Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My site is now blacklisted in some of our country school advisory boards because there is sex on my site! Google please, I don't want sex advertisement from a search box.
Maybe someone in here knows how to deal with this?
@Hobbs,
I did mostly #2 from your list. A clear statement won't help as long as the offensive content is still there. The user doesn't care about statements they just want the site to be child friendly.
Although I must say most of the advertisements *are* child friendly and Google is getting better and better at providing appropriate ads this one seems to be problem.
I know it won't help, but you better contact Google and let them know about your experince. Few days back I wrote them about Youtube speed problem and they resolved the issue with CDN. Later I also got email from their support department.
Hope this helps!
Some would argue it is not appropriate to advertise to children. Studies have shown that children can be influenced by as little as one commercial advertisement to favor and desire a specific product. Most importantly, children cannot discern between truth and commercial exagerration. For instance, they believe as truth when told something is a "bargain". The whole scenario of advertising to children begins to resemble a scene out of Disney's Pinocchio where the puppet is seduced and swept away to an unfortunate fate.
The other issue raised is about whether AdSense is useful on a children's site. For the publisher there is the concern of whether it's a commercially viable activity or a waste of money to advertise on a site where the main demographic is likely not to have a credit card or make a purchase. Because children like to explore, it's possible that a significant amount of clicks may result from children's curiosity than an engagement with the advertised product.
On the publisher side the OP raises the issue of not being able to protect children from exposure to inappropriate advertising.
[edited by: martinibuster at 5:41 pm (utc) on June 8, 2008]
whether it's a waste of money to even advertise on a site where the main demographic is likely not to have a credit card or make a purchase
The moderator is hijacking the thread, but I'll bite:
Yes on the effectiveness of advertising to non credit card carrying demographics. Specifically children are a major buying power already realized and targeted by all big brands: Sports, Toys, Sweets, School gear ...
As for appropriateness, as a parent I'd rather my child not get exposed to contextually targeted ads open to the vermin we see on our sites, but I would be ok if they are direct advertisers vetted by the owner of a trusted and known children's site.
Maybe someone in here knows how to deal with this?
Hobbs, the answer can often be found by considering all sides of an issue. The "this" referred to by the OP must be defined. These points are critical and central to the discussion as the OP has to consider them in deciding what their next move is. The OP has a responsibility to advertisers, the children who visit the site, and those who protect the children who visit his site.
That responsibility has a direct bearing on the question of AdSense on a children's site. The issues I pointed out are central to the issue of the OP's lack of control over the ads. If they cannot control the ads shown to children, what is the next best move?
As for the appropriateness of advertising in general or AdSense to children, please see my reply to the issues you raised above.
That particular issue has an answer in at least three components, The Children visiting the site, the Advertisers placing ads on the site, the School Boards objecting to the ads. AdSense is setting up a situation in this case that is bad for advertisers, bad for children and bad for the school boards. And ultimately this adds up to a negative situation for the OP.
If the OP cannot control the variables to make any of those constituents happy, what is the decision the OP needs to make? Walk away from the school board's approval? Or walk away from AdSense on that site?
This is an opportunity for a 'for children' search engine if Google does not not address it seriously, I believe that there is lots of money in that business but have no data to collaborate that.
I agree with you and it could even go one step further a child / family friendly PPC / CPM solution .
There are a great deal of education sites who do not or wish they did not have to run contextual adsense or Google Search but there are few current alternatives.
One of the problems with adsense are adds like visit Thailand for ? or find escorts etc that slip through all to often even when family friendly is turned on.
Most / education childrens sites attract parents / teachers who may be peeking over their shoulders or just for research to help kids with homework so there is a market ( not sure how big or lucrative )
steve
It's just that one word entered in the search box (that otherwise performs pretty well) that is giving problems. People looking at the site don't know/care it's Google throwing the sex related ads in.
"this" (in the opening post) means I want to know a solution to stop Google serving sex related ads as they shouldn't be there anyway.
[edited by: Bddmed at 7:07 pm (utc) on June 8, 2008]
but image ads don't perform very well...
but if it's mainly kids that are using your site then maybe the opposite will be true, and they'll perform better. kids seem to like pictures more than text.
Needless to say, our site was removed as a resource on numerous school and childrens' organization sites, because of this one ad.
An inquiry to Google generated a response that this ad was indeed inappropriate and should not have shown up on our site, and that the advertiser was under review for TOS violations.
My question has always been: if G won't let webmasters place AdSense on 'adult' sites, then why does G allow 'mature-themed' ads into their network to be placed on publishers' sites? Seems kinda inconsistent, to me.
Even if they don't pre-screen ads, one would think that the oft-vaunted Ph.Ds at the Plex could easily use keyword matching (now don't tell me that's too hard for Google!) to flag ads that have mature content (or link to mature sites), so that these ads never show on an inappropriate site....
2.) Add only Your site and some good sites like Wikipedia to Your custom search box
Wikipedia a good site? That's subjective. And if we're talking about a site used for educational purposes, it's even more in doubt - [insidehighered.com...]
While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it, the history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand.
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Frankly, if being child friendly was that important, I'd remove custom search from my site and find something else.
I agree and I think this goes beyond concerns about a site that children use. If I put AdSense ads on my site about widgets, I'm basically depending on Google to deliver ads that would be interesting to my visitors. I'd rather Google not deliver inappropriate ads and I certainly don't want Google to deliver ads that my site visitors would consider offensive, obscene, etc.
However, when I add a search feature to my site, I'm taking another step and surrending a lot of control to my visitors.
The 35 year old businessman who is at my site researching widgets might decide to view some porn and do a search from my site. Is it reasonable for Google to discern the age of my visitor and appropriateness of ads in that situation? Unless less every ad is manually reviewed and rated somehow, I don't know how that would be possible.
Sometimes AdSense just isn't appropriate for a site. Putting a search feature on a site where you know children visit might be one of those situations.
FarmBoy
