Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I for one do not like that as people may click on that rather than the ad.
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In fact I have now just seen one add that had no ads but just a whole bunch of links for related searches.
Majority of my traffic does not come from search engines. So I owe nothing to google in this aspect.
I'm done ranting, AdSense in it's current form isn't for me.
I've got to admit; I want to play with some color schemes before I rid Adsense from my website.
One thing I also noticed today is that my CTR is way higher than ever before, though revenue is only the slightest bit higher than normal (and I'm talking nearly double CTR). Is Google mixing the click tracking of free and paid ads into the same "Clicks" value? Maybe just a fluke though - I'll see if this keeps up for several days.
I am not content to provide new exit points to my traffic unless they are paid for.
It was a nice trial run.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is the best anti-spam weapon they could use. If you had a good site before AdSense, and you think this will hurt you then don't use AdSense. If you think you'll still make slightly more money, great, but at least we shouldn't have 500,000 'content sites' about casinos and viagra.
You could have a point. For now, I'm crossing my fingers and keeping an eye on my revenue reports to see what happens.
Perhaps the launch of the ad color options was a deliberate attempt to soften the imminent blow of the related searches.
Agree scummbar the CTR should improve because ads will be more prominent so it may be difficult to see the impact of what related searches and colours have separately.
While I think it is a good technique from Google to stop people building new pages to get high SERPS in the hope that a user will click an ad. I am not sure I like it as legitimate users can now leave my site without me earning anything, which is not what I signed up for.
When you have legitimate users that have not come from a SE then why should I have related searches on my site, ads OK but am not comfortable with this move.
We have a loyal following of people that come to our site daily, the ads were great but related searches is a waste of space not a useful addition.
playing around today im finding.. (all skyscraper) all pages here are all original news items of 500 to 2,000 words, analysis pages, and original reviews of hotels, books etc.
1. A page which had charity ads because it had negative words re the marriot jakata bombing yesterday, now had just one long white box saying this space brought to you by google, and NO related searches, which i find highly surprising as the topic of the page would be related to many sites.
2. One page with 1 paid ad, and (wait for it) ten (10) related searches!
3. a few pages which USED to have targeted ads, which now have NO ads, but 6 to 8 related searches instead.
I dont know which of these are planned, permanant/temporary or teething problems, but obvously there is a lot of work ahead for Adsense publishers in evaluating and reviewing the porgam and deciding how best to use it now (or not at all!)
[edited by: chiyo at 3:45 am (utc) on Aug. 7, 2003]
"...If something looks too good to be true, it probably isn't..."
We have a loyal following of people that come to our site daily, the ads were great but related searches is a waste of space not a useful addition.
