Today I saw a website that contained a listing of text links. But each of these links contained adsense client and channel numbers. When you click on the link the results look similiar to the adsense search code. This is a sample the of link: <a href='http://www.google.com/custom?q=compare+prices&sa=Search&client=pub-XXXXX&forid=1&channel=4056726609&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23FFFFFF%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%'>Compare Prices</a> Is this legal under adsense?
Is it using the google search for it? It looks like it is pre-populating search queries using the paid for search, and if it is that is definately against the TOS. You can't prepopulate the search like that.
Hence providing a direct (Active) link to Search page, Suggesting specific Queries to users is invalid and against TOS.
It's legal!!! and I like it! What it means is that you can choose the adsense searchwords that best fit your site. So instead of having adsense decide what they'll be you can decide. My only concern would be that they are not branded so the user doesn't know they are ads - but presumably you only get revenue when they click on the blatant google ad, not when they click on your link.
Or maybe not, since they've dropped the links from the urls in the links section and now got to Google direct - so Google will have only seen the legit link units on the page.
Link units are different from pre-populated search units. I don't think the original site had link units on them... Link units just show up as javascript links in the source code... I don't think that is what they were doing.
I am sure it wasnt link units. link unit url are like this h||p://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&dt=1128464704614&lmt=1128464701&prev_fmts=160x90_0ads_al&format=fp_al_lp&output=html&channel=4401520643&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xyz123abc.com%2F&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.XXXXXXX.com%2FToolbarReferer.html%3FToolbarId%3DCT46070&cc=100&u_h=864&u_w=1152&u_ah=834&u_aw=1152&u_cd=24&u_tz=330&u_his=9&u_java=true&u_nplug=21&u_nmime=93&kw_type=broad&rt=ChBDQwFGAAtn5goOIEb9LiwwEgZFY2FyZHMaCMFenK6vQWpKKAE&hl=en Code (markup):
definately not link units then. I checked and can verify the syntax shown in post #1 - but they've taken it out now. And it was hard coded - not javascript. follow this link: http://www.google.com/custom and add your search term & tweak until you've built a page full of ads (rather than natural search results) and add your adsense details I'm guessing they tried it & found they got valid adsense revenue but have been asked to stop or it didn't work either way, the code isn't there now.
Shortly after I posted the message on this forum, I sent email to the webmaster and asked him if the code was legal with google. He never replied and the next day the code was removed. It is basically a hyperlink (no javascript), that uses the google search code. It is all hardcoded. The results would be the same if the user typed in 'compare prices' in a google adsense search box.