I’ve been having an ongoing problem with a group of genealogy sites who at best use deceptive practices, at worst are a scam.
It has even progressed to the point where I’ve been threatened with legal action on my ‘Empty Nest Genealogy’ blog, as described in my previous posts.
This morning I received an email from a thoughtful viewer who informed me that this same company’s advertising is showing on my site. So, for the very first time I decided to look into the possibility of blocking specific sites from advertising on my blogs with Google Adsense.
- It was a lot easier than I expected it to be.
- Open your Google Adsense account.
- Click on the ‘Allow & Block Ads’ tab.
- In the data entry box, enter the url(s) of the sites to be blocked.
Google Adsense has a great help section that goes into much more detail. It’s well worth checking this out as they give good advice on how to make the block as broad or narrow as you wish.
In this case, I wanted the broadest block possible. The basic rule of thumb is, ‘the shorter the url string, the broader the block.’ I entered ‘familyhistory.us.org’, ‘genealogy.us.org’, and ‘ancestor.us.org’. This will block ALL urls containing these specific strings, including urls with ‘www’ entered. If I had put the ‘www’ in the urls, the only urls blocked would be those that contain ‘www’, leaving all other variations able to show ads.
It is important to note the following warning from Google Adsense to avoid false clicks and possible suspension of your site(s) from their program.
“Remember, please do not click your ads to determine their URLs. Clicking your ads is against the programme policies. If you want to view more details about your ads, you can use the Google Publisher Toolbar. The Toolbar will allow you to check the destination of ads on your page without the risk of invalid clicks.”
If you wish to support me and others who have posted about the deceptive practices on these sites, please consider blocking their ads from showing on your sites.