According to a recent poll by Penn State, web surfers do not trust search engine sponsored links.  Print Goes Wireless published an article recently, stating that “consumers are distrustful of search engine sponsored listings and click on such links fewer than twice in every 10 searches, new research has revealed.”  Those are some horrible statistics!  This only shows that Adsense website owners need to be always changing with the consumer mindset.  If it means tweaking their website layout to flow better with the ads or improving their content so the visitor will more likely trust, or even appreciate, the link, then the webmaster must keep working on imaginative ways of developing their sites.

Further, the article states, “in that study, participants clicked on the results identified as ‘organic’ on more than 80 per cent of their searches rather than sponsored links even though many of the organic results were actually rewritten sponsored links.  So his goal was to determine whether integrating sponsored links into organic results would increase the click-through rate, but this did not happen.”  This is very interesting and goes against much of the thinking of Adsense webmasters.  Instead of using block ads, perhaps the better method is to integrate the ads into the content itself, such as having keywords link to an ad.  We’ve seen this on some websites and forums, but they don’t seem well integrated and usually have a double line under the word.  This seems to be very annoying for the reader if they happen to roll their cursor over the word, which would then display an ad image or more ad text.

The other unavoidable problem is with the advertisers themselves.  If their advertisement leads the visitor to a page loaded with eye-popping, bold print that seems like a poorly designed web page, at best, or a horribly conceived ad, at worst, then the the visitor will be more annoyed than happy with the result of their click.   Advertisers must take the time to make visiting their site worth it.

As web surfers become more savvy and discerning in what constitutes a worthwhile site, including those of advertisers, then the pressure falls back on the Adsense site and the advertisers to offer up something better.