Removing AdSense from my retail site

[Tonearm]

Hi everybody. After a week of testing and optimizing AdSense, I've decided it won't work on my retail site. I realize there could be more clicks to come that are currently being withheld by Google for closer inspection, but I've taken that into account. My reasons are as follows, and I'm not saying that Google is making any mistakes, just that these are the reasons AdSense won't work for me.

- inadequate control over what is presented

The list of sites to be advertised comes from Google, not from me. Filtering sites is helpful but still doesn't allow for sufficient control.

- inadequate control over how it is presented

There are limited options pertaining to the display of the ads and referential text.

- inadequate revenue

Not that much money.

- shopping deterrent/distraction

The ads seem to decrease the number of orders placed.

- requires an offsite request

Making an HTTP request to google.com instead of only local requests slows down the loading of the page.

- uses Javascript

Javascript can cause different types of problems, and is generally not as good as no Javascript.

- opens in same window

Google won't allow an ad's click to open in a new window, which means you lose the visitor *at least* temporarily.

I do subscribe to WebmasterWorld and I really want to thank everyone for their help. I'm not going anywhere, just -1 forum for me.

- Grant

[topr8]

The ads seem to decrease the number of orders placed.

you've hit my reason right there ... visitors to my retail site are hard won, i'm trying to sell to them and i'm not going to give them a route out of my site to one of my competitors even if i do earn a few cents, a sale is worth far more to me.

[Macro]

Do you sell all over the world? If not then block ads to visitors from your country and show everybody else the ads. (Don't ask me how - maybe somebody else can explain that)

[vabtz]

damn thats a great idea Macro

[jenkers]

that is really good idea. One way to do this would be to bring adsense into the page using an include.

i.e. check your visitor's ip address and only call the adsense if the range is outside that of your chosen country and give them a different page if they are in the range.

Not foolproof - but would probably work ok. I'm off to give it a go.

thanks for that :)

[Tonearm]

Holy smokes! Macro, that is a great idea. I could easily do that with a little server side scripting. I will report back.

- Grant

[Macro]

>>I could easily do that with a little server side scripting.

That's a lot cleverer than the idea itself. My technical skills are, er, limited. I'd never be able to do that.

[benevolent001]

I hope the result of this experiment would be an open code...?

[Tonearm]

benevolent -

Absolutely.

[topr8]

its pretty straightforward but what you need is a current db of ip ranges related to countries.

they are readily available but you will have to pay for the info and keep it updated regularily.

[jenkers]

there used to be a free ip/country db on dmoz.org but they appear to have removed it :( anyone know where there is a freebie for testing purposes?

[linear]

ip2nation.com has a freebie optimized for mysql, plus sample php code to use it.

[jenkers]

thanks for that :)

[DMacedo]

You should not present adsense (or any other type of ads) on a commercial website.
Or at least on the relevant (selling) pages of that same website, this means that product info/review/listings is OK, but product add-to-cart page is not OK!

Anyway, I think the idea of showing ads only to other countries is nice. I use ip2country for managing my ads:

[ip-to-country.webhosting.info...]

You can find several sources of how to use the database, I advise using MySQL and setting up a update page for the .sql dump! Google it ;)

~ Dani