Toronto Mike

The Google Adwords Maple Music Redirect Mystery

Adwords

I've never met Buffalo Boy, but I helped build his blog and I help him out now and then.  Earlier today, I received an S.O.S. email from him.  A visit to buffaloboymike.com was resolving at maplemusic.com.

At first I didn't believe it, because it didn't happen in my Firefox.  Then, I tried it in IE and saw it with my old eyes.  There was clearly a redirect from Buffalo Boy's blog to the official Maple Music website.  I tried it in Chrome and saw the same thing.  I was intrigued.

I reviewed every line of the source code looking for a redirect script that may have piggy backed its way in there with an image or video Buffalo Boy put on his site.  Everything was clean.  I checked out the Movable Type templates, deleted the commented out countdown script to Spring Training 2008 and trouble shot this sucker to death, scratching my head the whole time.  Then, I had that eureka moment.

Buffalo Boys displays Google ads on his site, as I do.  My Firefox suppresses these ads because I use Adblock.  That would explain why I wasn't redirected in Firefox but was redirected in IE and Chrome.  Lo and behold, when I took out his AdSense code, the redirect stopped.

I've never heard of this, and Googling the issue isn't shedding any light on the subject.  How the hell was a Google ad from Maple Music automatically redirecting visitors to maplemusic.com?  Does anyone have a clue?

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