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After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

blog.ericgoldman.org

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Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#41

Post by glaslong »

beloch wrote: post #19

"I never saw most of the offending ads because of my adblocker, so I didn’t notice the changes or experience any irritation personally. " -------- If you run a website that serves ads, whitelist it in your adblocker so you can see what your own damned site looks like to people who are still rawdogging the world wide web.

This is why I greatly prefer podcasts where the hosts read the ads. If you're going to take ad money, you better be willing to sell it with your own voice. All else is a descent into scam ad hell.

Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#42

Post by shermantanktop »

sanswork wrote: post #30
breput wrote: post #13

Several years ago, I ran a niche hobbyist website and incorporated Adsense (because why not?!?). The site featured a fuzzy search function since it referenced tens of thousands of named parts. The search result page would echo the (sanitized) search term followed by the matching results - along with recent search terms in the right sidebar. One day, some spambot hit the site and started searching for terms like "meso…

It's been like 10 years since I worked in the space but I'm pretty sure showing adsense on search results like that has been against the tos for a very long time unless you get a specific search feed(which is basically impossible these days and even 15 years ago was limited to companies like ask.com)

Sounds like a footgun waiting to go off? Unless Adsense is pretty explicit about this, beyond some language buried in a TOS.

Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#43

Post by echelon »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #14
beej71 wrote: post #7

I had some sites that used it years ago ca. 2006. $500/mo at peak. Then one month it suddenly halved for no apparent reason. And it kept dropping. After a while or just wasn't with the ugliness. And I learned to never count on Google. Since then I've become anti-ad and haven't had any for years. I am sorry for my embarrassing lapse in judgment. :)

This is pointing out something that seems to be deeply human, it's not intended as a personal dig, because I think I'd be in the same boat: It's interesting, not unexpected and not un-understandable, that your opinion started changing as the dollar value decreased. I greatly dislike what this says about the effect of money on the human psyche. It's as old as time, but this hack hasn't been patched and I don't think i…

> I forgive you for your lapse in judgement.

I "don't forgive you" for considering this a lapse in judgment, because you still have some things to learn. (I'm kidding of course. All of this framing is rather silly.)

beej was doing what was best for them at the time. There were no victims. beej sold a service to an enterprise until it didn't make sense anymore.

Moralizing something that happened 20 years ago is wild. It literally does not matter. beej didn't kill anyone, didn't ruin their self esteem, didn't steal. This is not "soul selling".

Money isn't evil. Working for money and selling for money are not evil. You're going to have to do a whole lot more to meet that threshold for most people.

We should stop casting stones at people unless they're really assholes. This is nothing.

Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#45

Post by technion »

drnick1 wrote: post #8

Aren't most people using ad blockers these days, making the revenue that one can generate with ads trivial unless traffic is enormous?

My experience deploying at blockers in the enterprise is the average non tech user feels the Internet is "broken" when it's not covered in ads and will tell helpdesk it needs to be fixed.

Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#46

Post by akoboldfrying »

greyface- wrote: post #20
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #5

I do find it interesting that the author specifies they use an ad blocker whilst also wanting to view the industry 'from the inside'. I'm not sure there isn't a level of hypocrisy there, albeit understandable. As staunchly anti-advertising, I wouldn't include advertising on anything I publish personally, but then I also don't publish anything, so I have no pressure to change my stance. I think I've convinced myself t…

There's no contradiction; ad blocker usage is common within the industry.

There certainly is a contradiction, but it's so deeply ingrained that using ad blockers is OK that people can't see it even when it's right in front of their faces.

If everyone used 100% effective ad blockers, Alphabet (minus GCP) and Meta would not exist, and nor would the very large number of free-as-in-beer services that make up a large part of what makes the internet useful to people.

Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#47

Post by Sevii »

shermantanktop wrote: post #42
sanswork wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been like 10 years since I worked in the space but I'm pretty sure showing adsense on search results like that has been against the tos for a very long time unless you get a specific search feed(which is basically impossible these days and even 15 years ago was limited to companies like ask.com)

Sounds like a footgun waiting to go off? Unless Adsense is pretty explicit about this, beyond some language buried in a TOS.

Adsense is designed to have as many footguns as possible.

Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#48

Post by BLKNSLVR »

echelon wrote: post #43
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pointing out something that seems to be deeply human, it's not intended as a personal dig, because I think I'd be in the same boat: It's interesting, not unexpected and not un-understandable, that your opinion started changing as the dollar value decreased. I greatly dislike what this says about the effect of money on the human psyche. It's as old as time, but this hack hasn't been patched and I don't think i…

> I forgive you for your lapse in judgement. I "don't forgive you" for considering this a lapse in judgment, because you still have some things to learn. (I'm kidding of course. All of this framing is rather silly.) beej was doing what was best for them at the time. There were no victims. beej sold a service to an enterprise until it didn't make sense anymore. Moralizing something that happened 20 years ago is wild.…

'twas purely for the lolz in reply to parent's:

> I am sorry for my embarrassing lapse in judgment. :)

But I do agree with the point you're making.

Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#49

Post by cabaalis »

It seems with AI models this space is ripe for on-domain ad sales as a SaaS. Just pay an invoice to "advertise here" Have an AI make sure the links adhere to content policies. Don't track visitors or charge per click. Just pay a fee and get the banner.

Re: After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

#50

Post by sanswork »

shermantanktop wrote: post #42
sanswork wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been like 10 years since I worked in the space but I'm pretty sure showing adsense on search results like that has been against the tos for a very long time unless you get a specific search feed(which is basically impossible these days and even 15 years ago was limited to companies like ask.com)

Sounds like a footgun waiting to go off? Unless Adsense is pretty explicit about this, beyond some language buried in a TOS.

You have to agree to have read the policies when signing up and they've always been pretty clear about placement rules. Not placing ads on non-content pages is a pretty basic rule and would clearly apply to this since a search result is non-content.

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182?hl=en#zippy=...

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