Here is some bad news for publishers hoping improve click-through rates by placing images next to Google ads.

Google is setting the record straight on positioning Google ads with thumbnail images. In brief, they do not want publishers to place images next to ads in a way that might mislead visitors to associate the ads with the image.

Below is an example of a violation:

I’ve seen an Adsense “beautifier” plugin for Wordpress that separates the images from the ads with a dotted line. According to Google, and as apparent from the figure above, the dotted lines are not going to cut it. The idea is to avoid confusion in the minds of visitors. So long as the juxtaposition can mislead the visitor to associate the images with the ads, it’s a violation.

Although Google has been warning publishers against this practice for some time, this is the first time they’ve spelled out their policy in such clear and specific language.

Some For more details, see: Google’s Adsense blog

Although I rarely do SEO consulting work, many people new to the online business world have approached me to seek help getting their new sites listed on the first page of Google and other major search engines. Of course, they never mentioned which keywords they wanted to rank high on, which demonstrates their lack of familiarity with even the basic principles of SEO.

Unfortunately, the web is littered with unscrupulous SEO charlatans who are only too happy to prey on would-be internet millionaires hoping for quick results. We all know that there are some keywords that are so competitive that it’s virtually impossible to achieve a top-ten ranking on without considerable time and money.

You can get an idea on how hard it is to rank highly on a keyword by checking the prices advertisers are willing to pay for it on various pay-per-click advertising channels. For example, enter “apply for credit card” on Overture’s View Bids Tool, and you’ll find that advertisers are paying up to $8 for this key phrase, illustrating the high competition for the key phrase and the high level of difficulty for ranking high on it.

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