Google Restricts the Clickable Area in Adsense Ads

Google is changing the clickable area of their ad units, which may affect your ad performance in the short term. Google is restricting the area that a user can click on within an ad unit. I just observed it in the Google ad unit on this page at left side bar. The description, even if clicked on, is not taking to the advertised website.

Instead of being able to click on the entire ad unit, the publisher can now only click on certain areas, such as the title and the URL in the ad. The change is designed to reduce the number of erroneous ad clicks. The result may be a reduction in CTR (click through rate) in short term, although the quality of clicks should now be higher.

I am curious to know the drop in CTR and Revenue for publishers around. And does it affect the large portion for their revenue. So I am closely watching my reports for this week and next week. In a way, it’s good to keep away publishers from earning advertisers’ money for erroneous clicks which probably advertisers never wanted. This will help to improve their faith in Online advertising and has good long term effects.