Images Next to Ads are a “No No”, Says Google
Google has clarified it’s rules about ad and image placement for Adsense publishers. The general idea is this,
“We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads.”
They offer examples of what not to do. Here is an example,
The fear is that the images next to the ads could cause a higher click thru rate because visitors assume the images are previews of what they will find when they click the ad. Thus it’s misleading according to Google.
This has been a popular technique used by a lot of high profile bloggers. For example, right now you can find Google ads at CopyBlogger.com that look like this,
Personally, I don’t think it’s always misleading. Sometimes it just enhances a site’s ambience. Like custom bullet points. But I guess Google is worried about the relevance of traffic it’s sending to it’s advertisers. That’s noble.
But where do you draw the line between legitimate ad placement and misleading people. For example, would the ads at the top of this site be considered misleading because they could be mistaken for navigational links?
<--- Or how about these ads built right into the content? If so then me, Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) and millions of other Adsense publishers will be in violation too.
I think the real problem are spammers - people who build entire sites of fluff content just to dupe visitors into clicking links. But how do you prevent that? I’ll suggest educating web surfers. The more informed people are the less likely they are to be tricked by spam sites. And once people stop falling for those sites they will slowly disappear. But I guess that puts a lot of faith into the world at large.
Good luck with that, right?
Tags: Adsense, Images, Google, Rules, Placement, Click Thru Rate, bloggers, copyblogger, problogger
