Matt Bernier

I was recently chatting with a friend about how some very topically slanted groups have been advertising on one of his favorite websites which actually leans the opposite way as the advertisements.  I realized something very interesting, we talked about it, and I figured I would share it here.

First, a little background on how Google Ads work. Whenever an advertisement is clicked, the site that provides the link gets paid a small amount of money and the person who posted the advertisement is charged some amount of money. Also, most people who post advertisements set a specific daily budget for their ads because otherwise it is possible that through Google that advertisement could be seen by millions of people an hour and clicked as many times. This could create quite a high bill very quickly.

Another thing to know about Google is that they take their advertisers very seriously, this is their bread and butter so they do not mess around. It is very important for them to identify fraudulent clicks and nip the fraudsters in the bud and then go about their day. This means that Google for little to no reason will completely stop serving ads to a site, stop paying that site for hosting the ads, or at the very least send a nasty-gram to someone who is asking for ads to be clicked. As a website who hosts ads, you sign a strict agreement that allows all of this. I have personally met people who have made mistakes and tried to game the system and been shut off, losing all legitimately (and otherwise) earned money.

Keeping all of this in mind, if you were a reader of a site and could not take the injustice of the advertising you are seeing on a daily basis, you could potentially organize and find a way to game the system.  This would be very difficult as you would have to be better, faster, and smarter than the guys in the Google Ads division and you would have to change your tactic in a way that was seemingly random on a day to day basis.

The following is a thought exercise ONLY. DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS. DO NOT BLAME ME if you get busted, get your favorite site busted, or someone involved gets in trouble.  It is not my fault if you choose to take on Google, so please do not give me credit.  Reading any further in this article means that you understand that I will not be held liable in any way for your actions or anyone else’s actions with regards to this article or any ideas derived from it that try to game the Google Advertising system (adwords or adsense).

Now that I feel a little bit better about sharing, the following is what I have to say.

Hypothetically, to game the system someone would have to be very organized and have a very large group of people who were dedicated to helping out.

The basic idea would be to seemingly naturally click the advertising on the site in a way that Google could not pinpoint as an organized front.  This means that if the group were going up against another group with a huge budget you would need a ton of people.

The rules of engagement would be these:

1. Each person can only click ads once per 3 day period
2. Each ad that is clicked should be done at different times of the day
3. Ads that are clicked should be in different parts of the page, making sure that the main portions of the page are clicked more often than less significant parts of the page, but not clicked significantly more times.
4. Different ads would have to be clicked as well as the targeted ad groups, this way it is not specifically apparent why all the ads are being clicked in such a rapidly growing fashion.
5. Different numbers of natural page views should be encountered before clicking. This means that entering a page and clicking an ad would not always be ok, sometimes 3 pages in, sometimes 2, sometimes 10.  Changing it up makes it look more natural. Time on pages where ads are not clicked is important. Make sure you read the article, or give enough time to scan it.
6. All clicks need to seem natural, so opening a page and clicking is probably not going to work.
7. There should be NO link between the people clicking and the owners of the site
8. The owners of the site should NEVER be made aware that this sort of movement is happening, in order to keep them out of the loop and out of trouble.
9. The group leader would have to find a way to ramp up the people clicking the ads, take them in and out of rotation for clicking the ads and manage the group as a whole all while keeping Google in the dark on the efforts of the group.

I imagine there would be some other things that should be taken into account, but these are the highlights. They would have the potential for making it seem like your favorite site is just getting more ad revenue instead of having an organized group of people who are trying to get rid of specific advertising.

This would effectively achieve three goals:

1. The unwanted advertising would be gone
2. The undesirable advertisers would be charged a boatload of money, causing their coffers to be lessened.
3. Your favorite site gets more money, which allows them to get bigger and stronger.

All of a sudden on Dec 15th I started seeing some really crazy events showing up on my Google Calendar:

All I could think was that one of two things had to be going on:

1. Some calendar software I am using had a “funny” developer
2. Someone was messing with me

I disregarded the first couple events, but here it is February and this stuff is still showing up on my calendar.  Now, this would not be too much of a worry except that it was showing up on my work calendar and my boss started asking questions.  There was an event that was nothing but the word “Fuck”, I quickly deleted it upon my boss discovering it.

Then my brain-switch kicked on (must have been the coffee) and I realized that not only have these crazy events been showing up in my calendar, but I have not been getting the SMS event reminders I should be getting. Ding! I went and checked my SMS settings on the Google Calendar and my old phone number was in there.

So, for 3 months some poor guy who got my old phone number has been getting the equivalent of a collections-agency-annoyance from his new number.  Unfortunately, I had that number for 13 years, so he is probably also getting random phone calls from people looking for me.  I tried to remember to switch everything over but there are some things you just forget.

Here’s to the guy who got my old number, and here’s to hopefully solving the problem so I don’t get some random dude showing up ready to kill me. If you know him, tell him I’m sorry and buy him a beer.

I have recently been helping a friend out with setting up their MobileMe account on Windows with their new iPhone.  I have also set it up for myself on the MacBookPro (MBP).  So until questions I cannot answer come in, I will consider myself a Pro at setting this up and continue through this article.

The main reason why my friend got MobileMe was so that she could sync her calendar and be able to update it whenever and wherever she is.  Like I said before, she is on Windows.

On the MBP, I already had Mail.app and iCal running with multiple Google Accounts and pulling any and every calendar I can get my grubby little digital hands on.  In order to do this effectively I use BusySync, which was $20 but totally worth the expense because it makes using Google calendars with iCal a cinch.

Once we got my friend signed up with MobileMe, logged in with her phone and with the Windows box, things looked great.  Then we realized there were no calendar dates on her phone. WTF!?

I went back to my desk to do some research and quickly found in the small grey text at the bottom of the MobileMe page, that it will ONLY sync calendars with Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 on Windows.  Seeing as how she was only using Gmail online, she was less than thrilled.

This seemed like a cop-out on Apple’s part to me, but it is actually probably Google’s fault.  If you know me, I would never say such a thing about Google, except that in this case it is true.  Google has set up their calendaring to be easy to use, but they also made it so that sometimes it is almost impossible to fetch/push/merge the data with current software like iCal.

For me, part of the reason I went and spent so much money at the Apple store was to get a breath of fresh air from all that Microsoft stuff I have owned my whole life.  So, when I see something like:

MobileMe calendars sync with Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007 only.
If you use Microsoft Outlook in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server, MobileMe will not sync your contacts or calendars with Outlook.

from Apple makes me sick. They pretty much come outright and say “Buy our biggest competitor’s product because we can’t make this work otherwise”.  This turns a $100 a year mobileMe account into a $180 purchase ($100 + $79.99).

I haven’t written a blog post in a long time, but someone suggested I tell this story.

I have a bunch of stuff I need to sell, so I figured Craig’s List was the place to go.  Things like, a 5DVD change, a Vacuum, a desk, and some movies.  Simple, easy, 5 minute transactions.  “Here’s your stuff, thank you for the money”.  Seriously, this is what every transaction I have ever been a part of has consisted of.

This however has not been the case for the last 3 days.

I posted the items on Sunday night and sold some of the movies right away, like within an hour.  I didn’t hear anything else until the next day.

This is what happened Monday night:

Person 1: “Do you still have the 5 DVD changer?”

Me: “Yep”

Person 1: “Where are you located?”

Me: “Parker and Arapahoe”

Person 1: “Oh”

Me: “Where are you located?”

Person 1: “Parker and Hampden”

Me: “I can meet you half way”

Person 1: “No, I am just being lazy, I’ll call you back in 10 minutes”

They never called back.

Then the classic interaction which spanned from Monday until tonight (Tuesday at 10:20PM):

Her: “You still have the vacuum?  I would like to pick it up.”

Me: “Yep, I am at [insert address], when can you come and get it?”

Her: “I will have to come tonight, can you repeat the address?”

Me: “I just sent you a link to a Google Map, you can get directions there”

Her: “Ok, I would like to come by tonight around 8PM”

Me: “OK, sounds great.”

… 8PM rolls around …

Her: “I am at Hampden and Parker, which way do I go?”

Me: “Go towards the mountains, that is west.  Then go LEFT, that is South about 2-3 miles until you see Arapahoe.”

Her: “OK, I’ll be there in a little while.”

… 10 minutes pass, she calls me back …

Her: “I am at Parker and Yale, which way do I go? I don’t want to go on the highway, I will end up in a different state”

Me: “Go South on Parker about 3-4 miles until you see Arapahoe, pull into the Target parking lot, i will meet you there.”

… Yes, she went NORTH …

… 20 minutes pass, she calls again …

Her: “I am at Parker and Florida, I just wanted to make sure I was going the right way”

Me: “You went further North, turn around and come south about 5 miles.  You will not be able to miss Arapahoe. Pull into the Target and I will meet you.”

Her: “OK”

… 20 more minutes, she calls again …

Her: “I am at Hampden and Parker, I think I am going to give up”

Me: “OK, I understand. Sorry this is so confusing. Maybe we can try again when it is light out, to make it easier.”

Her: “Yeah, I think that is a good idea. Thank you”

… 24 hours later, it is 10:20PM. I am walking into my bedroom and my Fiance hands me the phone …

Her: “This is [name here], I was just calling to tell you I will not be coming tonight.”

Me: “OK … “

Her: “I will try to come on my day off, if you haven’t sold it already”

Me: “When is your day off?”

Her: “Saturday and Sunday”

Me (thinking) “You mean the weekend…?”

Me: “Ok, well please call me before you try to come down here again, there was someone who said they might be able to come and get it tomorrow”

Her: “OK, thank you.”

… I think about going to bed, instead I write this blog post …

The following is literally the path she took to get to Parker and Arapahoe.  Point of order, she never made it to the last stop, and this took her over an hour to accomplish.

The reason I am worried about the fate of the planet is that these were not the only two people I talked to.  There were 4 people on the phone, all of this caliber.  Also, there were people over email who either didnt respond or sent me 4 emails about the same item from 2 different email accounts.

How do people survive?  I am serious, how do they survive?  If you cannot print Google Map directions, write them down.  If you can’t follow them, take someone with you, or stop at a gas station and ask directions.  Let alone the fact that what sounded like an elderly lady was going out at night to meet a strange guy, possibly in a dark parking lot to buy a used vacuum. I would never do anything, but has no one heard of “The Craig’s List Killer”?? This is a real person who preyed on people he met online.  GET A FUCKING CLUE, the world is not all roses and good buzzes.  I wish it was, but at some point you have to pull your head out of your ass long enough to get the things you need.  Most Americans forgo getting the things they need and spend all their efforts trying to snatch up things they want.

These people couldn’t do common things like, figure out directions, drive one direction, follow through when you call someone to buy something, email from a single address… The list goes on.

This was possibly the craziest 3 days of my selling things on Craig’s List.  It is enough to make me question where our world is headed, and at the very least it makes me wonder if I will ever try to sell things online again.  Maybe I will just drop off all my old crap at Goodwill and call it a day.  Or a night, if you are that second lady.

Oh yeah, everything I put up on Craig’s List, except 2 BluRay movies (out of a list including about 20 DVDs total), is still for sale.

I was replying to a friend on Twitter using trim, and I had a <script> tag in the post.  I realized when I submitted that the tag made everything after it in my tweet dissapear. If you want to see the actual tweets, you can find them in my twitter feed here: Matt Bernier’s Twitter Feed

First thougt was, “No Way!”.  Second thought was, “What Else Can I do?”.

So, I tried basic HTML with this tweet:

This got me this result:

Just HTML in the Tweet

Then I tried an alert:

That got me this result:

Javascript Alert in a tweet

Then lastly, I tried a little more JS, pay attention though. To make it fit, I used a tr.im URL!!

Which got me this result:

Replaced Tr.im's images with Google's!

I have submitted this information to tr.im. I did very mundane, topical things to the page I was looking at, and did not even attempt anything more dangerous. My hope is that you will see the humor in this, urge tr.im to fix this issue and to continue the amazing job that they do.

UPDATE: The Tr.im developers are quick to read their emails, respond, and fix issues. It took all of twenty minutes from when I sent the email to them, for a response saying that this issue was fixed.

I am constantly trying new things to keep myself organized, on time, and accountable to my clients.  I have found this increasingly difficult as I add clients, projects, and responsibilities.  I am going to start chronicling how I manage my tasks, my clients, emails, and general to-dos in the next couple of posts.

I use a number of tools to manage myself, in this introduction I am going to go over the easiest ones to explain.

BaseCamp

I have and continue to use BaseCamp with my clients, which helps me to keep all of my client data in the same place.  Also, they provide an easy place for me to communicate with my clients, and them with me.  It is a great tool for project management and has saved my butt a couple times.

Google Calendar

I use Google Calendar to handle all of my scheduling.  Whenever I have something time sensitive that I need to make sure to remember, I put it into Google Calendar.

They will send me a text (SMS) message and an email before the event, at whatever interval I want.  Sometimes I know I will be in the clouds so I will have the reminder 30 minutes, or 15 minutes before I am due for a meeting.  Other times, I know I am going to need to drive, so I will figure out my drive time plus 15-30 minutes before my meeting, that way I have enough time to get ready and drive to the meeting.

Along with these features, Google Calendar has export and import functionality that allows me to have my calendar on my IPhone, my home computer, and my work computer.

Paper Notepads

I keep lists on notepads, about everything. I will detail this more later.

I have had a Commission Junction account for years, but never really had a good place to try it out.  I have something like 2000 advertisers who accepted my sites, mostly because I had grand aspirations to create the single greatest affiliate advertising website on the internet.  Reality hit me upside the head, and I gave up those aspirations of grandeur. Plus, it was a freaking horrible idea.

Anyways, I still have an account with Commission Junction (CJ), so I figured I would try to put some ads up on Failed Proposals.  The site is all about videos and stories of failed wedding proposals. So, it fits that I would want to put wedding related ads on the site.

I found some of my current advertisers who I have approved my sites and I, and I picked a couple for a “Smart Zone”.  A Smart Zone is a feature from CJ, which allows you to group some links together and then use a single piece of JS to display the ads on your site.  I installed this JS and waited, as they say it could take at least 24 hours for the ads to show.

When I came back to the site 2 days later, there were no advertisements showing on the site.  It looked to me like the JS was not working correctly.  I am not sure what the problem was/is really, so I looked for another way to skin this cat.

I remembered the WP-ADS plugin for wordpress, installed it, and inserted the html from CJ in as banners with the location of “header”.  Now, I have to wait again, for a day or a couple of hours (so says CJ) for the ads to show up on the site.

I am hoping that this works, because it would be great to have the ads actually pulling income from the site.

As an added bonus, I also used WP-ADS to place Google Adsense ads into the header and sidebar.

I currently provide a range of services in the area of web development and business consulting. If you are interested in these services, please visit my “Services” page.

My current services include:

• Web Development
• Proposal Consulting
• Website Consulting
• SEO Consulting

Contact me if you would like to talk to me about the services I can provide your company.