Porn Surfing 101

Free sites and blogs receive revenue if they send you to a pay site that you end up joining. Various methods are used by free sites to get you to go where they want you to go, which explains why navigation can be a pain when surfing for porn.

Banner and Text Ads

The most obvious and straightforward way of getting you to visit a pay site is through the display of banner ads and text links. Just click on the banner or text link and you are taken to the sponsor's site. Text and banner ads are a user-friendly means of encouraging you to visit sponsoring sites; they are how BananaGuide makes its suggestions known. But, elsewhere on the Net, other more intrusive methods are commonplace:

Popup Consoles

Sometimes when you click on a text or image link, a new screen "pops-up". This can happen when you enter a site, moving around within a site, or when you exit a site. When you try to close the screen, another one replaces it. This can repeat itself several times and in its worst form, you are taken into a loop, known as a "mouse-trap" or a "circle-jerk", that requires you to shut down your browser or even turn off your computer. Most surfers now use the pop-up blocker that's built into their browser to keep this problem under control.

Misleading Links

These are text or image links that take you to somewhere other than you expected. A common form is when the webmaster hides the entrance to a free site. The splash page of the site will have some text is larger letters, such as "ENTER HERE". You click on the link and are taken somewhere else completely. Other varieties of misleading links are "Click here for hot pics" "Next gallery" or a thumbnail photo that takes goes to a pay site instead of the full-sized photo.

Unfortunately for surfers, misleading links are ubiquitous on the adult Web.