For Discussion: What's with the four Google ads above the sidebar?

September 29, 2003 2:31 PM

For Discussion: What's with the four Google ads above the sidebar?
posted by ~rschram to MetaFilter-Related at 2:31 PM (19 comments total)

I think they're used to sell either products or services.
posted by eastlakestandard at 2:40 PM on September 29, 2003

for 40 bucks you can get the MetaFilter Pro package, and among many other cool tools (MetaChat for, well, chat, iPodFilter for your mp3 needs, etc), you'll also see that the textads disappear
it's worth it!
posted by matteo at 2:42 PM on September 29, 2003

I almost wish they were on the left, so we could have our sidebar and Matt could eat too, but they're not so obtrusive. If it helps Matt pay the bills, I don't have a problem with it.
posted by frykitty at 3:04 PM on September 29, 2003

ProductFilter!
posted by dg at 3:06 PM on September 29, 2003

Google wanted to kill the small ad recently, and they left it up to me what I should replace it with.

I shopped around the space for a couple weeks, but no one really wanted to buy out the space so I just threw in the other ad shape, which does make the sidebar less than useful, I know.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:19 PM on September 29, 2003

Not a biggie. i still scroll down to check out the sidebar. Simple really, simpler than trying to parse a Thomcatspike sentence.
posted by konolia at 3:54 PM on September 29, 2003

I miss the sidebar, but it wasn't really updated often enough to mourn too much (definitely not enough to justify hunting for it).
posted by rushmc at 3:58 PM on September 29, 2003

Not updated nearly enough. Grrrrr!!!!
posted by seanyboy at 4:00 PM on September 29, 2003

Rush, there's nothing to miss as the sidebar is still there. Just scroll down a wee bit.
posted by konolia at 4:42 PM on September 29, 2003

Search MetaTalk
posted by angry modem at 5:18 PM on September 29, 2003

See the parenthetical part of my comment, konolia.
posted by rushmc at 6:50 PM on September 29, 2003

Do whatcha gotta do, Matt.
posted by ColdChef at 7:10 PM on September 29, 2003

I think I'm missing out. I see one Google ad on the front page, none on MetaTalk, and four on comments pages. Which is what I recall there being for quite some time. Where can I see these magical new ads?
posted by punishinglemur at 8:19 PM on September 29, 2003

I think the sidebar should come back on the left so that ads and the sidebar both get top of page billing. I never see the sidebar content any more below all the ads. (As an aside, I think we're going to adopt three columns on SportsFilter if we adopt AdSense.)
posted by rcade at 6:30 AM on September 30, 2003

For Discussion:...

Isn't this just a sneaky spin on "...Discuss."?
posted by signal at 8:02 AM on September 30, 2003

I just had a look around and came back puzzled, because I'd clean forgotten about the fancypants custom stylesheet I use to block adverts.

Now, the thing is that I actually want to see the advertisements here on MetaFilter, so that I can click through and pay my way (in a tiny way). Does anyone with better CSS skills than mine know of a way to selectively disable the disabling of ads on a site-by-site basis? If that makes any sense at all...
posted by jack_mo at 9:10 AM on September 30, 2003

two lines in my hosts. file trump all that css stylesheet gobbledy-gook, but it's an all-or-nothing deal.
posted by crunchland at 9:37 AM on September 30, 2003

Crunch, you may have blocked it out at your computer's level, but I've blocked it out at the mental level here.

I'm working on a Miguel filter, but it's tough.
posted by angry modem at 10:40 AM on September 30, 2003

I don't understand why Google ads have a higher "page rank" than the MeFi sidebar. But then, PageRank is broken, so maybe that's the reason.

Also, MiguelFilter.
posted by dhartung at 9:59 PM on September 30, 2003