Google Adsense click policy changed

It seems that Google will change the definition of clicks on their Adsense ads. Before this, clicking anywhere on an ad was considered a click, but with the new policy, valid clicks will be counted only when the user click on the ad title. Google states that with this technical move, the risk of accidental clicks will greatly be decreased and I believe them. The problem is that Adsense can be customized with your own colors for a reason and with this move, in my opinion, will greatly decrease the income of websites using only adsense. Webmasters were relying not only on the actual clicks, but also on “accidental” clicks.

Let’s face it, Adsense is not an ad network that “is there”, people use it for monetizing using cloaking techniques (link color, pictures etc). I’m not for ad cloaking but it’s the plain truth, Adsense will generate alot of income for websites and webmasters are still in combat with ad blindness, thus optimizing their pages, colors, ads for better CTR.

Barry Schwartz from Search Engine RoundTable got a reply from Google regarding this issue: “Although we recognize these changes may result in a RPM decrease for some publishers in the short term, we expect these improvements will lead to increased advertiser spend in the long term. By investing in the long-run health of the relationship between AdSense publishers, AdWords advertisers and your sites’ visitors, we’re ensuring your continued success as an AdSense partner.”

I think advertisers will be very happy about this increasing the value of the clicks, but we will see the publisher reaction soon. There is also a discussion on the WebmasterWorld Forum regarding this subject.

    Sphere It