Does google adsense improve ranking?

I saw a few people in various location that were convinced that it does improve your ranking in Google, because they want their ads shown.

Now I have no ads on my site, its currently supported entirely by members, but other sites that "compete" for search ranking do have adsense ads.

Are the ads worth doing? (Sure money might help, but it wouldn't be the deciding factor)

@Jake:

In my opinion, there is certainly no reason not to run Google AdSense. The revenue that is generated can certainly be used to help offset expenses for hosting, etc.

It takes a lot of time to run a successful forum - I think your members will understand. Of course, there are ways of overdoing it. You have to maintain a balance of what works best for both you and your members.

Google should not be ranking sites higher simply because they run AdSense - but I've joked about that potential conspiracy theory as well.

Has anyone else encountered this theory? What are you thoughts?

In my experience Adsense does nothing for your ranking. Our forums have ran adsense for quite a while and we barely make any money from it. Our main site however makes quite a lot of money from Adsense. I think the forum format doesn't lend itself too well to ads unless you have an extremely niche-oriented forum where people actually come looking for ads and offers.

I am not too sure there is any evidence of this, although, i am sure fire support of the ideology that an Alexa Traffic Graph on your website improve's your ranking.

Originally Posted by kovacs

I think the forum format doesn't lend itself too well to ads unless you have an extremely niche-oriented forum where people actually come looking for ads and offers.

I can't agree with that. Lots of forums out there make lots of money from Adsense. Mine does quite well, and I definately don't have people coming lookg for ads and offers.

In my experience, the Leaderboard ad right below the navbar is the best moneymaking position, with the least amount of user annoyance.

Info here: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/10/...-tips-for.html

I'd agree with ConqSoft using a Leaderboard advertisement either under the navigation area or underneath the last post in a thread certainly for me at least, provides a successful hitrate whilst not distracting too much from the forums main content.

We run it both in the header (468) and below the last post on each page. The 468 banner represents about 2/3 of our forums income while the leaderboard below the posts represents about 1/3.

Compared to our main site the forums has about 50% of the traffic but makes about 10% of the income. It still more than pays our hosting so I'm not complaining.

The leaderboard below the navbar - do you folks use that for everyone or just guests?

On mine it's for everyone other than paid members.

I've tried it with nice borders around it, making it look like part of the site and the click counts go WAY down. The current format has worked out the best for me:

http://www.fireblades.org/forums/

And these are the pages where I show it:

Code:

<if condition="in_array(THIS_SCRIPT, array('showthread', 'forumdisplay', 'index', 'member', 'memberlist', 'search', 'online', 'faq', 'calendar', 'VBGooglemap'))">

Ad Code Here

</if>

That good place but in our Community i have add in in the nevbar i think this is the best place ..

Originally Posted by ConqSoft

On mine it's for everyone other than paid members.

I've tried it with nice borders around it, making it look like part of the site and the click counts go WAY down. The current format has worked out the best for me:

http://www.fireblades.org/forums/

And these are the pages where I show it:

Thanks for sharing. I'll experiment with making it blend in *less* than now to see if it has an impact. Always worth a try.

what do you guys think of my ads? too blended?

so far they're working... even with the limited traffic I get.

Mustang Canada

Originally Posted by shakes

what do you guys think of my ads? too blended?

so far they're working... even with the limited traffic I get.

I think those images are likely to get you banned from AdSense. I'd remove them if I were you.

how so? I own them... they're in my database of my members cars.

no copyright issues at all.

Please let me know if i've missed something in googles terms... i've read through it and I don't think i'm breaking any rules.

Originally Posted by shakes

how so? I own them... they're in my database of my members cars.

no copyright issues at all.

Please let me know if i've missed something in googles terms... i've read through it and I don't think i'm breaking any rules.

By placing images next to the ads you are enticing users to click on the ads. This is a violation of Google's terms.

I know of several sites that have been banned due to this.

As long as you have a border (even the slightest of borders) separating the images and the ads, it's completely within their TOS.

Google has even started having their own images embedded in their Leaderboard ads beside text ads.

If you haven't seen them, here's a sample:

Forumtrends » New Adsense Ad Units with Images