Some Internet Explorer 7 Breaks AdSense
I may have rushed this one. While the issue exists, it appears that a large number of people do not have this problem. Understand that while reading this, and read the update at the end.
Possibly the most important thing web developers need to learn about Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 beta is that it breaks one of their favorite advertising options: Google AdSense.
I noticed this today, that none of my ads were appearing in IE7. Considering that by the end of the year, IE7 should be available for almost all versions of Windows, unless Microsoft wants to face the ire of developers everywhere, it had better fix this. According to a poster at Digital Point, the bug is not evident in the version of Internet Explorer in Windows Vista build 5270.
There is one possibility: that IE7’s new security features block AdSense by decision, some security default that blocks certain types of JavaScript, something that would force Google to alter the way Google serves AdSense ads just to avoid losing a large percentage of the two billion a year AdSense pulls in. I wonder what other methods you could serve ads by? Maybe installing some code on your server that processes the ads locally and serves them as local JavaScript? I guess it all depends on what is causing the bug, and whether the IE team is willing to write an exception.
Oh, and Chitika doesn’t work either.
UPDATE: I’m also seeing those ad links within articles, the ones that hotlink random words to useless ads, not working in IE7. Example on this page.
UPDATE: According to Robert Scoble in the comments below:
This is NOT intentional behavior. The IE 7 team is working on this as we speak. Remember, this isn’t even a full beta. It’s an inbetween test release so that we can find things like this that don’t work right.
I also received an email from Google PR, and they said:
I wanted to clarify your recent post that I think may be based on some incorrect information. IE7 disables javascript with the security setting on “high”, which would not allow AdSense ads to show along with numerous features of most websites. IE6 works exactly the same and the phenomenon is definitely not specific to Google AdSense. It is likely that whomever did the test had their security setting on “high”. However, this is not the default setting and we believe most users would not have a good experience on the web having javascript blocked.
Of course, my IE7 settings were not set to high, but medium-high. I can confirm that by going to Tools >> Internet Option, clicking on the Advanced tab and clicking “Reset all Defaults”, I got my ads back. I can also confirm that, with the ads working, if I switched to high security, the ads dissapeared. Just one little problem: I’ve been using Gmail all day. On the high setting, the one Google says disables JavaScript, Gmail doesn’t work, or at least isn’t its regular self. You get this message:
JavaScript must be enabled in order for you to use Gmail in standard view. However, it seems JavaScript is either disabled or not supported by your browser. To use standard view, enable JavaScript by changing your browser options, then try again.
To use Gmail’s basic HTML view, which does not require JavaScript, click here.If you want to view Gmail on a mobile phone or similar device click here.
So Google must be misinterpreting the problem. I think I would know if I had JavaScript disabled! I haven’t been using the internet for two weeks, I know how this stuff works, and no one needs to school me on websites needing JavaScript to run. All JavaScript based websites I used, including Google’s own and MSN’s, have had no problems in the three weeks since I installed IE7. The only thing that didn’t run were JavaScript-based ads.
Okay, Windows Live Mail had issues as well. But Google.com, Google Maps, Windows Live Local, CoComment, Flickr, classified Windows Live betas and a million other websites worked perfectly. The only thing that didn’t was JavaScript-served ads. I’m assuming it was an advanced JavaScript setting, maybe something that carried over from specific settings in IE6.
I remember something about being allowed to set specific JavaScript security in IE6, and I don’t see that option in IE7, so maybe the setting was there. It must have been some setting I don’t have access to in IE7, that was set in IE6, that when interpreted by IE7 broke AdSense. I couldn’t find or fix the setting (and I’ve been trying for a while), but resetting the browser did it.
A warning: When you reset IE7, you lose everything. You lose history, temporary files, stored passwords, home page, every freakin’ thing, except your favorites. So be prepared if you do.
So, while not everyone is going to have this problem, others have, and have expressed their fears that many of their visitors will never see their ads. I doubt a large enough number of people will have this problem, at least not enough to seriously affect people’s livelihoods.
Of course, there’s something to consider: If there’s a secret IE7 setting, a registry key perhaps, that disabled something JavaScript-served external ads rely upon while leaving things like Gmail alone, how many people would be interested in turning that on?
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Pingback by 鉴踪集 J-Log.net » Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) 狙击AdSense??? | February 8, 2006
googlejuicer
So it say here that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 can block Google Adsense. Is that true? Does that explain why Google is so keen to join the browser wars? Does that mean internet users can block Google from becoming bigger…
Trackback by gapingvoid | February 8, 2006
The fact Chitika doesn’t work isn’t that bad at all. It sucks. I’m no longer using it. I always lost more than 50% of my clicks, making it a shame to sacrifice so much place of my blog to their ads.
They were never targeted, even if I inserted keywords manually, I’d still get off topic things. They were never local, although now I see an ad, right above this post that refers to a Belgian shop called Winkelwijs. The ad is for Star Wars, Battlefront on PS2. How very relevant.
I kicked it out. It was fun because they promised a lot of cash, but as time went by they had to revise that promise I think. I know for sure I’m not the only one who thinks this. I know plenty of people who’ve quitted Chtitka. All of them for the same reason.
Their ‘globalness’ (offering a local store) isn’t there from the start. Whenever someone from my country clicked an ad, the click was counted and at the same time rated as invalid. No store could deliver oversea for the listed price, therefor no one bought the product, plus most of the stores just didn’t want to ship goods over the ocean.
That left me with surfers who wanted to buy but couldn’t, with clickers who had no ‘curiosity’ intentions. Both are relevant for my payout, but I’m pretty sure they were all ‘filtered’ by some sort of judging system nobody has insight to.
That said, too bad AdSense is broken too. Now that is a real shame. I hope they fix it.
Comment by Coolz0r | February 8, 2006
[…] InsideGoogle reports that � Internet Explorer 7 Breaks AdSense. The most interesting part is here: There is one possibility: that IE7’s new security features block AdSense by decision, some security default that blocks certain types of JavaScript […]
Pingback by vrypan|net|log » � Internet Explorer 7 Breaks AdSense � InsideGoogle � part of the Blog News Channel | February 8, 2006
Did you just fix it, or do I have some kind of gift seeing nonexistent ads?
It’s quite ironic to see BOTH AdSense and Chitika below that post.
Comment by Tim | February 8, 2006
I’m pretty sure it depends on what browser YOU are using Tim, not the browser the author is using. If you don’t have IE7 then the ads will show up. If you’re using IE7, no ads will show.
Comment by mwilson | February 8, 2006
Using IE7, I see adsense ads just fine.
Comment by Dazzlindonna | February 8, 2006
Use CCleaner and they will work just fine.
Comment by Ryan | February 8, 2006
Microsoft wants to be sure no one makes a buck from the internet without Microsoft getting a piece of it. This is just the first in a coming series of customer-unfriendly attempts to destroy Microsoft’s competition in advertising, subscriptioins, id management, etc.
Microsoft is finally living up to it’s billing as evil. Leave them. Encourage your friends to leave them. Get a mac, use Mozilla, encourage your friends and family and business to do the same.
Microsoft is going to single-handedly destroy the Internet as we know it if they get a chance.
Comment by leavethem | February 8, 2006
Report your problem to MS, not to the blogasphere. The blogasphere is a hodge-podge of malcontents who argue to and fro about how sweet Lord of the Rings is.
Comment by smith288 | February 8, 2006
[…] Whoa! If this is true, it’s really bad news for many sites, including ours. It seems the IE7 Beta breaks Adsense. The ads just don’t show up, according to the Inside Google blog I noticed this today, that none of my ads were appearing in IE7. Considering that by the end of the year, IE7 should be available for almost all versions of Windows, unless Microsoft wants to face the ire of developers everywhere, it had better fix this. Source: Inside Google […]
Pingback by Does the IE7 Beta 2 Break Google AdSense? @ Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech | February 8, 2006
leavethem: Good grief, chill out man. Ever think that maybe …. it’s a beta, and they didn’t intend to break it?
Not all company’s are like Google, leaving their products in beta for eternity and causing users to lose touch with what the word “Beta” means in software development.
Comment by matt | February 8, 2006
This is NOT intentional behavior. The IE 7 team is working on this as we speak. Remember, this isn’t even a full beta. It’s an inbetween test release so that we can find things like this that don’t work right.
Comment by Robert Scoble | February 8, 2006
[…] Internet Explorer 7 Breaks Adsense (via gapingvoid) […]
Pingback by Pig Pen - Web Standards Compliant Web Design Blog » Blog Archive » Internet Explorer 7 Breaks Adsense | February 8, 2006
I am using the beta version and i changed no settings in it. I can very easily see all the ads there. The problem does not persist on all the systems and websites .. least to say
-Abhishek
Comment by Abhishek Goyal | February 8, 2006
Thanks for the update!
You don’t need to do a full “restore all defaults” update. You could just reset your security settings to the default level.
Comment by Robert Scoble | February 8, 2006
I’ve found a number of bugs, especially with javascript. It’s a developer release. It happens.
Comment by Randy Charles Morin | February 8, 2006
“I haven’t been using the internet for two weeks”
Well anyone who has used it for two weeks would have been able to troubleshoot such and easy task, a simple Google search shows running something like Ccleaner resolved the issue the day IE7 B2 was leaked, no resetting defaults, no conspiracy theories about it.
Rushed is right.
Comment by Ryan | February 8, 2006
From CCleaner’s website, what it does to Internet Explorer:
First off, if this was an issue with preferences or security settings, how would CCleaner would fix it? Additionally, what is this Google search you speak of? None of the searches I ran, including those that included the term “ccleaner”, revealed no well-known fix. Perhaps you’d like to elaborate.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | February 9, 2006
Robert, I did reset my security settings. Wasn’t enough. That button only switches back security option to defaults, while the button I clicked erases any and all changes to the browser. Since resetting security settings didn’t fix it for me, I can only assume that it is a setting not exposed in the options dialog.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | February 9, 2006
Ccleaner has nothing to do with security settings, never said it did. Simply, I installed IE7, no Google ads were showing. I did a few searches and in about 10 minutes found a comment that said use Ccleaner. I ran Ccleaner (which I had never heard of before), ads showed up upon reopening the browser, no rebooting, no touching internet options.
Ccleaner also does a registry sweep in addition to what you quoted.
Now I don’t know what it fixed, but I know enough to guess that the IE7 installer probably forgot to clean something or do some kind of maintenance, which is understandable in a beta application that already has other more prominent installation issues.
As to where I found the info on Ccleaner I am unsure, I think either BetaNews or ieXbeta. I do know that is was through searching for a resolution to JavaScript display problems in IE7 instead of posting a blog about it.
Sincerely,
- Ryan
Comment by Ryan | February 9, 2006
If resetting your security policies didn’t fix it, it doesn’t sound like a hidden setting either. I guess it’s really just a bug not related to any setting.
It works for me. (WinXP Home SP2 IE7 pre-Beta 2 custom settings)
Comment by Tim | February 9, 2006
Okay, thanks Ryan. I say to always blog things like this, so that when people search for it in Google, they’ll have some sort of solution. Since the websites I found when searching for this specific problem were fairly useless, I hope that this post will rank high and offer some good suggestions to searchers.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | February 9, 2006
Received an email from someone at Google, who says about their engineers:
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | February 10, 2006
[…] Nathan at InsideGoogle says that his Internet Explorer 7 beta is blocking Google AdSense and Chitika contextual advertisements from being served. Google AdSense is the life and blood of many in the web publishing and development community and site owners, as well as Google, will not be happy to hear about this bug. […]
Pingback by » Internet Explorer 7 Blocking Google AdSense? : Search Engine Journal | February 13, 2006
[…] Nathan at InsideGoogle says that his Internet Explorer 7 beta is blocking Google AdSense and Chitika contextual advertisements from being served. Google AdSense is the life and blood of many in the web publishing and development community and site owners, as well as Google, will not be happy to hear about this bug. […]
Pingback by James’s Blog » Internet Explorer 7 Blocking Google AdSense? | February 13, 2006
I have noticed that in the new IE 7 beta, my ads work, but only the first time I view the page. If I go to a different page on our site, the ads don’t show unless I refresh the page.
Anybody else seen this?
Comment by Kevin | February 13, 2006
In follow up to my previous comment, it appears that IE 7 Beta doesn’t load the adsense ads unless refreshed ONLY when the charset is using UTF-8. If I change it back to “charset=iso-8859-1″ then it loads them every time without needing to refresh it. Only IE 7 Beta does this. I tested in 6.0 and it loads the adsense ads just fine with either charset. Go figure …
Comment by Kevin | February 13, 2006
My php script runs perfectly in IE6 but its not at all responding in IE7 Is that the problem with my script or with IE7
Comment by Alex Jeyasingh | February 16, 2006
Thanks for update
Comment by Viki | February 20, 2006
[…] >>> If Microsoft add a Google-like search engine hardcore in windows, i dont think Google would be happy…! I already heard that IE7 might block google adsense ads from appearing. Click Here for detailed info on IE7 breaks adsense… […]
Pingback by ZeroneWorld - (Binary Does Matter) » Microsoft Search Engine In Next 6 Months | March 2, 2006
The ad’s are being blocked because google is dropping 3rd party cookie in your browser (GoogleCookieTest). It then tries to read the cookie back. If AdSense doesn’t can’t read the cookie back, it will serve up a 1×1 blank pixel in place of an ad. If your security settings have block 3rd party cookies set, you will then not see any ads.
Comment by John D | March 7, 2006
Ie7 vs Google… who would have thought!
Comment by How to make more Adsense money | April 21, 2006
My addesnse doen’s display sometimes Whta the problems
Comment by SEO | April 25, 2006
Well here’s a nice damper for IE7…look at these websites: http://www.msie7.com and http://www.microsoftie7.com and http://www.microsoftinternetexplorer7.com
Comment by Yang Nakagawa | October 27, 2006
We at Team Routrua have started a new blog and we are deeply concerned about the loss of adsense revenue. Is there anyway around this IE7 bug or we doomed to lose adsense revenue.
http://blogs.routura.com/
Comment by Team Routura | March 8, 2007
There really isn’t much point changing the settings in my own IE7, so that I can see my own ads, is there? If I open in Firefox, I see ads, in IE7, no ads. It is on default settings, so I would expect that a good part of my market will not be seeing the ads, unless Microsoft makes some changes to IE7 for the next upgrade. I have to wonder - does Microsoft want Google to fail badly enough to sink all of our businesses as well?
Comment by paula | June 5, 2007
I am horrified that months have gone by and there still seems to be no consensus on what exactly the cause of the problem is and when a fix will be released. The behaviour I am seeing with IE7 is not only that ads do not display but that NOTHING on the page gets displayed: the browser somehow gets confused and tries to construct and follow a non-existent link from the script data. Note that Amazon links cause a similar behaviour too, suggesting that the impact is wider than just pages using AdSense. I suggest if possible that authors do the following: display a message to IE6 users telling them not to upgrade; display an alternative page to IE7 users recommending them to use another browser.
Comment by Neil | June 22, 2007
Hi guys,
Seems to be that IE7 just blocks javascript that comes from domain that doesn’t match the originating one, when some security settings are set. This is mainly done to prevent those nasty XSS attacks.
Cheers.
Comment by alexeich | June 25, 2007
Vista + IE7 is a pester in my everyday life and Ì sincerely wish I had never started to run this on my new laptop. I am unable to read my Gmail. My blogspot blog makes trouble, and so on and so forth. Yes I have allowed ALL sorts of cookies, even thos from thrid party that I usually want to accept before allowing - and no, IE “does not allow cookies”.
Comment by S. Ny | July 13, 2007
This is not just on IE for me. After upgrading to Vista Business, I can’t see AdSense ads on any page in my Firefox browser either.
I’m convinced this is another way Microsoft is not complying with the anti-trust settlement.
Comment by Scott Supak | July 16, 2007
I agree with Scott above. It is not just with IE7. I am experiencing the same problem with Firefox 2.0.0.5 on Vista Home Premium. I have talked with Google Adsense tech. support about this and they don’t seem to realize that it is not just an isolated incident.
Comment by Jeff Clark | July 21, 2007
[…] I think IE7 break Google and the Google ads don’t show up in IE7. There is one possibility: that IE7’s new security features block AdSense by decision, some security default that blocks certain types of JavaScript, something that would force Google to alter the way Google serves AdSense ads. You may read the full article here. __________________ Diamond jewelry, diamonds […]
Pingback by Google Adsense Search breaking in IE7 - Webmaster Forum | August 1, 2007
Wow that was frustrating - I spent the last hour trying to figure out this problem! Your blog has the answer as mentioned above by one of your readers it is vital your charset=iso-8859-1 not utf-8. With this set your google adsense ads should now diplay!
Comment by learn japanese | August 9, 2007
The charset “solution” above makes no difference for me. The problem still exists with Firefox 2.0.0.6 and IE7 on Windows Vista Home Premium.
Comment by Jeff Clark | August 13, 2007