can we encourage visitors to click the firefox referrer button?

[sallam]

we as publishers are prohibited from using any text to encourage people to click any adsense ads.
but does that same policy of adsense ads apply to the referrer buttons?
to be specific: can I add some text to encourage my visitors to download firefox google toobar?
for example 'donate $1 by downloading and installig firefox google toobar' is that allowed?
or is that against the rules?

I've sent google that question, but thought I ask here too, while I wait for their reply.

[flyerguy]

I was considering that myself, as I am putting the Firefox ads online.

A quick read-through of the Adsense site would indicate that these banners are to be treated exactly the same as regular google ads, as per the Program Policies: [google.com...]

So no, I don't think it's advisable to encourage people to click on the banner.

[incrediBILL]

I wouldn't touch that button with a 10 foot pole!

Someone reported a few days ago the button counted as an impression and drove his CTR down and smart pricing kicked in and clobbered his earnings until he yanked the button off.

It seemed logical based on what we've heard about poor conversion affecting your pricing so unless Google could confirm or deny this actually is the case, I would err on the side of caution.

[MetalType]

Take a look at the destination page, in the UK it's for the Firefox toolbar only. There is a small link to go off and install Firefox, then I presume you come back and install the toolbar, then start using it, then be in the right country . . . I guess a conversion is pretty difficult!

[sallam]

if you're browsing from firefox, you'll be sent to the page to download the toolbar only. Try it from IE and you'll be sent to download firefox+google toolbar.

btw, incrediBILL, CTR has no effect on EPC, I've got a written confirmation from google. Also in a personal study over 10 months, it showed the same.

[edited by: sallam at 5:16 pm (utc) on Dec. 1, 2005]

[SkyDiveDad]

Typical double standards. Places like Fox News are running both Ypn and Adsense literally on top of eachother on the same page.

[ogletree]

I have 2 sites that have the same content both rank for the same terms one in ppc and one in organic. The PPC url is on topic and the CTR is very high. The organic result has a URL that has nothing to do with the subject. The CTR is lower on that page. The organic site makes much more epc than the other so I don't think CTR has anything to do with smart pricing. This has been pretty consistant for a while now so it is not just a few days worth of data. There is a 10% CTR differenct between the two sites. They have roughly the same ammount of traffic and earn the same ammount (same ecpm) but have very differnt CTR's actulay showing the oposite of what was said about CTR and smart pricing.

[rickhz]

I've already got a reply from Google for the same question.

They basically said that in the case of a message board you cannot encourage people to click on the refferal button, but you can start a thread saying how great Firefox with the Google toolbar is...

[Play_Bach]

> Places like Fox News are running both Ypn and Adsense literally on top of eachother on the same page.

Where? I looked and didn't see any at all. Can you be more specific?

Thanks.