Metaphorically - 2:01 am on Aug 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

Wow. Has anybody here ever used google?

Search for "potato peeler", "shoe horn" or pretty much any product. When I do this I see the top two results - *under* the heading that says "Web ... Results 1 - 10 of about ..." - are Adsense advertisements.

Yes, they are separated by a slightly different colour background (it's pretty much indistinguishible on this LCD screen, but I know it's there) and it says "Sponsored Links" way over on one side. Similar distinctions are there for Adsense on content sites. The ones on the content sites at least have a very distinct font - the ones at the top of Google are styled identically to the rest of the results.

The point of Adsense isn't to trick your users, it's just to get useful advertisements in front of them. The OP might have phrased this so that it sounds like shennanigans, but it's very very close to what Google demonstrates on their own site.

It's all in how you look at it.

If you're trying to make your users click on something they don't want, you're hurting them and yourself.

If they've found your site through search, and the ads match what you're talking about on the page, then you're just giving them something else they might be interested in.