Using OpenX to serve text links that search engines can see? - javascript

I am currently using OpenX to serve rotating text links. However, the invocation code is javascript so I don't think search engines can spider these links. Is there another solution or a way to modify OpenX to serve links that search engines can index. An example ad is here http://www.glumbo.com/ad.html

There is what's called a "Local Mode Tag" invocation type in the self-hosted version of OpenX which it looks like you are using. However, this requires the ad server to be on the same physical host as the website. However even if this works (I've not used it, so I can't speak for how it works), or if you use the JS or iframe invocations, then the URL OpenX will generate for the link still won't be direct (it'll redirect via the ad server) otherwise you'll have no way to track the number of clicks on a link.
Finally, it's against Google's rules to sell "search friendly" links on a website, and you could be penalised in search results if Google catches you selling links in that way. So if the aim of this is to sell Google friendly links I would advise against it anyway. Good luck!

Related

How to know when a particular ad is being served by Google Double Click

There are ads (line items) in my company's double click for publishers account. Some are ads to external sites and some are in-house ads, like an image that says we also have an android and iOS app available.
We show a link that says 'advertising' next to any ad. Clicking on that leads to advertising options on our website.
Now, we don't want to show this link how in-house ads. How can I know from the client site (through javascript) that the ad being served is in-house or not? I tried setting key-value pair on a line item and tried getting it via GoogleTag's getTargeting(KEY_NAME) function, but that doesn't seem to work. Not even sure if key-value pair can be used for such functionality.
Any solutions?
I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think that's possible.
You could add some javascript to the creative to inform the site to remove the "advertising"-word?

Remove Google Ads from cached page for certain users

We run an ad supported wordpress blog and use WP Super Cache to cache the pages to pure HTML. The way it works, via mod_rewrite, totally bypasses php if a html copy of the file is available.
The problem stems from the fact that we use a "premium user" system in which the blog does not display ads for premium users.
Unfortunately this is not true for cached pages which, due to being pure HTML, cannot differentiate between premium and normal users.
The obvious way to go would be to use javascript to look the user up and hide the ad DOM elements. But modifications to Google Ads code are not allowed by the ToS.
Is there any way to stop google ads from displaying for some users? Maybe with some sort of asynchronous code that would make the ads load AFTER the user gets verified?
Would that violate the Terms of Service as well if the ad never gets triggered in the first place?

Deep linking javascript powered websites

I have a website which has two versions, an all singing all dancing javascript powered application which is served when you request the root url
/
As you navigate around the lovely website the content updates, as does the url, thanks to html5 push state or good old correctly formatted #! urls. However if you don't have javascript enabled you can still use all functionality of the site as each piece of content also exists under it's own url. This is great for 3 reasons
non javascript users can still use the site
SEO - web crawlers can index the site easily
everything is shareable on social networks
The third reason is very important to me as every piece of content must be individually shareable on the site. And because each piece of content has it's own url it is easy to deep link to that url, and each piece of content can have it's own specific open graph data.
However the issue I hit is the following. You are a normal person and have javascript enabled and you are browsing and image gallery on the site and decide to share the picture of a lovely cat you have found. Using javascript the url has been updated to
/gallery/lovely-cat
You share this url and your friend clicks on it. When they click on the link the server sends you the non javascript / web crawler version of the site, and the experience is no where near as nice as the javascript version you would have been served if you directly went to the root of the site and navigated there.
Do anyone have a nice solution / alternative setup to solve this problems? I have several hacks which work, however I am not that happy with them. They include :
javascript redirect to the root of the site on every page and store a cookie / add a #! to the url so on page render the javascript router will show the correct content. ( does google punish automatic javascript redirects? )
render the no javascript page, and add some javascript which redirects the user to the root, similar to above, whenever the user clicks on a link
I don't particularly like either of these solutions, but can't think of a better solution. Rendering the entire javascript app for each page doesn't appear to be a solution to me, as you would end up with bad looking urls such as /gallery/lovely-cat/gallery/another-lovely-cat as you start navigating through the site.
My solution must support old browsers which do not implement push state
Make the "non javascript / web crawler version of the site" the same as the JavaScript version. Just build HTML on the server instead of DOM on the client.
Rendering the entire javascript app for each page doesn't appear to be a solution to me,
That is the robust approach
as you would end up with bad looking urls such as /gallery/lovely-cat/gallery/another-lovely-cat
Only if you linked (and pushStateed) to gallery/another-lovely-cat instead of /gallery/another-lovely-cat. (Note the / at the front).
Try out this plugin it might solve your 3rd reason, along with two reasons.
http://www.asual.com/jquery/address/

How to I put ads on 100% JavaScript web applications?

Placing ads on JavaScript web applications has turned out to be much harder than I thought. First of all, when I say "100% JavaScript web application" I mean a tiny HTML file that loads and initiates a JavaScript file which draws all the content on the page. In other words, the website is completely empty until the JavaScript has executed.
Adsense is out of the question. They immediately deny your ad application based on an automatic scan of the website where they "discover" that the page "has no content". I've sent a bunch of mails to Adsense support trying to get somebody to manually check the application instead, but they have all been responded to by the same auto-generated "no content" email.
I have also tried using Chitika, but after hours of trying to get the ad to display I've given up. It simply doesn't work when I add the ad code after the page has opened, which I have to do in a JavaScript application. I also tried placing the ad code in an iframe, which does work, but the ad loses the context of the page, which is quite important because it can't find the Google search terms.
Do you have any experience with placing ads on JavaScript applications? How do you do it?
#Dan in the comments has a point here -- if Adsense can't get any sense out of your site, then neither will the Google bot, which means your site won't show up in Google.
If you want any kind of traffic for your site, then the very least you need to do is create a splash screen from regular HTML that Google can hook into. If that is then overwritten by the JS code, that's fine, though it might be worthwhile leaving it in place for all users until they click a 'start' button or something.
The splash screen page will also give you a starting point for somewhere to place your ads.

URL tracking functionality

I want my webpage to have two parts. The top part has a textbox. When the user types a URL into the textbox, the bottom part browses to the content of that URL. When the user clicks a link within the bottom part, the bottom part navigates to the new URL, and the textbox in the top part changes to the new URL. How can I do it?
NOTE: This behavior is the same as in Google Translate (e.g. here), but without any translation.
first problem..
Same origin issue
The only way to achieve what you are asking is exactly the way google translate does what it does - which is to use a server-side powered script as a proxy request:
http://translate.google.com/translate_un?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA&lang=de&usg=ALkJrhgoLkbUGvOPUCHoNZIkVcMQpXhxZg
The above is the URL taken from the iframe that Google translate uses to display the translated page. The main thing to note is that the domain part of the URL is the same as the parent page's URL http://translate.google.com -- if both your frame and your parent window do not share the same domain, then your parent window's JavaScript wont be able to access anything within the iframe. It will be blocked by your browser's in-built security.
Obviously the above wont be a problem if in your project you are only ever going to be navigating your own pages (on the same domain), but considering you are proffering Google Translate as an example I'm assuming not.
What would Google do?
What the above URL does is to ask the server-side to fetch the wikipedia page and return it so that the iframe can display it - but to the iframe this page appears to be hosted on translate.google.com rather than wikipedia. This means that the iframe stays within the same origin as the parent window, and means that JavaScript can be used to edit or modify the page within the iframe.
next problem....
Rewrite the proxied content
Basically what I'm saying is that this can't be achieved with just HTML and client-side JavaScript - you need to have something to help from the server-side i.e. PHP, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Node.. and so on. This script will be responsible for making sure the proxied page appears/renders correctly e.g. you will have to make sure relative links to content/images/css on the original server are not broken (you can use the base tag or physically rewrite relative links). There are also many sites that would see this as an illegal use of their site, as per their site's terms of use and so should be black listed from your service.
final problem..?
Prevent the user from breaking away from your proxy
Once you have your proxy script, you can then use an iframe (please avoid using old framesets), and a bit of JavaScript magic that onload or ondomready of the iframe rewrites all of the links, forms and buttons in the page. This is so that when clicked or submitted, they post to your proxy script rather than the original destination. This rewrite code would also have to send the original destination to your proxy script some how - like u in the Google translate URL. Once you've sorted this, it will mean your iframe will reload with the new destination content, but - all importantly - your iframe will stay on the same domain.
too many problems!
If it were me, personally, I'd rethink your strategy
Overall this is not a simple task, and it isn't 100% fullproof either because there are many things that will cause problems:
Certain sites are designed to break out of frames.
There are ways a user can navigate from a page that can not be easily rewritten i.e. any navigation powered by JavaScript.
Certain pages are designed to break when served up from the wrong host.
Sites that do this kind of 'proxying' of other websites can get into hot water with regards to copyright and usage.
The reason why Google can do it is because they have a lot of time, money and resources... oh and a great deal of what Google translate does is actually handled on the server-side - not in JavaScript.
suggestions
If you are looking for tracking users navigating through your own site:
Use Google Analytics.
Or implement a simple server-side tracking system using cookies.
If you are looking to track users coming to your site and then travelling on to the rest of the world wide web:
Give up, web technologies are designed to prevent things like this.
Or join an online marketing company, they do their best to get around the prevention of things like this.
add a javascript function to your second frame -
<frame id="dataframe" src="frame_a.htm" onload="load()">
let the text box have an id - say "test"
function load()
{
document.getElementById('test').value=document.getElementById('dataframe').src
}

Categories