I have come across a few websites lately and noticed that they are displaying more than 3 adsense content units per page. I thought we were only allowed 3 Adsense Content Units, 3 Adsense Link Units and 2 Adsense Search Bars? Am I missing something here? Are bigger websites with more authority and traffic given permission to do so?...because 4 or 5 ads displaying on their pages are all displaying, no WHITE BLOCKS, (blank space ads) like if I were to display more than 3 on my site, the 4th one wouldn't display. Holla!
Either: 1. They breaking the guidelines and Google has not disabled them yet or 2. They are premium publishers and as such can negotiate their own terms and conditions with Google.
The normal TOS does not apply to premium publishers. They negotiate their own terms with Google directly. Some non premium publishers are allowed 4 content units per page depending on the content quality and quantity. If your adsense account is assigned a adsense rep, ask him if he can approve an additional ad unit for your site. My rep approved the use of 4 ad units per page on one of my sites which, on an average, has more than 1000 words of content per page.
The fourth or fifth ad might be from other networks, who are using adsense as backup network. I am using 3 adsense ads and one media.net ad on same page. The media.net sometimes shown just like adsense's "adchoices".
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1346295?hl=en#Ad_limit_per_page Unless, yes of course they are premium or use backups ads that display adsense ads.