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More AdSense Shenanigans
In a previous post I pointed out a questionable use of adsense placement on the popular blog lifehack.org. Lifehack finds personal productivity articles from around the web and posts daily blog entries linking to the relevant site. They also format the link to look almost identical to an adsense ad – while surrounding the link with real adsense ads. I posted about this practice because when I first found the site, I almost stumbled onto this ‘trick’ and nearly clicked on the adsense ad instead of the link to the mentioned article. I asked readers what they thought about this – whether this was a brilliant use of adsense or underhanded visitor manipulation at the expense of adword users who had to pay for clicks from visitors who didn’t necessarily intend to click on their particular ad. Personally, I still haven’t made up my mind about this example.
Recently, a colleague here a ranktopseo.com found an even more pernicious example of “creative” adsense usage. Take a look at this screen shot from the site www.top-affiliate.com:
On the left hand menu bar, the first 4 links below “Ads by Google” are in fact adsense ads. I don’t think this is in any way falls into some grey area like lifehacks site. In my opinion its pretty black and white. This is blatant manipulation of Google adsense code and as a paying adwords user, clearly in violation of Google’s TOS. But, maybe I’m over reacting. Leave a comment and let us know what you think. Is top-affiliate.com going too far, or do you feel that everything’s fair in the adsense game (until you get caught)?
