1 Ad that could destroy your credibility

[rannans]

for the past few hours this one ad has shown, and whilst i have been with adsense for well over 5 years and have had literally no main issues, something like this could easily ruin any credibility for new visitors

[i760.photobucket.com...]

i dont mind that google tests things like fonts and colours, if they must, but to allow ads like that is disgracefull

mikey

[DaStarBuG]

This is one of Google's way to detect click fraud.

[rannans]

i very much doubt that, given that i have been with them for over 5 years, and never had an email from them regarding anything like that

[HuskyPup]

It's an ad and it's got your attention, isn't that what ads are supposed to do?

Does it have any relevance to your site though?

[cloudtap]

@DaStarBuG -- It IS one of the ways Google combats click fraud

Here are the observed ways they combat clickfraud and combat inflated smart pricing for publishers:
- IP of user and time on site
- bounce rates
- movement across sites advertised via analytics data
- putting up fake ads once in a while to mess with click fraud producers (I've seen this atleast once every 3 months in the last years)

Placing ads which are irrelevant to all is a big thing right now as well as combating paid to click/surf programs and systems people use

[Swanny007]

What happens if a user clicks it out of curiosity?

[Sally Stitts]

I typed in the url t---.com.
It seems to be a legitimate site.
However, their taste in ad composition is . . . limited?
Or perhaps it is by design, but I think a few other words would be very helpful.

[cien]

So is it a normal site with some clever Adwords ads or Google testing click fraud with their own fake ads?

[HuskyPup]

It's a regular site and it's not owned by Google.

[burcot]

Looks like a gaussian blur ps tutorial to me. Surely this can't be the original image the op linked to

[HuskyPup]

Looks like a gaussian blur ps tutorial to me.

Yep, obviously deliberate by the OP to hide the actual domain.

[Sally Stitts]

Perhaps we might allow this link -

[google.com...]

for the sake of the unenlightened, such as myself?
Pretty obscure techie graphics phrase, for me anyway...

Edit - "Surely this can't be the original image the op linked to "
No, I think he photoshopped it first - he just wanted to obscure the adjacent information, so as not to give away too much. The only unobscured part of the photo is the actual ad that he is referring to, which looks like the 3rd ad down in a rectangular tower.

Is my guess correct?

[topr8]

perhaps it is an adwords advertiser trying out the adwords interface who didn't realise that the ads were going live?