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Does Google approve of AdSense links looking like navigation links ?
I have always believed that one of the rules when using AdSense is that the links should always obviously be AdSense links.That is why this article at the official A look inside Google AdSense blog surprised me.
In the article they tell how an AdSense user doubled their AdSense revenue by moving their AdSense to a "convenient unobtrusive location"
They display a Before and After screenshot of the positioning and write this paragraph,
"Recently, Julie experimented with optimizing her link unit ad placement. She removed the existing 120x90 link unit from the uppermost right corner of her pages, and instead placed a 468x15 link unit at the top of her articles. In doing so, Julie found a convenient, unobtrusive location and saw her readers naturally gravitating towards the link unit. Her efforts led to an immediate doubling of her revenue -- an increase that has been sustained since the move."
Now to me, it looks like the AdSense links have been placed to misslead visitors in to assuming they are part of the internal navigation system of the site.
Does this article now confirm that Google approves of this technique?
Follow up - 28th Feb 2007
I emailed the Inside Adsense team raising this issue and was pleasantly surprised to receive a reply earlier this evening. I would like to copy it here, but have asked their permission first before doing so.The crux of their reply was than it *IS NOT* acceptable to position AdSense links in a way that blend in with, or blatently look like internal navigation links.
They also pointed out that the links on the site they featured were *Link Unit* ads, which take people who click them to a page of relevant ads, and advertisers are *Not charged* unless the user clicks again on one of the ad options.
Hopefully we will one day get a clear clarification that AdSense links should not be blatantly positioned to look like internal navigation links, a practise that in my opionion is abused far too often.
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