Are AdSense right for your website?

Yesterday’s SmartCompany article on DealsDirect being blocked by Google shows why it’s important to understand the purpose of running a business or private website and whether showing adverts on it is appropriate.

DealsDirect’s problem allegedly arose because an advertiser placed some suspicious code on the DealsDirect site. Malicious web code is designed to infect computers, using what’s known as ‘drive by downloads’.

Drive by downloads happen through web pages designed to infect visitors’ computers when the page is opened. Thankfully rare these days thanks to improved security in XP and later versions of Windows, they are still taken seriously when they appear.

The real question though is why DealsDirect, a discount online retailer, chooses to run third party adverts. One of the strange things on the internet is why many websites run Google AdSense at all.

Google AdSense and other contextual advertising looks at a web page’s content to determine the adverts the site will show.

So a website on plumbing will tend to show adverts for plumbers and plumbing supplies.

That’s great if you are running a site featuring tips on plumbing or bathroom renovations with the aim of making some money from advertising, but if you’re the local plumber, having AdSense on the site may result in your competitors’ ads appearing.

Now there are features in the advertising programs to block the ads of competitors and products you don’t want on your page but these take up time, which often isn’t worthwhile given the returns most sites have from AdSense.

Even if you are happy to show competitors adverts, there’s also the question of your brand. Do you really want low rent and tacky ads offering teeth whitening and weight loss messing appearing on a website that tells the world about your professionalism and great products?

For many businesses, running ads on their websites isn’t worthwhile given the advertising returns aren’t worth the management time and potential reputation risk raised by the programs.

Like much in the technology field, whether you run adverts on your site depends upon your business and objectives. Although if your business isn’t an advertising driven model like SmartCompany’s, it’s probably best to leave third party ads off your websites, as DealsDirect have found.

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Paul Wallbank is a writer, speaker and broadcaster on technology issues. He founded national support organisation PC Rescue in 1995 and has spent over 14 years helping businesses get the most from their IT investment. His PC Rescue and IT Queries websites provide free advice to business computer users and his monthly newsletter has over 3,000 subscribers.