Google Adsense update. The latest post on Google Adsense blog talks about “Another look at optimizations” which mentions two optimization guidelines for your site with Adsense Ads.
From Google Adsense blog:
We’ve given you many optimization tips over the years, and, as you know, it’s important to consider how your ad implementations affect not only your click-through rate, but your users’ and advertisers’ experience as well. To support this, we’d like to remind you of the following two guidelines when optimizing your site.
1. Ads shouldn’t be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.
For example, ads shouldn’t be placed under titles such as “Dallas Business Opportunities” or “Today’s Hot Deals”. Placing ads directly below titles such as these implies to your users that the links in the ads are publisher-created content. The example below shows a placement that does not follow this guideline.
2. Ads should be easily distinguishable from surrounding content.
Similarly, you should not place an ad unit by a group of links that has identical colors and line spacing. Doing so may cause users to think the ad unit is content created by you. In this situation, we recommend using a different color for the ad titles or indenting the ad unit to help distinguish the ads from your own content. This screenshot shows an implementation that does not follow this guideline:
As you can imagine, users who click on ads that they think are publisher-created content may lose trust in your site and decide not to return in the future. It’s important to keep their interests in mind, as well as your own.
Also, advertisers can tell which sites have a high conversion rate for them using Placement Performance reports. A conversion occurs when a click on an ad leads directly to user behavior that the advertiser deems valuable, such as a purchase, sign-up, page view, or lead. Advertisers have the option to exclude your site from their campaigns and may do so if it is not leading to conversions.
We believe these guidelines invest in the long-term health of the relationship between AdSense publishers, AdWords advertisers, and your sites’ visitors, and that they will help ensure your continued success in the AdSense program.
Posted by Meridith Major - AdSense Publisher Support
Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 12:36:00 PM
My take on this update
Yes, I have noticed that some blogs and web sites are implementing the ads below the post title. I am one of them too but my intention/purpose is not to make it look like the ads or links are publisher-created content. But I guess Google is thinking the other way around. From now on, I will follow Google’s guidelines so that I would no longer have problems in the future with my ads. So, I am changing the alignment of my Google Adsense ads by using the left/right alignment or by wrapping it from my post now and also placing one at the bottom of each of my single posts so that my guests, readers and visitors can clearly make out that they are really ads. Thanks to Marhgil for the heads up.
I am wondering when will Google is going to seriously implement these guidelines to blogs and websites. Will they penalised them right away in anyway or advise them to change the positioning? How about you, what’s your take on this?
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