I came across a blog that put Adsense ads in the sidebar and, above them, a header that reads "Helpful Sites" with one lonely site link below it. So it looks like the Adsense ads are part of the 'helpful sites'. Is this technique working for anyone here?
I am interested in the answer for this as well. I am trying something somewhat similar at my own free Web hosting site, in that I am blending a link unit with other links.
You should be very very careful if you want to do something like this. You are not allowed to label Adsense ads with anything other than "Sponsors" or "Advertisement". If Google feels that you are purposefully misleading your visitors chances are that you could get your account banned. At the very least put a seperator line between the actual links and the Adsense ad.
This is really starting to annoy me. Why do people still have confusion with the whole "is this implementation compliant" thing? If you are trying to mislead your visitors into clicking your ads, regardless of how you are doing it, it will be a policy violation. Simple as that. Forget trying to think up new ideas about how to fool your visitors and start putting your visitors first. Invest your time in writing good informative content.
Yes, it is advised to avoid using these kinds of misleading headers as Google Adsense does not allows..
I understand how this practice could be viewed as iffy, but does it really mislead visitors? For one, the ads usually are useful for visitors. Also, there is a line before the ads that goes 'Ads by Google' (part of the Adsense ads). This line is between the 'Helpful Sites' header and the actual Adsense ads. Does this make an inkling of difference, or is this still considered shady? But, any which way, I won't be doing this practice... Better safe than sorry I suppose. Thanks, guys, for your thoughts.
As lons as the ads are not directly below the 'helpful sites' and has at least 1 link befor ethe ads, I think that should be OK.