Info Tooltips Allowed on sites with Adsense?

[intionters]

Hello, I was wondering about the use of hover/click tooltip popup modals on sites with adsense ads.

Are such tooltip/ glossary popups allowed by the adsense terms policy and is it safe to use them on sites monetized with adsense ads?

The tooltips are shown for some of the words on the articles and display short info from Wikipedia. I tried searching for answers on the internet, but couldn't find any information on that matter.

Thanks a lot for any advice.

[NickMNS]

It shouldn't be issue per se, but be sure that the no clickable elements are rendered over ads. For example if the element expands over an ad and requires the user to click a close button(x) that is over an ad. Such a situation could be a cause of invalid clicks.

[intionters]

My thoughts were about the same thing, but as I use auto ads, I can't be sure where the ad unit will appear exactly, as they are generated dynamically and change places on the page constantly. So far, I don't see ads near the tooltip popup and it's closed by clicking outside of it. I understand that there is the possibility of these tooltips causing some invalid unintentional clicks, but I'm not sure if it would be a big problem i.e lead to account issues or ban.

The tooltips I use aren't mandatory, but I thought they would provide more value to users with additional information for terms that are unknown to them and would keep them more on the page without leaving the site to search for the meaning of that word.

Are there previous cases or users that have used tooltips on their sites along with adsense and were they facing any issues with invalid clicks, account problems, etc..?

[NickMNS]

First let me welcome you to Webmaster World.

I don't use auto-ads as I like to have control of my content so I can't really help from that perspective.

I understand that there is the possibility of these tooltips causing some invalid unintentional clicks, but I'm not sure if it would be a big problem i.e lead to account issues or ban.

Exactly how big the problem can be is impossible to say, there is only one way to know and that is to try. I doubt that you would be banned outright. The most likely scenario is that you would see a rise in end of month claw-backs and then if left un-corrected it may eventually lead to a ban. The only problem is that AdSense isn't at all transparent about what is causing the invalid clicks, so a rise in claw-backs could be completely unrelated, you could never know for sure.

[intionters]

Thank you Nick, I'm really happy to be a part of such helpful and friendly community.

The tooltips were to be used for just a few complicated scientific words here and there, so the possibility of overlapping with ads on the mostly very long articles I have would probably be minimal, maybe.

Well, I guess I will have to play it safe and remove the tooltips from the site until we have more information on whether they would be causing an issue with ads.

Thank you again for the valuable insight.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

See by yourself. Visit your site, on desktop and mobile device, and see how it looks like. You'll figure out possible problems from a user point of view.

It might not be aproblem from a TOS point of view, however, as said, if it results in accidental clicks, at some point Adsense will be able to detect this accidental activity, will not count, or remove them from your reports. A side effect, is that, it might impact the "quality" of your site (from an Adsense point of view), and downgrade the quality of advertisers and CPC.

[not2easy]

You can use css z-index properties to give your tooltips modals a lower priority than other elements of the page. It can only help for positioned elements, but the positioning can be almost anything. Moz offers more info with a demo: [developer.mozilla.org...]

[intionters]

Thanks guys, I already tested my site both on desktop and mobile and it seems the tooltips are not appearing close to any ads. Though, I think this doesn't mean the modals won't cause any problems with clicks on other articles, as I have a few hundred posts already. For now I will disable the tooltip plugin until I have more conclusive information on similar usage cases.