Paranoid about coop ad signature

I would like to suggest getting rid of the string that trails the ad HTML:

<!-- an-hl -->

It is too easy for Google to identify pages with this and penalize sites in the network. Today the network may not be big enough to think Google is paying attention, but this string just makes it too easy to identify sites in the network. Better safe than sorry.

I assume this is used to validate the existence of the ad? If that is the purpose, how about allowing each account to define their own string under account settings, to help guide the validation routine?

 

I don't think that will be a problem - that would be like google banning sites for being part of a web circle.

 

A couple of suggestions:

1. About the tag (I also think that it's not very good to have common identifier of ad network):

You can use something like

md5( 'DigitalPoint' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']; ) 

PHP:

instead of 'an-hl'. This way it will always be different - yet you can auto-validate the tag.

2. Instead of the

$p = substr ('../../../../../../../../../../', 0, $i * 3); 

PHP:

construction, why not to have:

$ad_file = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/ad_network_ads.txt';

PHP:

Thank you

( Just placed ad code to www.lena.karpinsky.com - Original Abstract Paintings )

 

Another solution is to put a code that inserts the ad signature only if the request comes from the digitalpoint server (by IP or by checking user agent).

if ( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] == 'digitalpoint-validate' ) {
print $the_comment_tag;
}

PHP:

 

Funny, I expected a reply to my posts...

 

With respect, it doesn't really matter what we think about the network. Google may think differently.

 

Whats wrong with it? All of the links are perfectly visable and clickable.