Hey. I recently noticed that a lot of websites are, in a way, "tricking" their visitors into clicking on the ads posted by Google. Now I am not saying it's wrong, especially since I do it too But can you give me more effective ways into convincing the visitor into believing that the Google Advertisement is part of the website? Currently, the only way I have seen is to place an image next to it OR make it look like the navigation bar. In addition, I have changed the Title to look like the header tags on my website, the description to look like normal text, and the links to look like the links on my website! Any other pointers anyone would like to share?
You're on a very dangerous track here my friend. Tricking users into clicking ads is against the adsense TOS. Making your site more attractive and / or making the ads slightly more interesting isn't. If you dont understand the difference here, I'd suggest you stop doing whatever you're doing before you end up as one of guys whining about having their AS account banned.
cause their main concern is to make money.... let them be Rob..bad guy always die at the end... just don't come back here cry about getting band from Adsense
Been some time since we really had a whiner in here. So let him go, and maybe he will be in here shortly whining and we can have fun with him. LOL But really sixty6, just build up your site so that visitors will enjoy the site. Don't worry about adsense or tricking visitors. If visitors come and like your site and in the process see something in adsense they are interested in seeing more of, the adsense income will increase.
I see that most of us have been missing the point (including me) lately. It is not about tricking the visitor to click your ads by mistake. Neither it is blending your ads so much that they become near invisible between lots of links. Tricking the visitor will make your CTR increase a lot, but with the time you will be "hit" by smart pricing because of poor conversion. As webmasters we have to come up with a way to place the ads so that visitors become aware of those links which, by the way, should be targeted enough (as a result of proper page topic optimization) so as to capture the visitors interest. There are lots of data to analyze, and lots of strategies to apply. We have to dig more through the stats and find which pages, topics, design or whatever converts best. Enrique
As an Adwords user, I *hate* it when webmasters try present the ads to 'trick' the user into clicking them. Total waste of my money. Google recognizes this, and it is against their TOS. However, I think Google is taking the mickey with the 728x15 Link Unit - surely they know that everyone is using ii in place of a nav bar & tricking users this way? Put another way - how many times have you seen this format *not* used to try and look like a nav bar?
When I was a complete rookie at Adsense blending I didn't have mine looking like a top navigation bar, I was actually using the 468x15 though - but now that I do know some of the (for lack of a better word) "tricks of the trade" most publishers would be crazy not to implement it as a somewhat top nav bar if they were going to apply it to their sites. But what goes around comes around - and if publishers abuse the advertisers too much there will be a corresponding withdrawl of money from Adwords (I'm also an Adwords publisher, but I'm thinking of closing my account - it's just not getting a good ROI). So in my opinion there is definitely a limit to "optimising for adsense" that should be going on. Too much optimisation ultimately ends in everyone losing... and publishers are left looking for new means of revenue for their websites while businesses and advertisers are left looking for a new means of getting visitors to their sites to buy their products.
You guys don't know much about advertising in general. Getting a consumer who is interested in product X to look at product X's site, even unintentionally, could result in an eventual sale. You know all that junk mail that get's sent to your house? Advertisers pay to send that to every home knowing only a certain percentage of people will ever even look at it. Do these advertisers feel "ripped off" by the people that don't open the mail? No, they know this is part of the game. Same with PPC. Despite click fraud, unintentional clicks etc, this is still a targeted, attractive, and effective form of advertising. Google knows this. Like someone already said in this thread, just look at the horizontal link unit.
That is all well and good as long as there is a ROI, too much "tricking" and ROI will drop and so will the number of advertisers will to use this method of advertising.
Your blog is actually good compared to some of the crap out there - dont flush it down the toilet by tricking your readers
Maybe that's why Google implemented smart pricing? If your sites are spammy, they probably won't convert well and the sites will be smart priced and earnings will drop. I think Google has done a great job protecting the interests of the advertisers so far.
I work at an advertising and I watch clients burn huge sums of money on traditional advertisements (newspaper, radio etc) every day. There is little or no accountability or tracking of results. Given that the alternatives are so bad, what makes you think that having a targeted visitor "tricked" into viewing your relevant ads is such a bad thing? How is that ANY different than buying a huge newpaper ad that only a fraction of the newspaper readers will even look at? How is that any different than spending money on direct mailings? When you say advertisers are going to quit using Adwords because of this "trickery" - where is it you think they are going to go? Back to TV and newspaper?
I would never do that to Modern SEO But I was thinking of doing it to one of my new practice game website.
You definately have a point there. Tv and newspapers are much more costlier then web , and that too with zero accountability. I believe adsense will is here for some time.