is lame. I have a lot of stuff there , Too bad we are not allowed to move stuff either. This is a much better platform for most of itl.

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   3. 84

      jenb0128posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Another example of the silly ad blocks - I started to write a hub about the science of why birds poop so much, and there was an ad block warning on it. I never would have thought that bird poop was a taboo subject!

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9. 0

   healthylife2posted 11 years ago

   I did have the same unrelated ads about clearing arrest records. I thought that maybe I was seeing that ad because I was looking up a case about a former trainer at my gym that got arrested for "inappropriate actions". I thought different people see different ads but not really sure how that works.

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10. 69

    brakel2posted 11 years ago

    When I was looking up vitamins, ads followed me everywhere, especially on HubPages.. I think it is over. as I turned off Google history.

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11. 65

    A K Turnerposted 11 years ago

    Basically whenever you go to a website you leave a footprint. Google then uses this footprint to advertise stuff to you. I have adverts from websites I have actually been on, for products I have just been searching for. It will change from person to person, but it is basically targeted advertising. If you clear your browsing history the adverts will be less targeted too.

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