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May 8, 2006

Accidently Clicking on Top Blue Google Ads

When you search at Google.com on certain keyword phrases, you may see the sponsored listings at the top of the page. Those listings have a blue background, so that they are clearly labeled as paid listings. But, did you know, if you click on the blue area, with no ad text, it will still take you to the advertisers landing page and charge the advertiser?

clicks-adwords-accident.gif

As you can see from the image above, I boxed out the blank area, that if you click within, you will be taken to the advertiser who is closest to your mouse click on the left.

ShandyKing at our forums says he sometimes clicks on a page to drag the page down. When he does this at Google, he some times accidently clicks on an ad, even though he is not clicking on any ad text.

Do you have ad "clumsiness" that costs advertisers dollars?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.



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posted rustybrick in Google AdWords at May 8, 2006 7:59 AM Comments (6)

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Comments

Rustybrick,

The same is true for MSN.

Peter

 

Posted by Peter Harrison at May 8, 2006 09:38

Google, Yahoo, and MSN do this. The only major search engine that does not do this is AOL.

 

Posted by Neil Patel at May 8, 2006 11:31

I've totally done this. I'm surprised it took so long for someone to blog about it. I'm not really spazzy on the mouse, either. It just happens sometimes.

 

Posted by Jaimie Sirovich at May 8, 2006 11:46

It's not new. I think I have seen this long ago. They have made the whole DIV tag clickable by putting this event handler onClick="ga(this,event)" ...

 

Posted by SEO Junkie at May 8, 2006 12:22

Isn't that the whole point? That's the reason that the top and right side of the screen is used for ads.

Users frequently click inside the browser to make that window active. Both search engines and advertisers depend on this, so the real question should be "how much of this 'clumsiness' leads to real revenue for advertisers?"

 

Posted by Ray Grieselhuber at May 8, 2006 12:38

seems like some type of border dividing the blue space would solve some of this confusion? it would at least clarify which advertiser you are clicking on. on the right side of that blue space, it is really difficult to tell.

 

Posted by Todd Henley at May 8, 2006 12:56

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