Anti-RWT ads filter

As you might have noticed Runescape Reader's Digest blog is RWT ads free. Today I'd like to tell you how it was achieved and how you can do the same on your fan site or blog.

It all started when Joost (owner of Runetower) shared with me his "black" list of RWT sites. I poured it into my AdSense Competitive Ads Filter, changed all ads to graphical ones and voila - RWT ads were gone. Only two weeks later I spotted a new RWT ad and had to update the filter. And so it went, very little maintenance was required.

But there was still a need to update the filter periodically and the list grew over time. I again started to feel like fighting my own battle against RWT ads. I did not want to fight it alone! So I ended up creating a simple "collaborative" tool, where fan site owners could go, grab the latest filter and contribute their "black" lists. I shared it with Runetower and TruthScape and since then was making all filter updates in there.

To be honest, I am not sure if Joost and Qeltar are still using this tool. In any case, I do and it is still there, up and running and containing the latest "black" list of RWT sites. If you are interesting in receiving access to this tool, let me know (via email please, vaskor_runewise@yahoo.com), and I'll be happy to give you access to it as well.

P.S. Eventually, I'd love to see Jagex hosting this kind of list and collaborative tool. That way all fan sites could benefit from it. I did post a suggestion about it on RSOF (feel free to bump it, by the way :-))

Runescape Ads Filtering

You may have noticed some changes in the blog layout. There were indeed a few things I changed in the last few days. First of all, I added the Blog History and Blog Topics sections, so you could find older posts much easier.
Also I finally decided to do something about various Runescape Gold ads, which Google kept showing in the blog. Believe me, I liked them no more than you...
People sometime think that it is easy to filter the ads, well, I can tell you it is NOT, especially for 'a one person team'. I would never be able to do it by myself. It is one of the reasons why I don't have any ads at Runewise. Fortunately, Joost from Runetower was very kind to share with me a pre-compiled filter which he and Aliensvortex from Global Runescape have created. I am very grateful for that.
So the filter is in place now and should start working within next 4-5 hours (according to Google). Hopefully, it will take care about the problem.
And the last change was simply graphical, I replaced text ads with images.

I guess that's it. Enjoy!