With the new post over at the Google AdSense blog could this be a sign that Made For AdSense (MFA) websites are dead?
The key points that Google makes are:
- Ads shouldn’t be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.
For example, ads shouldn’t be placed under titles such as “Dallas Business Opportunities” or “Today’s Hot Deals”.
Placing ads directly below titles such as these implies to your users that the links in the ads are publisher-created content. - Ads should be easily distinguishable from surrounding content.
Similarly, you should not place an ad unit by a group of links that has identical colours and line spacing. Doing so may cause users to think the ad unit is content created by you. In this situation, we recommend using a different colour for the ad titles or indenting the ad unit to help distinguish the ads from your own content.
Basically Google are re-stating that deceptive practices, whereby AdSense ads are placed under titles (that indicate they are not Google AdSense ads) or are “hidden” amongst navigation systems to look like part of the site, are against the AdSense Terms of Service (TOS).
This has been an issue for a very long time now. As a user, I find it frustrating to click on a link that I think is an integral part of a webpage when in fact it is a deceptively placed AdSense ad, only in position to fool users into clicking the ad. As an AdSense publisher myself, these kinds of tactics really damage the environment we work in and it places ethical publishers under greater scrutiny because of the minority’s morally questionable behaviours.
And I really hope Google start policing this a bit better because there are too many sites spoiled by the fact that they are FULL of AdSense ads, hence the term MFA or Made For AdSense.
Let’s hope the MFA site is dead.
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