AdSense have just announced something that a lot of publishers were calling for after the launch of their Referral system – the ability to use text links for referrals. Up to this point they’ve only allowed publisher to use graphic links/buttons to send traffic to them but now text links are allowed.
Before you get too excited though it’s worth noting that AdSense are only allowing four specifically worded text links (as above – click to enlarge) which will limit the way they can be used. To use them you need to insert a long code.
This will make inserting links into the middle of individual posts as deep contexual links difficult (if not impossible).
One placement option might be to run them at the bottom of each post on individual pages.
Also remember that you can only use one referral link per product per page.
For example if you use a button in your sidebar (as I currently do here) you can’t then run a text link at the bottom of each post.
Lastly – for non English speaking publishers you will have to wait for text link referrals in your language as they are only available in English to this point.
These are not exactly the text links that I reckon most people had in mind when they suggested the feature to Google. It’s still a bunch of JavaScript code; it only outputs text.
Therefore it’s not quite as useful as it could be, but a few people will be able to use them.
The Firefox text links are a little better, I think, but they’re still JavaScript.
Interestingly enough you have to set your language to English US to get these.. English UK doesn’t have them
cant use my own text? no point man. i will stick to the graphic banners which is much better.
[…] A través de Problogger, Darren nos cuenta que AdSense ha respondido a un reclamo de larga data de los webmasters para tener la posibilidad de brindar enlaces de texto para referir lectores al programa de referidos de Adsense. Sin embargo, no es algo muy versátil ya que permite elegir entre cuatro textos preestablecidos desde la interfaz, con lo cual, no cambia mucho las cosas. Y para sumarle un poco de negatividad, no está disponible para usuarios que utilicen otro idioma que el inglés. […]