Sunday, April 11, 2004

In Which I Attempt to Fool the Adbots

I must say that I am quite satisfied with how my little weblog experiment is going. Friends and family have responded with flattering words. Then again, they know I don't take too well to criticism. In an effort to expand my audience, I've posted this address on my orkut profile and have joined blogsnob, in the hopes that more people might peruse the offerings.

My one pang of sorrow comes from the BlogSpot adbots. I love that BlogSpot hosts my weblog for free. I can even accept that they get run ads on it in return. I just wish I had a bit more control of which ads get shown. (I have a similar feeling about some of the weblogs that randomly get promoted on my site with BlogSnob.)

I never paid much attention to the ads on my site until I wrote the letter to Sen. Kerry. Shortly afterwards, I noticed all of these ads for the RNC. Anyone who read the letter or knows me at all knows that while I promote lively political debate I'm not big on the Republican party. I don't really want my weblog to inadvertently promote it. Could all my rantings about Bush's "leadership" have led to RNC ads? I've done a little research, and apparently they did.

So now I'm left wondering how many times I have to say ebay for ads about ebay to appear in the ads at the top of my weblog. Maybe if I talk about my boyfriend's items for sale on ebay I will have the word ebay in this entry enough times for the ebay ads to show up. But I honestly have little interest in discussing ebay auctions at this time.

Maybe I should talk about some of BlogSpot's competitors in the free weblog game. I don't know if they'd accept ads from sites like LiveJournal. I suspect they probably don't advertise competitors too much.

My only conclusion is that almost all of the ads look a bit suspect. While it probably goes against my user agreement, I advise you to NOT click on the ads. Laugh at them. That's what I do.

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