New Adsense rule: No ads below misleading post titles
März 28, 2008
Google Adsense announced an update today regarding new rules regarding the proper way of showing ads.
The first one referred to advertisements placed under a title that may mislead visitors, while the second reiterated Adsense’s rule on ads that look very similar to website links.
The new rules are as follows.
1. Ads should not be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies the ads are not ads.
For example, ads should not 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.
When I first read the update, I thought Google wants us not to place ads under any blog post title. That certainly is not good especially for this site where ads below post titles are the ones with the highest CTR.
After re-reading it, however, I figured that Google only disallows ads under titles or headings that “may imply that the ads are not ads,” meaning they are not allowed only under titles which can mislead visitors into believing that the ads are part of the blog content. For example, if you have titles or headings that say, “The Best Free Deals” or “Here are our best offers,” you cannot place Adsense ads below them.
The idea is that users can be led to believe that the “content” below a misleading title was created by the blog poster when, in fact, those are ads.
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 second rule is easy. Google does not want publishers to have links in the site with a similar formatting as the Adsense ads (and vice-versa). Obviously, such similar appearance can trick users into believing that the ads are not ads. What you can do, though, is to have a different format for the ad or move its position so it doesn’t look like it is part of the content.
Is this a good development for you, publishers?
März 28th, 2008 at %H:%M
most of my post title pa naman implies enumeration, such as “Batangas Beach Resorts”. Either I have to visit each of my posts and change the misleading titles or to reposition the ads. I decided to reposition it, that’s the easier path. :) kapag bumaba yung CTR, i’ll go to the harder path. :(
März 29th, 2008 at %H:%M
not a good news :(
März 30th, 2008 at %H:%M
I think this move was made because of the high CTR to websites with misleading links. This would surely benefit the advertisers but not the publishers.
März 30th, 2008 at %H:%M
I think this move of google was just a respond to their advertisers sentiments about clicks that was not really suppose to be a right one… Both the advertisers and readers were fooled by the scheming publishers…
März 31st, 2008 at %H:%M
base on those examples, I think that it is just appropriate for google to stop those schemes. Its more likely to trick the users rather than informing them about the ads.. but thats just me..
jeez.. reCAPTCHA words are difficult to read.. hehe..
April 2nd, 2008 at %H:%M
I think that I have seen this rule around before but not from adsense.
April 6th, 2008 at %H:%M
[...] A new Google Adsense rule has been rolled out a few days ago by Google stating that Adsense Ads are now not allowed to be placed under misleading titles. Read more about it here. [...]
Juli 10th, 2009 at %H:%M
yep thats true, many of my friends got their account banned cause of similar looks.
Juli 28th, 2009 at %H:%M
Thanks for informing us.
Oktober 20th, 2009 at %H:%M
Thanks, that’s very enlightening….i’m new to blogging…
pls also, can you tell me what to do, my adsense was approved one day, i was so happy…then i added a slideshow, then i deleted it, i started rearranging, i asked my friends to visit my page…by the next day, my id was disabled….i reapplied but no reply until now….