Google Updates Algorithm To Punish Websites With Excessive Ads

I'm sorry, but forums do not cost $300/$400+ a month to run; especially ones that have an alexa rank of 101,000. Hell, hackaday costs only $150 a month to run and they get an entire magnitude more traffic than this place.

Y'all bee'n fooled.

Forums also don't have to be shut down for maintenance daily or several times a day, at least none of the other forums I'm a member of do.. but I'm not in charge, I'm just sayin'.

The forum belongs to the Admin.. we as a community are of very little consequence in any discussion about his cash flow. I can guarantee that..

wannaburn said:

If using firefox, the adblock feature rids my screen of all the ads..
Worth every second it took to install that add-on :san:

You can also right click on large banners etc, and add custom
filters to block what isnt blocked by default in that feature.

Click to expand...

It wasn't too bad before the 9 pages of identical adds at
the bottom of the page. The pages still loaded quite fast.

The problem is that the longer it takes to load the pages
the more members will try to increase the load speed by
using Ad Blockers.. It is inevitable... Then no-one will see
any ads posted which kind of defeats the original purpose
of posting the ads...


Jerry

You know, I had never run an adblocker in my life until I joined LPF. I so firmly believe in content creators getting rewarded for their efforts that I never would have dreamed of doing so... again, until LPF.

I don't have an adblocker on my phone, and LPF is unusable there (now that the mobile version is gone). It's the only website that I can't use while mobile.

We've all heard all of the arguments, blah blah blah. All of those arguments can be avoided by just pointing out one reality: None of the other websites I visit require this much advertising to survive.

That's it. It's simple. All the back and forth is trumped by that one reality. Nobody else needs this much advertising to survive as a website in 2012.

grenadier said:

I'm sorry, but forums do not cost $300/$400+ a month to run; especially ones that have an alexa rank of 101,000. Hell, hackaday costs only $150 a month to run and they get an entire magnitude more traffic than this place.

Y'all bee'n fooled.

Click to expand...

It is their forum, they can do whatever they want to, really.

Anybody who thinks that donating ( you should donate of course if you can) will remove any add from LPF is dead wrong.

These guys are making decent money from this forum, no doubt about that.

And I am talking about money from advertising, not donations.

Nothing wrong with that - it is a business.

Good business

lasersbee said:

It wasn't too bad before the 9 pages of identical adds at
the bottom of the page. The pages still loaded quite fast.

The problem is that the longer it takes to load the pages
the more members will try to increase the load speed by
using Ad Blockers.. It is inevitable... Then no-one will see
any ads posted which kind of defeats the original purpose
of posting the ads...


Jerry

Click to expand...

I just loaded this page in IE

Have been running ad-block for so long, now I know why there is
a large black void at the bottom of each page...

I can see how annoying that would be without using an ad-block :undecided:

Switch to the default style. Barely any ads, and has helped me immensely with the issues that Safari has with the site.

Anyway, posting in this thread before it's locked.

Brenner said:

These guys are making decent money from this forum, no doubt about that.

Click to expand...

Actually, LPF probably isn't "making money" or "profiting".

Avery is a security engineer (I believe?), and I'm fairly certain that he pays himself for working on LPF. He may or may not pay himself whatever his normal rate is, etc, but I believe that he DOES pay himself for his time. I wouldn't be surprised if LPF runs a $0 balance, with $0 net profit.

Whether this is "profit" is just an issue of perspective. If LPF makes $0 profit, but Avery pays himself, that's cool. Nothing wrong with that. But it's at least some monetary benefit to Avery, even if it's not the full remuneration he might make doing similar work for a client, etc.

But on an *emotional* level, it's odd for us to suffer through ads, if (and this is an "if", because I don't know this to be the case) a major expense being used to justify those ads is the site owner's own hourly rate, or salary, etc.

Ghostchrome said:

Switch to the default style. Barely any ads, and has helped me with the Safari issues with the site.

Anyway, posting in this thread before it's locked.

First rule of LPF, we don't talk about the ads.

Second rule of LPF, WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THE ADS!

Click to expand...

Guys are running legit and successful business.

Why would they block this thread?

Members are here to click on those ads, not to block them .

If ya know what I mean

Again nothing wrong with it.

grenadier said:

I'm sorry, but forums do not cost $300/$400+ a month to run; especially ones that have an alexa rank of 101,000. Hell, hackaday costs only $150 a month to run and they get an entire magnitude more traffic than this place.

Y'all bee'n fooled.

Click to expand...

Ummm the last time I checked the owner of a website has every right to make money off of it if they want. LPF doesn't claim to be a not for profit or anything like that.

That is exactly what I am trying to say.

Making any money in today's economy is a big plus.

Don't forget that you get tons of free info.

Google / Gmail is sniffing all your email content, and spamming you with ads based on what is in your emails, but we still use gmail.

They have the right to make as much money as they can, but we also have the right to bitch about it.. Here on LPF, whatever Avery says is what goes because he owns the site.

sopark4000 said:

Ummm the last time I checked the owner of a website has every right to make money off of it if they want. LPF doesn't claim to be a not for profit or anything like that.

Click to expand...

Absolutely.

Just because you're giving a "donation" to an organization, does not mean they aren't profitng off of your good will. People tend to associatate the word "donation" with "helping those in need", when all it means is "to give."

I agree... The forum belongs to one person and he can do what
he wants with it.
We are here as a privilege... not as a right.

If the Admin was to shut down the Forum tomorrow there is nothing
anyone could do...
If the Admin started to charge $$ to be a member here that would
be up to him and there is nothing forcing you to accept that decision
and there would be nothing you could do about his decision...

The ads are there because the Admin decided that's what he wants
and there is nothing we can do. Whining will not make the ads go
away...

But there are alternatives already mentioned...


Jerry

Well to get rid of the ads I used adblock and theres an option to create custom filters. So I went to all the banners and put the websites they link to and the actual image link on the filter list, and now LPF pages are loading in less than a second for me.
:wave: :wave: :wave: :wave: :wave: :wave: :wave: :wave: :wave:


This is sooooooo much better than having to wait 20+ seconds for a single page to load. For those of you who want to do it do the following

1. Click the ad you want to block and let the linked site load,
2. Copy the address of the site to the block filter.
(this next part is the more important part)
3.Left click on the ad and select "copy image URL" or "Open image in new window"
4. Put the entire URL from the pic/ad/banner into the custom filter

You could probably just get away with doing the second part because if you do that the ad/pic/banner wont show up anyway.

I've been wanting to try this for a while but I just never got around to it. Also if you are going to do what I said make sure you reload the LPF page a few times because sometimes there are different ads with different links.

WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO LPF loads like a regular website now.

sopark4000 said:

Well to get rid of the ads I used adblock (...)
do the following

1. Click the ad you want to block and let the linked site load,
2. Copy the address of the site to the block filter.
(this next part is the more important part)
3.Left click on the ad and select "copy image URL" or "Open image in new window"
4. Put the entire URL from the pic/ad/banner into the custom filter

Click to expand...

Why go through all this trouble when you can just right click on whatever you want to remove and select "Adblock picture"?
Advising people to click on all the advertisements might result in a lot of people getting malware on their computer.

As others have said - this is Avery's website and it is for him to do with as he pleases. However, he should be aware that excessive advertising will simply force users to block all the advertisements and perhaps even create - or drift to - rivalling forums.
There have also been a lot of times at which it was suggested that the forum would only be able to continue running if certain donation goals were met. This was misleading and many were disappointed when they learned they were simply paying the administrator's salary.