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take care when altering layouts!

.. without checking everything once you've done so

Duke_of_Url

10:29 am on Oct 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

I made this mistake a while back, so thought I'd highlight it here as something to bear in mind.

We're always encouraged to experiment with ad position, to improve ad visibility, CTR, and so on.

One of my small sites was a fairly simple layout, ie

<site nav> <content> <adsense tower>

It was like this for quite some time, and I thought I'd try a layout change. The site was template driven so only took a moment to make it

<adsense tower> <content> <site nav>

and I left it alone. Perusing the site a little later I realised I'd suddenly done something that could breach TOS. Buried within the text of each page, and below the fold, I'd finished off with a note along the lines of 'find more interesting links in the lefthand menu'. Which of course was true originally, as the site nav was initially on the left. But after my quick move-around, ads now showed on the left and I was inadvertently directing people to try those links. As soon as I noticed this I amended the text asap. Fortunately the site doesn't get much traffic, but could easily have caught me out big time.

Thought I'd just flag this in case someone else is modifying their layouts en masse like I did. Check everything, not just the sections you alter but also the content alongside!

hth

DoU

trannack

11:10 am on Oct 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

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Thanks for the info - all tips always greatly appreciated. Wht is obvious to one person is not always obvious for someone else.

ken_b

1:46 pm on Oct 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

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Duke_of_Url;

That's the kind of oversight that can happen easily and possibly have unfortunate results.

Thanks for mentioing it.

ann

1:53 pm on Oct 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

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I have done a few things like that and I find it was mostly done when not feeling up to par or when you would really rather be doing something else.

Ann

System

2:21 pm on Oct 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

redhat

The following 3 messages were cut out to new thread by jatar_k.
11:17 am on Oct. 12, 2006 <small>(pst -7)</small>

[edited by: jatar_k at 6:18 pm (utc) on Oct. 12, 2006]
[edit reason] removed OT [/edit]

nickreynolds

11:49 am on Oct 13, 2006 (gmt 0)

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I've done something similar, where the result has been an image or text partially covering the adsense ads

HarryM

12:01 pm on Oct 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

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This is not specifically Adsense related, but it's easy to make a boob. A few years ago I used to check for browser type and served up slightly different layouts with a number of "if" statements. I decided to improve the code, but inadvertently left out a final "else" so that SEs were served nothing at all. Pages still showed correctly in browsers so I didn't realize there was a problem until the site disappeared from serps.

ann

12:31 pm on Oct 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

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I just did something similar.

I searched up my middle site only to find the title and some tags messed up, I clicked on it and it would say done but nothing was showing in my browser, no 404 either.

I quickly ran it down and repaired it.

It was only a few days but it scared me! :) I remember when it happened. I had company come in so I rushed thru it and uploaded without checking.

I will simply stop working if that situation ever happens again. :)

Ann