Salocin

Life after death for advertisements?

I've been spending a little time trying to figure out how, on this website, people were hitting ads that had expired, and therefore shouldn't be displayed on the screen anymore. I finally figured it out: they are viewing my webpage in the Google Cache, clicking on ads, and leaving little cryptic notes in my logfiles...

I was receiving strange entries in the user logs :

2003-05-04 18:05:32 guest from 195.229.xxx.xxx hit advert 10

2003-05-04 05:37:58 User guest from ip 159.134.xxx.xx viewed article leo

2003-05-04 04:48:25 User guest from ip 64.235.xxx.xxx viewed article bond20

2003-05-04 02:37:32 Advert submitted by 65.214.xx.xxx

I couldn't figure out how adverts could be getting hits when there were none in the system, and therefore none getting displayed. In fact, Google cached some pages with adverts in them and that's where the hits came from, users clicking on these get redirected to my redirection page (!) and the log records this as a hit. Since the adverts are still in the system, they then get shunted to the right place.

On another note, thanks to the anonymous person who sent me feedback about needing a better way to view old articles than some long list. I finally got around to writing the archives box on the left. Thanks also to The Weblog Review for emailing me the same suggestion. It results in an extra little cookie on your machine to track the current month displayed.

Finally, thanks to the anonymous donor of the latest piece of feedback: Post More. I'll take that as a compliment!

Posted by nlvp at May 5, 2003 12:40 AM