Anyone who has ever looked at a web page can attest to the fact that in all probability it was loaded with Google Ads. And anyone who has ever tried to make even a few extra bucks online is familiar with and has tried to use Google Adsense on their various sites and blogs.
However, as any first semester web designer knows but somehow forgets when it comes to Google anything – “Don’t give your site visitors reasons to click away!” It’s hard enough to get people to visit a website, and it’s even tougher to turn them into paying customers. Why on earth would you want to give them the opportunity to see something they might like better …and go there! You just sent your competitor a customer.
Sure, the entire concept of Adsense is to make money each time people click on a link in one of the boxes you have incorporated on one of your pages. But, do the few pennies you make per click replace what a customer would have spent if you hadn’t conveniently listed other sites he could visit instead?
Supposedly you have control over what websites appear in the ads, but in all reality, until Google perfects its programming and auto-matching ability with the all too frequent poor SEO programming of most websites today, you will get competitor ads, nonsense ads, and embarrassing ads – all of which could garner some interest from people who took the time to get to their original destination – your site – only to be offered a chance to go somewhere else.
Google, whose collective marketing think tank comprises some of the best minds in the world, offers some strange advice in its training program on how to maximize your returns when using Google Adsense – they suggest that you copy the colors and style of your website as you design your Google presence so “the ads will fit in and look like part of your site”. Hmm. To whose advantage would this be? Not yours! If customers think these ads are truly part of your site, they could be more prone to click away than if it was blatantly obvious that they were in fact just one more batch of nuisance nonsense.
Google obviously has no concern for the success of an individual website. It does, however, have great concern for the success of any Google ad campaign on your website and is graciously willing to give you a few cents in exchange for the millions they earn by allowing people to sign up for the Google Adsense campaigns.
Is Google Adsense a viable money maker? Hardly. Can the average company or website owner or even blogger expect any real revenue from this? Not really. Unless your website gets thousands of visitors a day, and each one clicks on multiple links once they get there, the type of revenue they are claiming is most likely pure hype.