Handsome Logic

Several industry blogs yesterday reported that Google AdSense publishers have been getting emails regarding a change to what parts of ad units are clickable. According to the emails, only the titles and display URLs will be clickable once the change is fully rolled out. The reasoning behind this change is an attempt to cut down on unintentional clicks.

I can’t help but wonder, though, when Google is going to enforce a similar policy on their search network partners? Ask.com, Netscape, AOL, Earthlink and AT&T are all permitted to dictate their own versions of what constitutes a click.

On Google.com, only titles are clickable:

Google AdWords ads served on Earthlink have both clickable titles and display URLs:

Still no real problem. But when you get to Ask.com, the titles, descriptions, display URLs and some of the empty space can be clicked. Empty space that appears between two ads is not clickable:

The real offenders are AOL, Netscape and AT&T:

As you can see above, almost all empty space and the geo location of the advertiser are clickable, including space far outside the visual end of the ad. It’s easy to see how a searcher could inadvertently click an ad while trying to click “Sponsored Links” (which goes elsewhere) or click the wrong ad because of the clickable margin surrounding it.

AT&T is by far the worst offender. In Firefox, you only see a hand pointer when you mouseover the title of an ad. Moving your mouse over any other parts of an ad shows either the default arrow pointer or the I-shaped text cursor. However if you click with that pointer or cursor, away you go! Try highlighting something in an ad without ending up on the advertiser’s site.

It’s decent of Google to enforce this policy on AdSense publishers and on Google.com, but when are they going to enforce a similar one for their search network partners?