Sicko adverts on Google

Roger W

Roger W

Well-known member
Just looking at a news item on the Internet - rather sad tale of a lady in China whose husband was executed for stabbing a couple of "pavement police" who were beating him up for selling kebabs from an unlicensed street stall.  "One minute I was touching him, then a few hours later I was collecting his ashes in a bag," said the man's widow.

Think what you will of living conditions and local justice in parts of China - it was the advert that followed the article - carefully tailored and chosen for my instruction and edification by Google - that made me want to install a P-bolt between someone's eyeballs:-

"PRE-PAID FUNERAL PLANS

Gobblo Chobblo* Is The UK's Largest
Independent Funeral Plans Provider

www.GobbloChobblo.com.uk"

* name modified to avoid offence to the company concerned. 

Tasteless?  I have to say I wasn't impressed...
 
There's a problem there that these people, not just Google, need to solve. I think that the algorithm that works these things picks out significant words from a news story and hangs adverts with similar themes on them. mostly that's OK, if you read stories about cars, you'll find adverts for cars etc but sometimes the concept comes unstuck, as it has here.

Of course the real answer is to use Adblock on your browser and just not see any adverts at all.  :thumbsup:
 
Yep, Adblock is the answer. I had forgotten there were such things as online adverts until Adblock stopped working one day. Thank goodness it was only one day. Can never understand why people choose to have adverts when there is a choice.
 
Adblock is great...but if everyone used it then the web would change significantly...and probably not for the better.  So if you're an Adblock user then that's great (I am too!) but I wouldn't publicize it too much and certainly not crow about it ;)

It's worth remembering that the servers that host ukCaving are paid for by advertising - if nobody was viewing adverts and nobody was clicking through then this site would no longer exist.  In fact, this site is only really here because ukbouldering.com makes a profit from advertising.

I'm not trying to preach but you have to put up with some advertising or lose some things you take for granted.... Let's face it, how many ukcaving users would be willing to stump up a subscription fee instead of putting up with a few targetted ads?

In response to the OP - Google isn't perfect and gets it wrong sometimes but again, in return for an extremely good search engine you have to put up with a bit of (sometimes misguided) advertising.  If that's not good enough then I suggest DuckDuckGo. f*** knows how they make money but if you want untainted search results then it's a good start...
 
I can cope with the adverts most of the time...  :)

It was just that the one in question was sooo insensitive    >:(

Ah well - that's what happens when things get run by computers, I guess.
 
Besides this is a forum on the Web, a good stating point is to assume that any relevance to anything at all is pure coincidence?














...that said UKC is  better than a lot of forums  :thumbsup:
 
It is relevant. I recently commented on Facebook that a caving friend of mine had died and it seemed a bit harsh to delete him, when someone else viewed the comment a similar ad appeared. The ads don't bother me anyway, like TV adverts I'm oblivious to them and have been for years. I worry more, if I do at all, that I've become so skilled at ignoring spam, ads etc that I'm also ignoring stuff I should take on board without realising it.
 
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