Content Ads Guide

One of the subjects that has been talked a lot on several forums is the placement of images near Adsense Ads. There’s been some confusion on this issue, and so Google decided to ask the policy team to set the record straight. When asked : Can I place small images next to my Google ads? Google answers like this:

We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn’t actually being offered. That’s not a good experience for users or advertisers. Publishers should also be careful to avoid similar implementations that people could find misleading. For instance, if your site contains a directory of Flash games, you should not format the ads to mimic the game descriptions. If the ads and the images appear to be associated, inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads will not make the implementation compliant.

Google just want to make sure that the ads and images are not arranged in a way that could easily mislead or confuse your visitors. So this is some bad news for publishers hoping improve click-through rates by placing images next to Google ads. There are some publishers that are already using some scripts to automatically place these images and change them randomly (Adsense Beautifier plugin for Wordpress) . So this new police clarification can lead to banning some accounts. I also think that with this new statement and only one or two examples of ad placement next to pictures the policy is not totally clarified. Let’s see what happen in the next months… more information here.

Google now lets you Build and customize your own search engine. Simply submit websites or pages you’d like to include in your search engine index. You can choose either to restrict your search results to include only some pages and sites, or simply to give these pages and sites higher priority and ranking in the Google index. Once you’ve defined your search engine index, Google will give you a piece of code for a search box to place on your site or blog. You’ll then have a lot of options to customize it and make it look and feel at your will. You can also add sites to your customized search engine as you surf, and you can allow friends to add to it as well. Google also  provides guidelines on how layout, Google attribution and branding must be handled, so pay attention to the TOS. You can also make money from relevant ads in your search results. If you have an AdSense account, you need to verify it within your search engine control panel (click the “make money” tab) by adding the email address that you use with your AdSense account, your zip code, and the last 5 digits of your phone number. The search results display similar to AdSense for Search, results and the ads are marked with “Ads by Google”. To know more about this click here.

This time I take you to a visit to NicheGeek.com. Dmitri Davydov runs this site and he calls himself a ‘niche collector’. Basically he become interested in Adsense niches a couple of years ago, when he accidentally found out that he can make either $0.02 or $2.42 per click. He has a lot of experience and test every subject you can think. He tracks well Adsense clicks and makes his observations available to everyone. He makes this stuff available for free. Some niches he talks about are for instance: Invoice factoring, trademark registration, Avoid Bankruptcy And Bankruptcy Loans, CRM Software, acne control, PBX and VoIP or car donations. He also collects stories about unusual online and offline business that you can read. If you are serious about earning money and you are searching for niche subjects, go visit NicheGeek.com.

Last 23th November on Queluz took place the first Google University event in Portugal. Some local publishers and advertisers were invited to a full day event covering manly Adsense and Adwords. The idea behind the event was to help publishers get the best from Google tools and increase the revenue through more effective ad serving. Advertisers had special focus and the Google team promoted the internet advertising through Adwords. Other products like Google Analytics and Webmaster tools were included on the agenda. The new Adsense features had the focus on the end of the event.