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Ok, here’s the deal…

Google recently announced on their blog that they’ll be doing yet another “slap” only this time to AdSense publishers. The bottom line is that publishers who “blend” their Google ads into their own content will be the ones who suffer.

Now, personally, I was very confused about this because Google specifically TELLS you when you create your AdSense ads, that it’s best to blend the ads - so what the heck is going on?

First off, I went to go check out their “guidelines for choosing colors” in their AdSense support section here:
www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21592&topic=1165
I scrolled down to step 4 about “choosing colors” and clicked on the link provided which took me here:
www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17957
hmmm…the “topic can not be found” coincidence? (I’m such a conspiracy theorist).
But…here’s yet another page which talks about blending…
www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=17957
And here’s a snippet from that page…

Well, here’s how Google puts it:

1. Ads shouldn’t be placed under a title or a section heading in a way that implies they aren’t ads. Here’s an example:

2. Ads should be easily distinguishable from surrounding content. (I know, I know, again, confusing as hell but here’s how they phrase it)…
“…you should not place an ad unit by a group of links that has identical colors and line spacing. Doing so may cause users to think the ad unit is content created by you. In this situation (again see the image below), we recommend using a different color for the ad titles or indenting the ad unit to help distinguish the ads from your own content.”

It’s probably best you just read the whole thing for yourself and then get to work if you’re in potential danger…