This part of the email: "A reduction in accidental clicks will keep users on your pages, interacting with your content until they choose to click on an ad." leads me to believe that the rest of the ad space won't be clickable at all (not that it will be clickable but will not pay. I tend to agree that a click on "whitespace" nowhere near the ad text shouldn't count as a click and shouldn't pay. If someone wants the ad, they will click on the text (but I do think the description text should be clickable also).
Johnchow has also covered this. http://www.johnchow.com/one-more-reason-to-dump-google-adsense/ When do you guys think this will roll out?
I will be an happy man when i'll get this email from google: We're rolling out a change to our adwords policies to help reduce the crappy ads you are seeing on your site. We are definitively kicking out all arbritrage sites, closing all MFA accounts, and making CPC minimum to $0.25. Visitors clicking on ads will finally experience a good landing page and find the content they were looking for. We are also enforcing controls to avoid those funny ad text like "($hysterical keyword here like Slave, Baby, Women): find and compare prices at website.com"
Yes, I have read that in JOhnchow.com... But I think its good for advertisers.. and may increase the conversions of Google.... also I dont think that it will reduce the earnings.... If someone clicked ur URL accidentally the most probbably he will hit the ESC button or STOP button and it means no earnings to you... Now, with this new ads I think the earnings will remain the same... If a visitor is interested in ur ad then he will click that ad..... Nothing to Worry.... ITS MY GUESS! Let's See what happens next
Why don't you think it'll reduce our earnings? How do you know where visitors are clicking on the ads?
I couldn't believe it, so I guess now its time to bring out the heavy artilery! *Hint Hint* ... Affiliate Banners!
i don't think its a big deal. if you search for something like cars (or anything that will bring up ads) on google.com, check out the ads on the right side. only the title is clickable. so if someone really wants to click on the ad, they have to click on that. it's not like google is making the white space clickable but not counting it as a click
I just posted over on http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=5218755, but to clarify here, with this change the whitespace of an ad will no longer be clickable at all, so clicks on that part won't appear in your account and won't take users away from your pages. -ASA
I'm seeing this rolled out on my site, and it's cut CTR in half. Even worse is that CPC is down as well. The thing I really don't like is that they are not linking the "text" of the ad anymore. I can understand the background thing, I never really liked that. But, the text of the ad should be clickable. As it stands now, I'll be removing most of my adsense ads and switching mostly back to banner ad networks.
I just noticed this on my blog http://www.minterest.com/ well.... Now I feel that it will reduce the earnings...as now we can easily copy the URL and paste directly to the address bar... earlier if we copy URL then automatically converts into a click... So atleast people who are aware about AdSense wont click... instead they copy URL and paste.... but Amit I dont think that you will see huge drops in earnings... as your traffic quality is good... and most of them are new to adsense... and so they will click ur ads... "its my personal view" Dont know whether am right....
My earnings have dropped to half their original values!!! This is especially true for competitive areas such as credit and insurance. Long run its probably good but for now I gotta stop spending so much on booze!!
I just checked and this has been rolled out on my sites. I'm a little torn. It's better for the AdWords advertisers I'm sure as they're more likely to get higher quality clicks. For the users I could see it being a pain, especially if they're used to clicking anywhere on an ad and now have to make sure to hit the top or bottom of it. As a publisher, this is going to have to lead to lower CTR, and thus lower earnings. Not good news as that's the boat I'm in. Oh, well, another day, another wrinkle in the fabric of the game...