Google AdSense "Hide These Ads" Feature?
There is a WebmasterWorld thread asking why do some Google AdSense ads have a link near them that read "Hide These Ads." When you click on the link, the ads disappear and then a link changes to "Show Ads."
I took me a bit of time to track down sites that do this, but it wasn't that hard. A couple searches and I found many sites that do this. One example is wikihow.com, which has many AdSense ads on the site and they all show the link. Here is a screen shot of one of the ad units with that link:
When you click on the hide ads link, it then changes to this:
I am fairly confident that this is not a native Google AdSense feature, but rather something coded in by the site owners. Is it against Google's terms of service - I don't know. If it is, I don't think it should be. It is a nice feature that the site owners are offering to their readers, to hide the ads.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Like The Story? Vote For It On Yahoo Buzz! Or On Sphinn!
rustybrick in Google AdSense at August 10, 2009 8:23 AM
Comments (4)
Sphinn 
• Tweet This! 
• Digg 
• Delicious 
• StumbleUpon 
• Google Co-op 
Comments
This is really interesting. Of course it cannot be a Google AdSense feature - why would they shoot themselves in the foot? On the other hand, what's the point of hiding ads by the site owners? Are they trying to make their sites more "user friendly" assuming that people are usually annoyed by such ads? Then why publish them in the first place?
Posted by Mihaela Lica at August 10, 2009 08:46