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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

"Google ads takes the long term view and doesn't tolerate shit like that. They are very strict and would rather not take that money and destroy their brand. Result? People still use Google to search for stuff."

Are you sure? I've seen loads and loads of some of the trashiest ads through Google's ad network.

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And at least Google iAds give you the tiny little logo in the corner for you to click so you can report the ad that tries very hard to look like a download button :(

Only they never seem to quite get it:

Google: here is x dating site,

Me: click, mark as irrelevant.

Google: here is y dating site

Me: irrelevant

Google: z dating site?

Me: nope

Google: lets try an ad for x dating site again then

Me: actually, you got my mail, all my searches for the last 10 years and still you cannot find anything more relevant for a happily married sw engineer?

Unless happily married SW engineers with your search history whom mark dating sites as irrelevant are great for dating site conversions.

You can change the google settings to specifically give you ads about topics you like

https://www.google.com/settings/ads

Ah, the "Choose your Vaselin flavor" option.

Been there, done that.

Somehow Google think dating sites fall under auto repair, gardening, computer hardware or software or a few other categories I am actually interested in.

Or more likely IMO: they don't care.

I bet they're using you to try and find differentiating factors between the different dating sites. You've already told them that you're willing to provide useful information about dating sites -- now they're just extracting as much info as possible.

They're extracting right till the moment they aren't - ever again.

I think they just have a weak pool of ads to serve. I routinely mark Twitter ads as of no interest to me, and still get virtually nothing I would ever have interest in.

The problem with that button is that whenever the ad slips past through an adblocker people like myself will click it regardless of what the ad is showing and report it.

People definitely still use Google to search for stuff!

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