Lately a lot of people have been asking me about placing Adsense ads below the titles of posts because it’s something Google has partially discouraged as of late.
I keep getting emails from people saying that you aren’t supposed to do it anymore. For those of you that are running around saying this to everyone on the planet I would highly recommend getting your facts straight first.
Telling people that they can’t do it is wrong, because they can in a lot of circumstances. Google’s official position on this is that it can’t be done in a way that misleads visitors and encourages them to click.
Let’s say that our post title was ‘Top 4 Cell Phone Providers’ and right below our title we had a large rectangle ad unit. People would assume that the four links were the top 4 providers, right? This would be against Google’s terms of service for Adsense.
Now let’s say that our post title was ‘Top Cell Phone Providers’ and right below our title we had the same ad unit. Some people would assume the same thing right? This still isn’t a good idea because you are probably still misleading some people.
Now let’s say that our post title was ‘How To Turn Off A Motorola Cell Phone’. In this case, does having the ads below the title mislead people in any way? No, it certainly doesn’t.
For those of you that were contacted by Google, you were obviously using your titles in a misleading fashion – whether intentional or not.
The honest truth here is that you have to look at each of your titles to determine whether a person could be misled or not. If you’re getting crazy high click-through rates you’re probably misleading. It’s highly unlikely that 15% of people should be clicking your ads.
If you’re too lazy to check out each individual ad you should probably be labeling your ads with the word ‘Advertisements’, placing them above your titles, or floating them to the right so that they don’t appear below the titles. In my experience floating them to the right will still get a good CTR and in some cases placing them above the title will as well.
Tags: adsense, placing Adsense ads
Nothing seems to beat the good ‘ol 250×250 unit that’s been well integrated into a design. I’ll occasionally get a day or two where a different sized unit will perform better, but it’s rare.
Sometimes though, you’re right that you need to make some adjustments with your ads to adhere to Google’s Terms of Use. Who knows, you may even stumble on a new ad placement that will work even better for your site!
Hey Court,
After being one of the people who was asking this question I’d like to say thanks for the detailed and understandable post. Better to ask these questions than face the wrath of the big G tho!
Cheers,
Vlad
Can you add a second one at the bottom of the post as well?
Way off topic Court and Mark, but have you ever dealt with sites being de-indexed in google. I have had 2. Both for the same niche, and both are trademark infringing. Does google remove sites that do, if complained to?
Thats what i needed to know thank you for answering my question Court.
thank you
Derrick
I was interested in Will’s comment that the 250 x 250 seemed to work the best for him.
Does anyone agree/disagree, have any other thought.
I have just created my first site with adsense and was a bit stumped when it came to choosing which ads to place.
I eventually went for a mixture but would like to know expereinces from others.
Images vs Text Links?
Thanks
Jon
It sucks, i really just want to put them under the titles for higher CTR.
Adsense is the best paying make money online program on the internet. I just wish that i could increase my website traffic to high levels so that i could earn more money on Adsense.
i love Google Adsense, it allows me to make money on my personal blog and some of my health related sites.
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