Google Ad-words Poetry Project

hecticjames writes "Cute idea - buying google adwords to place poetry. The site also includes google's response." The page is a really interesting look into Google's text ad service, and has a lot of interesting statistics about the relative value of art and porn. It's really worth a read.

Comments

Summary / Not Censorship / Google Rules

[tswinzig]

The main rules of this new world are not ethic rules. As you can read in the emails I received, my happening has been censored by Google not for moral reasons but for economic ones.

Google provides their adword service so that related topics can be displayed next to real live search results. Making sure the ads returned are related to the search performed makes sense for google, its users, and its adword advertisers.

This guy wants to force unrelated poetry into your view instead. As a result, no one was clicking on his adword because it wasn't related to their search, and google's automatic ranking system lowered his ads due to the very low click-through rate. The guy could keep his ads on google, they just would very rarely be displayed due to their not being related to the searches.

A self-correcting system that makes sense.

Google rules.

I don't agree with the reasons why I was censored. I believe that the censorship rules of Google are not in accordance with the power and the importance of the tool they have created.

But it's NOT censorship! (Even ignoring for a moment that 'censorship' is really only when THE GOVERNMENT prevents you from saying something, not a PRIVATE COMPANY!)

Such a tool should be used more freely and should be self-regulated.

How the fuck could google be "self-regulated," since mySELF doesn't have control over google?

They are a private company, not your personal tool for serving poetry.

Re:Jesus is Cheap - what about Xenu?

[Misch]

Can't buy it.

See post on alt.religion.scientology

Well, you probably could buy it, you just can't set your ad link to xenu.net.

"At this time, we are not running ads for sites that promote hate against another group or business."

Re:Very impressive

[RatOmeter]

Freaky. A few days ago (Sat, April 13, I think), I search google for QuantaBot. Google said I misspelled Quantiblot and gave me results for that instead (did not say how many results were returned for the original search term). I headed straight to their "Quality form" to bitch that I had NOT misspelled anything and resented them giving me results on something else instead. Today, I tried the same search and was told

"Your original search: QuantaBot was misspelled and returned 0 results.
The corrected search: Quantiblot was done instead and the results appear below."

Wow. Could it be that someone at an internet-based company actually uses customer feedback!?

Re:Something like this for Slashdot?

[Alsee]

Sincerely,
The Slashdot Automated Performance Monitor

The SAP Monitor... I like it.

Correction:
Slashdot Performance Automated Monitor

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On Kuro5hin, We Rely On This.

[LionKimbro]

Over at Kuro5hin, the site is pretty much paid for by user placed ads.

The difference between user text ads and corporate ads is amazing. There is a lot of fun in the top-left corner of the screen, where the ads sit. You can also comment on most ads (there is an option to prohibit commenting, but it is rarely used), as if they were stories.

We Kuro5hin-ers are quite happy with our ad system.

Re:GeekWords (The Answer)

[GigsVT]

You really want to know? I have an account:

Keyword Matches vi
16,300 impressions (these are per-day)
Estimated cost per day: US$244.50

Keyword Matches emacs
17,200 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$258.00

Keyword Matches joe
50,400 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$756.00

Keyword Matches word
94,300 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$1,414.50

Keyword Matches koffice
200 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$3.00

Keyword Matches gnome
15,700 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$235.50

Keyword Matches kde
15,200 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$228.00

Keyword Matches fvwm
0 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$0.00 0 impressions

Keyword Matches linux
523,200 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$7,848.00

Keyword Matches windows
690,300 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$10,354.50
Keyword Matches bsd
6,900 impressions
Estimated cost per day: US$103.50
--------------------

So, in summary, BSD really is dying, emacs just barely beats vi, KDE and gnome are neck and neck, and no one uses fvwm. Oh, and if you ask someone what koffice is, they will look at you funny.