Hi everyone,

This week's policy blog post, titled "Don't run the risk of click and
miss," is about ad implementations that could lead to accidental
clicks.

To make sure everyone understands this particular issue, please keep
the conversations on this thread focused on this specific topic. Last
week, a lot of people seemed to have questions about separate issues,
and I just want to make sure no one gets confused about the policy.
Please feel free to start new threads to talk about those things this
week.

Thanks!
-AdSensePro

The blog post can be found here:
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/05/dont-run-risk-of-click-and-miss.html

Hi,

Does it mean we are not allowed to put AdSense ads near embedded video
player?

On May 4, 1:40 am, AdSensePro wrote:

This is a "common sense" reminder. Thanks for posting it!

If advertisers make no money with their ads, they'll (probably -or-
eventually) stop advertising altogether. This is bad for both Google -
and- the publishers (meaning us).

It's in our best interest to send valuable, relevant and interested
(albeit, not accidental) clicks to Google's advertisers. The reward
for doing so is a decent ad revenue stream for a long, long time.

Happy "adsensing", everyone ; )

Claude

http://beep.name/2006/06/16/google-blogs-all-the-time/
http://beep.name/2007/04/17/php-code-generators/

On 3 mai, 13:40, AdSensePro wrote:

I think this is going to cause a lot of confusion.

The blog entry says: "Some implementations that could lead to
accidental clicks include placing your ads ... (n)ear site navigation
controls on your pages, such as drop-downs or menu links"

It seems to go against the advice on your own optimization page
(https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?
answer=17954&topic=8437) , which says:

"Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well
because users are focused on those areas of a page."

So which is it? Do we place ads near navigation or not?

Toivo Lainevool

A few questions:

1. link units are best placed near the site's navigation area. They
aren't paid if they are just clicked. Are they also forbidden to be
places near "clickable" areas?
2. ""Business results" can range from an online sale to a page view.
If we detect enough of these clicks and determine that the risk to our
advertisers is too great, we may disable the account." - where is the
publishers fault if an ad is very appealing yet the website is
extremely poor
3. What means "near features of your site that your users may interact
with by clicking."? In a forum, almost all the content is near a link.

+1

On May 3, 10:34 pm, "[email address]" wrote:

I, too, am a bit confused by the guidance. It would be nice if we
could have some examples of what is acceptable and what is not. For
example, would the sidebar ads in my blog qualify as okay or not okay?

http://www.dkeener.com/keenstuff/blog/

I try to make the navigational elements very distinctive by having a
gold links on a dark background for site links with blue links on
white background for Adsense Ads links. (They are more blended on my
main site, and I will have to look at that ... should be clear that
they are not navigational links, but I will look at afresh.) But, the
ads are relatively "near" navigational links, as would no doubt be the
case for thousands of blogs.

If my Ads are deemed to be too close to navigational links, how would
you suggest solving it? The only solutions I can think of are to post
the ads so far down on the sidebar that they are far removed from the
navigational elements (but would be seen by fewer readers) or to go to
a three column format in which navigational links are in a separate
column from ads. And, it's not even clear to me that a separate
sidebar for ads would be an acceptable solution as they could, in
theory, be perceived by some as navigational. Not trying to being
sarcastic, just trying to bound this in terms that a simple guy like
me can (1) understand and (2) address.

Finally, does this apply to referral ads as well as other Adsense
ads?  My understanding of referral ads is that I get paid only when a
product is sold, and not on number of clicks, in which case
"accidental clicks" are irrelevant. If the best way for me to avoid
being penalized is to use only referral ads, I suppose I could go with
that option, but would like to know whether it is a necessity for me
to do so.

Thank you.
Bruce Keener
Keener Living and Keen PDA sites

On May 3, 3:34 pm, "[email address]" wrote:

Why Adsense cant just notify those very users  whose pages are
producing clicks which are considered to be "invalid"?
Why do we, Adsense publishers have to play blindfolded, having no clue
about the business results of the ads placed on our pages?
If those business results are considered to be critical and
nondiscloseable info, then publishers at least could get the abstract
scale of the ad productivity. It could be as showing a simple
indicator which would rate ad's business productivity and maybe
suspiciousness with the words like "bad", "normal" and "good", where
"bad"  would mean  that the advertiser has to take some action to
improve the indicator.
I believe it would be much better then shutting up accounts of
publishers who had no intention to make there pages producing
"invalid" or "fraudulent" clicks.

On May 3, 9:40 pm, AdSensePro wrote:

I can't understand such aggressive policy.

I fully support you when you disallow to cheat the users by masking
link units as menu, or by treating an ad as internal link of the site,
etc.

But if I CLEARLY show an ad banner to a user what is my fault? Yes, it
is in proximity to interactive parts of my site but I *don't* cheat
anybody.
Question to all readers: how often do you miss to click some
"interactive part" of a site? I remember it happened to me last time
when I was dead drunk.

If be more constructive: please define what do you mean under "close
proximity". Is it 1 pixel? Or may be 100? The answer can work out the
problem.

On May 3, 10:54 pm, Senya.s wrote:

I'm in agreement with the other posters on this one.  I believe this
needs a bit more explanation and I'm dumbfounded on why Google would
give such vague information like this in the first place.  It
definitely contradicts with your optimization tips.  On a forum some
ads can be "near" navigational links if using a lower resolution
display (800x600 for example) but aren't a problem when using say
1024x768.  I certainly haven't purposely places ads so to get
accidental clicks from users but I feel that we are all under the gun
on this rule considering almost every ad on the Internet today is
"near" a navigational link of some kind.  This is absolutely absurd
and I certainly hope you rectify our questions and points in another
blog post.

I think this is getting difficult. I think I should just give the
adsense team my server id and password and they can put the ads where
they want them to go.

On May 4, 5:40 am, AdSensePro wrote: