How Google ads work on NaturalNews (and how you can help us ban bad ads)

Monday, October 25, 2010 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Google, Adsense, health news

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(NaturalNews) Many readers have written us to ask why they sometimes see a Google ad appearing on our site for something we oppose such as a pharmaceutical or junk food product. On the left of each article, we publish a 300 x 250 Google Adsense ad. Google uses a keyword detection algorithm to determine which ads appear to be the most relevant to the article page, but this algorithm isn't able to take into account whether we are writing in favor of something or against it.

As a result, when we write about antidepressant drugs, for example, ads may appear that are promoting antidepressant drugs. This is frustrating to us as well as our readers, because we do not wish to promote products or services that are not aligned with our core beliefs.

We are able, by the way, to ban these ads one at a time by using Google's "competitive ad filter." I've personally been overseeing our ad ban efforts, and we've actually banned well over a hundred ads so far, including ads from the Corn Refiners Association that attempted to spew HFCS propaganda.

We've also banned sites that promotes breast cancer drugs and junk food items. But we're not able to catch them all.

You can help us ban inappropriate ads by alerting us when you see an ad that doesn't belong on NaturalNews. To do so, simply use our feedback form (www.naturalnews.com/feedback.html) and tell us the URL (web address) that the offending ad is promoting or leading to. Please also include a quick description of why you think the ad doesn't belong, such as, "It promotes junk food" etc.

We can then take your information and ban that offending ad, thereby creating a cleaner website for everybody.

Google's Adsense system is very sophisticated in determining which ads are most relevant to which pages, and for the most part it works very well. With your help identifying inappropriate ads, we can clean up our site even further and prevent misaligned companies from using our website to promote harmful products.

Thank you for your help!