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This weekend's ad for the New York City DUI attorney was the last straw for the top-of-the-page Google Ads banner. I'll keep Google elsewhere on the site for now, but the page topper is just too high profile a spot to give over to the AdSense network's erratic selection. So it's gone for now. A Google rep I chatted with Friday at USC commiserated—blog front pages that touch on a wide range of topics are the hardest to match ads with, he said. We're working together on an alternative method. I'm rethinking how to best use sponsorship and advertising to support LA Observed, but for now the banner spot is available for ads placed independent of Google or Blogads. Potential sponsors should begin with the advertising info page.
Speaking of...: Google's search engine referred 44,000 new visitors to LA Observed last month, according to my server's stats. That was more than triple any other referrer. The most popular post in February was the exclusive on changes in the New York Times Los Angeles bureau, followed by the scoop on the Orange County Register losing an investigative reporter to the LAT.
Final in-house blurb: There's no explanation given, but the entire blogroll at Die Dezentrale, a weblog published on the site of the German newspaper Handelsblatt, consists of links to Los Angeles newsblogs. Good to know that LA Observed is valued for its Nachrichten, Lokalnachrichten [und] Historisches.