Links like google ads.

Adjusting the looks of my links....

[JinxBoy]

Just a small question due to me not really getting the TOS guideline...

Can I adjust my regular links to look like the way the goodle ads look to make the page look more uniform? Is making your own links look like google ads (just the 3 lines with title, description, url) a violation of TOS?

Thanks in advance.

[plasma]

Why don't you make the google links look like your own ones?

[humblebeginnings]

Tricky, TOS says you can not display an "advertisement" that "mimics" Adsense ads or can be "confused" with Adsense ads.
The question is if Google considers a link the same as an advertisement...

Why don't you make the google links look like your own ones?

Not really an option if your own links have an other size and font.

[uhwebs]

But what if you just change your own links sitewide to match Google's?
You arent' making ads, just making your site so it blends better with G's ads.

[chocorol]

Once I blended the links in my site to a point that they were identical to google ads just to see if ctr improves. Inmediately after blending my ads I asked google to check my site to verify if it was ok with the tos. They told me that I had to change the links that looked like google ads because my users could be confused and could generate invalid clicks. I changed the font and the size and they told me later that everything was ok.

Just dont blend too much and ask google to check if your blending is ok

[humblebeginnings]

Darn good advice chocorol.

[uhwebs]

I wonder if it's a questions of users getting confused, or if it's just that the ads look like links so instead of thinking "That's an ad, I'll ignore it" (what I usually do...), they pause enough to really read the ad and become interested in it.