The Real Ryan J. Parker

I got an e-mail this morning telling me my sports handicapping blog failed the BlogRush quality guidelines.

Reading through the e-mail I had no idea why I was removed… I have quality content, it’s constantly updated, exactly the kind of things BlogRush is looking for. Well, at the very end, I see this last paragraph:

- The blog’s content (or advertising) should not contain any of the following types of content: hate, anti-racial, terrorism, drug-related, hacking, phishing, fraud, pornographic, nudity, warez, gambling, copyright infringement, obscene or disgusting material of any kind, or anything considered illegal.

Everything else in this list is either obscene or illegal except for gambling. Obviously you can make the argument that you typically have to be in a place like Vegas to take part in this type of activity, but BlogRush isn’t quite getting it right by barring this type of content.

Sports bettors like myself are a small crowd so I don’t expect much, but what about the poker playing community?

A few days ago I noticed about 60 clicks to my AdSense account in a short time span that appeared to be invalid, so I notified Google to make sure they knew that it was some sort of fraud. I’ve heard horror stories of people having some random jerkoff have their account disabled, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t fall into the same trap.

Looks like it didn’t work.

A few hours ago I received the following e-mail from Google:

Hello Ryan Parker,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions
have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have
therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that
this was a necessary step to protect the interests of AdWords
advertisers.

As you may know, a publisher’s site may not have invalid clicks or
impressions on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks and/or
impressions generated by:

- a publisher on his own web pages
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking or surfing programs, or any other deceptive
software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the
layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason

…

I run AdWords campaigns and obviously hate click fraud, which is why it’s unfortunate that Google has disabled my account.

So, what are the odds of Google reinstating my account?

Tags: google, adsense, account disabled

What another nonsense TLD: .info.

Hopefully by blacklisting .biz and .info I can keep Akismet happy.

While we’re on the topic: anyone actually own and/or use a .info TLD for a legit purpose?

Tags: .info, spam

Does anyone use .biz for a legitimate commercial service?

After much interruption, I’ve finally added the .biz TLD to my WordPress blacklist. This shouldn’t affect any real commentators, as it seems no one uses this TLD for legitimate purposes.

I guess the point of this post is to see if anyone has heard of anyone using the .biz TLD for a legit business. I haven’t, but there has to be someone out there, right? I mean, that’s what it was created for, right?

Or, more likely, .biz is simply another way for domain registrars to try and sell you yet another domain you don’t need.

To prove the point, just look at a recent post from Guy Kawasaki on how much it cost to build Truemors:

I spent $1,115.05 registering domains. I could have used GoDaddy and done it a lot cheaper, but I was too stupid and lazy.

I registered 55 domains (for example, truemors.net, .de, .biz, truemours, etc, etc). I had no idea that one had to buy so many domains to truly “surround” the one you use. Yes, I could have registered fewer and spent less, but who cares about saving a few hundred bucks compared to the cost of legal action to get a domain away from a squatter if Truemors is successful?

Let’s assume the website becomes a smashing success. Is it really worth buying these domains even though that domain isn’t really worth anything? These squatters aren’t impacting your bottom line very much, are they? Gotta respect Guy, but I don’t follow this logic.

Lastly, have you ever or do you ever plan on buying a .biz? I hope not–you’re blacklisted.

Tags: .biz, spam

Until AuctionAds realizes that they should write their code into an IFRAME, it is best you create your own IFRAME for these advertisements.

This is important for two reasons. First, the latency between your website and the AuctionAds website might be different causing your pages to load slower than normal. Second, if the AuctionAds service is down for whatever reason your pages will load extremely slow.

By placing your AuctionAds inside of IFRAMEs you won’t have to worry about these issues keeping your visitors from viewing your website’s content.

Creating the Code

First, you’ll need to make an HTML file on your web server that contains the AuctionAds code you wish to embed into your website.

Next you’ll need to create the IFRAME where you wish to code to reside:

<iframe src="aacode.html" width="WIDTH" height="HEIGHT" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" ></iframe>

Make sure you replace aacode.html with the appropriate path to the HTML file you uploaded to your web server, and also change WIDTH and HEIGHT to the appropriate values for the ad code.

That’s it! Never again worry about AuctionAds affecting your website’s performance.

Now if they’d only do this for us…

UPDATE: Poking around I see AuctionAds does put their code into IFRAMEs (not sure when this was activated or if it was always like this). That said, AuctionAds hasn’t been the most reliable service, so keeping with your own IFRAME will keep your website from screeching to a halt when there is an outage.

Tags: auctionads, iframe