You can pick your nose, but you can't always pick your adverts

Logging on to my blog this morning I was surprised (and not entirely disappointed) to find a prominent picture of a large-busted blond woman gracing the left-hand side, just below the somewhat less alluring picture of myself.

It turns out this is an advert for a game called Evony (beware more of the same), which seems to be a kind of medieval online adventure. Feel free to sign up, if your off-line life is insufficiently appealing.

Like many bloggers, I use Google Adsense to generate a bit of interest and (very modest) income. (You click, I earn. Terms and conditions prohibit "I click, I earn.") Technically, Adsense is supposed to match the adverts to the subject-matter of the blog, but sometimes (like some comments) it goes a bit 'off topic' - hence I am occasionally flooded with adverts for debt counselling, investment, and so on. Today seems to have been just one of those days.

The technology does allow you to exclude 'competitors' ads from your site, so there are some organizations and topics that I've been able gradually to eliminate, but it requires a bit of fiddling around with URLs, etc.

Quite why a sword-and-sorcery adventure should turn up on the Ugley Vicar blog, I can't really fathom. In the interests of good taste, however, I will have to make sure it doesn't happen again. (Sigh!)

Revd John Richardson
2 October 2009

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