Meta: Site redirects on mobile

Submitted by corundum on
Is anyone else experiencing a ridiculous amount of site redirects while using mobile? Usually it happens every once in a while but today it is happening to me every single click, basically making the blog unreadable. I don't want to complain, I just want to make sure that the mods / Brian know this is happening. Sorry if this was already posted but I literally cannot click to the second page of the board without a redirect.

GoWings2008

October 5th, 2015 at 10:39 AM ^

and I haven't checked back yet today to see if its still happening.  I had the same thought you did, wanted to make sure it wasn't my phone or my carrier doing it.  I have Verizon, not sure if that makes a difference.

Seth

October 5th, 2015 at 10:45 AM ^

This should not be happening anymore now.

When it happened before it was because one of the ad networks we run had some of these redirect ads in the mobile version. I paused them until they assured me they had found the problem and cleaned it up.

I've paused them again. Let me know if it keeps happening after 11 am today.

TSWC

October 5th, 2015 at 10:58 AM ^

It had been happening to me a fair amount, but only occasionally, for a while, but then stopped a few weels ago maybe. Hadn't been a problem since. Until yesterday when it was unstoppable--redirected me every single time I tried to load the page. I eventually gave up and downloaded the app. Thanks for working on it!

johnthesavage

October 5th, 2015 at 10:47 AM ^

This is a type of mobile ad -- Google recently announced they would downrank sites that use these ads which automatically redirect to your app / play store on mobile. I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about but they've happened to me here before, and just when I scroll the page or something like that.

I assume mgoblog is doing this on purpose but I don't think it's wise. These kind of ads cause negative user experiences and drive people to use ad-blockers.

LSAClassOf2000

October 5th, 2015 at 12:05 PM ^

I discovered this the other day actually - I was getting annoyed with the issue on Android so I tested this very thing on my wife's iPhone just for kicks and it works without issue. I normally access it from a desktop anyway unless I am at a game, but when you're trying to read the site on the fly, the redirects have been a major stumbling block. 

ituralde

October 5th, 2015 at 12:00 PM ^

Would it be difficult to track and/or block redirect ads from the site side?

 

I've never run an ad-supported site before, but I believe the following should be possible:

1. Prefetch all ad content

2. Parse, search for redirects

3. If redirect found, Block and log it so you can complain to your ad provider.  

4. If redirect not found, render ad content

 

 

TruBluMich

October 5th, 2015 at 12:20 PM ^

They're in an Iframe, so you could read the URL and load the HTML on the server and search for redirects. The load it would put on the server though would be pretty big. Not to mention the ad provider will most likely suspend your account for false views.

ituralde

October 5th, 2015 at 3:40 PM ^

Anything in an iframe you could simply re-package as a string that you could prefetch clientside in javascript before generating the actual DOM object.  You'd then log by having the JS talk to the server.  

Realistically, it should still count as a single view, though I'm not sure how ads track view count.