Ditched AdSense

To those readers who know (and/or care) about Google AdSense, I have just taken it off this blog site altogether. And it will stay off until some drastic changes occur at Google.

Specifically, at least to my mind at the moment, that would involve Google either divesting itself (whether voluntarily or like AT&T had to eons ago) and in the process coming to appreciate smaller clients, or it just organically takes a sudden genuine interest in satisfying the needs of small niche bloggers.

I'm not holding my breath for either.

I don't mean to be ungrateful. After all, Google provides free search, AdSense, and hosting for this blog (and several kajillion others). And I am truly grateful to have the choice to use AdSense or not. Nor would I try to discourage anyone else from using it.

Unless, of course, you aren't crazy about having sleazy ads cluttering up your blog, and/or ads for sites that claim to sell things you write about on your blog but that you find out after visiting the advertiser's site that they don't really sell it.

That last scenario is kinda what did me in, truth be told. A while ago I moved AdSense to the bottom of the page because I just didn't want to see all those sleazy ads of Ukrainian women for sale. It's quite humiliating, actually, even tho I'm not, thankfully, one of those being sold. (And as those in the know can tell you, precious few of them get to keep the money.)

So anyway, I moved the ads to bottom where they'd be more or less out of site, and thought I'd give it some time. Maybe Google would come up with a better filtering process soon. Maybe Google would become more selective as to who it allows to buy ads (and what kind it allows). Maybe a bunch of reputable and respectable Ukrainian businesses would jump on the AdWords bandwagon. I mean, who knows, right?

Alas. The last ad that appeared on this blog was one for a shopping site. It said it offered cabbage rolls. Of course, having just posted a recipe for cabbage rolls, this came as no great surprise. Still, I was quite intrigued, as the site didn't have a Ukrainian or even a European-sounding name, nor a foodie name even.

So I noted the URL and went to the site in a new tab (it's a mortal sin to click on a Google ad on your site). Much to my surprise, there was not even a food category at this shopping site. WTF??

Now, to my feeble mind, that borders on phishing. And I really don't appreciate bogus ads on my site ... any more than I do sleazy ones. Unfortunately, with the notable exception of Yevshan (bless Bohdan's heart), about the only ads Google sends to blogs with any kind of a Ukrainian theme are bogus and sleazy ones.

So I give up. There are just too many ads that I vehemently do not want on my blog, and I just can't spend the time to filter them all out. So I'm going to sacrifice my AdSense revenue ($4.81 so far) until Google cleans up their advertiser criteria, and/or makes it easier for bloggers to keep bogus and/or sleazy ads off their blogs if they so wish.

In the meantime, dear Readers, unless I have overlooked some seriously compelling, practical reason to reinstate Adsense, you and I will just have to do without Google ads cluttering up this blog. :-)