There are lots of ways to make money on-line; one of the most profitable has been search related banner advertising. For little or no work, advertisers can leave their mark all over the search engines of the world. I had never really considered avoiding them before; probably because for years I have been doing search and I have just learned from the school of hard knocks (and major phishing schemes). However in recent converse with my father in law, it occurred to me that search banner ads may seem like the Holy Grail for the casual searcher. Time is always valuable and wasting time on bogus searches from banner ads can be crippling to the morale. Consider the following things when finding yourself bombarded with search banner ads.
Banner Ads: Remember Your Search: My father in law was looking for work on-line. This can be one of the most dangerous types of search because when you type in something very specific like “Prison Chaplin Red Rock Arizona” or something very vague like “Electrician Connecticut” the search will often come back to you with exactly what you’re looking for…in the banner ads. Banner ads are run by affiliate websites who track your search habits to get you the exact search result you wanted. They often don’t do much more than redirect your search internally and get you all turned around. For that reason it’s important to remember what you’re searching for; it’s not affiliate web addresses; it’s whatever your search is. So if you find a result for “Electrician Connecticut” and one of the banner ads says, “Kimberly Clark Connecticut Electrician Jobs,” but the URL (web address) is really to some suspect looking job search board, you’re better off going back to the job source (Kimberly Clark) then to anywhere else. If the company “offering” the job on this web search isn’t “offering” anything on their own website, it probably is just a bogus runaround.
Banner Ads: Don’t Get Sucked In to A Bogus Search: When you click on a banner ad which has the exact thing that you’re looking for and you end up in a maze of screens, offers for testosterone supplements, anti-abortion rhetoric, or what have you, the whole search game can end up taxing you beyond your available patience. When you feel like you’ve been duped, best to exit promptly rather than keeping up the search and getting more and more lost in a bogus search.
Banner Ads: Search Deeper: The banner ad companies have put a lot of time and resources into knowing what you’re looking for before you do. For that reason, search can’t just be so lackadaisical anymore; you need to put in as much energy into the search as the ad companies do; at least as much! Once you have done your preliminary search, you should always dig a little bit deeper. If it looks like you could find the result of your search elsewhere, go there first, rather than following a bunch of bogus screens back to where you started.
Banner Ads: Conclusion: Search is a great tool which can be both useful and instructive. One needs to be wary of banner ads though because they can often lead you down a confusing road which can leave you frustrated and more hopeless than anything else.
