Ads by Google.

[xiphias]

In the free, ad-supported version of Google, you can have Google serve you two context-sensitive ads which look at the words on the page you're looking at, and give you ads which it thinks are appropriate. Or sometimes, just because.

I was looking at the "baaaabyanimals" LJ community. Not done as a link because I don't remember the actual spelling of how many "a's" there are in "baaaaaaaby". Anyway, Google decided that I might be interested in Anime DVDs, (okay, plausible, I suppose, although I'm not sure what it had to do with it all), and "Draco Malfoy: Find deals on draco malfoy at eBay!"

Um. Okay. I didn't know that Draco Malfoy was for sale on eBay, although I'm certain some people on my friends list will be pleased to find that out.

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Woo hoo! I'll be the first on my block to...er...wait until he's of age before shagging him merciladmiring his talent.

[cheshyre]

Trust me, there's already a long long line where that's concerned...

He was cuter when he was younger

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

IMHO, he'd lost a lot of his charms in the last movie, and just seemed like a petulant adolescent next to the three protagonists.

[cheshyre]

To be slightly more accurate, you were looking at this page of kittens from Japan, which may explain the anime connection.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

oh, how KAWAII1!!!!11!!!!

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

awwww. Thanks for pointing me to this community. Because, y'know, there's not enough sappy cuteness in my everyday life. :)

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Bwah. I used to know the girl that made that post, back when I lived in Minnesota and got sucked into the pit of drama that is the twin_cities community.

I don't think my world can get any smaller this week (see the comments to a particular entry in tigerbright's journal, for example). Then again, I am going to East Kingdom coronation on Saturday...

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

There isn't a paid, no-ad version of Google, unless I missed it somehow. I'm not sure where the ads showed up, though, when you were looking at the page--do you mean that you Googled to find the page, and the ads showed up in the search results?

I don't know how the Malfoy thing was triggered, but I noticed a while ago that eBay has a deal with Google where pretty much any search term becomes an ad that says "Find deals on " which then links to eBay, automatically searching for whatever the term is. Try this search, for example.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Oh, hang on, I just got it: You were using Opera, right? If you like Opera, you should try out Firefox, which is completely free and does pretty much everything Opera does. It also works with a higher percentage of websites, and has numerous extensions you can choose to install or not to adjust its functionality.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I meant Opera, not Google. Oops.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Just for laughs I tried out my copy of Opera on the same page and a couple of others in that community. I am consequently suffering from cuteness overload, but I was able to get the Malfoy ad (and the anime one, too) to appear not only on that page but on a couple of others, too.

It occurred to me that Google doesn't just index based on what's on a page, but how other pages link to that page or site. I wonder if it might somehow have something to do with the LJ user malfoy, though I'm not sure how since he(?) doesn't seem to have linked to the community that I can see.

segue into political ads

[deerdancer22.livejournal.com]

has anyone seen the great political ads created by moveon.org You can watch them on their web site:>}

[mitchellf.livejournal.com]

Actually, since we started using our beautiful, brand-spanking-new Gmail accounts, Vekson112 and I have noticed that Google seems to try to coordinate the ads with things we write in our messages (or with the subject lines of messages). Sometimes these ads make sense, sometimes they seems to lock onto an unimportant word in our messages. It's interesting to say the least.

Then again, it was pretty cool that Google pointed out ads and links to Ren Faires when we were discussing them, but weird when it came up with links to porn when we were talking about our upcoming trip to Boston. Hmmm.... How did I miss all that porn back when I lived there? ;-)