Today I was thinking a bit about ads and clickthrough rates. Suddenly a thought popped up in my mind about the sentence “do not click here”, which every so now and then you see being used somewhere. Actually I saw it a few days ago, now that I think of it. Anyway, of course the intention of the person that uses the sentence is to lure people into just doing the opposite: have the visitor click on the link to satisfy his or hers curiosity.

Now with normal ads you wouldn’t want to use this, because it will raise CTR, but very probably not conversions. Then I had to think about AdSense ads. I know that according to AdSense Policies it is forbidden to encourage people to click on the ads in any way. In fact I looked it up and here is what it states:

Encouraging clicks

In order to ensure a good experience for users and advertisers, publishers may not request that users click the ads on their sites or rely on deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. Publishers participating in the AdSense program:

• May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as “click the ads,” “support us,” “visit these links,” or other similar language
• May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks
• May not place misleading images alongside individual ads
• May not promote sites displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites
• May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior
• May not place misleading labels above Google ad units – for instance, ads may be labeled “Sponsored Links” but not “Favorite Sites”

So my assumption was correct. But when I read this very carefully, and take it very literally, it would be allowed to use the text “Do not click this Ad”, at least as pure text and maybe not as a graphic. I wonder if anyone ever tried this, because you may very well assume that CTR on your AdSense ads would rise quite considerably.

Of course this is all very hypothetical thinking, more like a joke, and I don’t want to encourage anyone into actually doing this. But if someone has heard of this exact ‘method’ being used somewhere,  let us all know and comment on this post.