Thread: Adsense Placement Review Wanted

I am not sure if this is the correct forum for this so please move it if its in the wrong section

I would like if someone would take a moment of their time to tell me of any optimisations I could make on two of our sites:

YouTube Backgrounds

and

YouTube Layouts

Is there anything you would tweak at all yourself in order to improve CTR and such?

Many thanks

I can only offer a word of caution, friend. I had adsense stopped by google on one of my domains because it used 'youtube' in the domain name url.

Apparently google own it and sent me: "While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies." and gave an example url.

They also stated further down the email: "Publishers are not permitted to promote the abuse of any Google product, such as YouTube, Orkut, or Blogger. This includes providing the means to circumvent the policies of these or other Google products, such as by allowing users to download YouTube videos. As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to make prominent use of "Google Brand Features" on sites displaying Google ads. This includes any sites that attempt to create a false association with Google or use Google trademarks in the URL."

I know you're only trying to help web users make their accounts a bit nicer looking, and I wouldn't want to spoil it for you intentionally but I would be very careful using a trademarked name and using the trademark owner to serve ads on the site. It took them over a year before they did this to mine, the site was quite happily showing youtube videos, not downloads just displaying them, with ads. They're still sending visitors though, in fact more now than when the site was live, takes the p*ss. I did remove the script and put a blank index page in place after I got the email, no point having a site that makes no money, and I'll let the domain expire now, but I got no warning first, just a 'no more ads' email.

Sorry Michael but you did ask, mate. Just be careful with it, don't be surprised if you get an out of the blue slap on the wrist from big G, they like to p*ss in the pool once in a while. Sorry if it's not what you want to hear but you should be made aware. I wish I could've been more helpful and less negative.

I would also urge anyone else using similar brand names in other websites not to rely on adsense income, I know there's a few proxy and proxy list owners doing such things and it looks like google want to spoil things.

Ya, ignoring the copyright issues in this one...for your adsense placements...I don't like you doing banner header and all down the left...
maybe a square at the bottom, reduce the left side ads to one, put a square at the top, scrap the big banner and put a link unit to go across the top?

Cheers,
James

Thanks guys, I understand what youre saying about the trademarked name, if all goes to crap then I guess we we would have to move the content to our other background site and redirect to it. Not too bad I guess in the end with already having another site in the niche

Im not quite sure how you mean by a square at the top, if you could tell me how you mean I would be grateful. The sidebar now only has one advertisement and looks cleaner although thats only on the first site lol will change the other soon.

I always assumed the larger the banner the better and images being better performing too on sites like this, anyone else got any input on this too?

Thank you

From what I can tell, the Adsense is only at the top of the page, I would recommend adding it at least 3 times on the page, you need to add it on the sidebar and at the bottom of the page, also.

Put some ad units in the single post template, before and/or after the content

Thanks guys, so more ads will give better performance then? There is currently two, one in the header and the one in the sidebar.