Keep link units away from other ads
Diggers Realm is complaining that horizontal link units are performing no better than vertical link units, which seems to go against what I said a couple of weeks ago in Yes, Virgina, AdSense link units do work. So, who's right?
Let me start with this admonition: everyone's site is different and therefore everyone's experiences with AdSense are different. What works for the majority of sites may not work for yours, and vice-versa.
I think, though, that in this case it comes down to one issue: placement. Where you place the ads on your page is extremely important for getting more clickthroughs. Look at this image from Diggers Realm showing where the horizontal link units were placed:
Placing your link units immediately underneath a normal ad unit is probably not a good idea. If your visitors are banner-blind, their eyes will slide right over the links — they're simply too close to the ads. Link units work because they look like a set of regular links and (this is my theory) get clicked on accidentally, causing visitors to discover a set of related ads which some percentage will then explore further. (Remember, you don't make any money on that first click, just the clicks on the actual ads.)
To make the best use of horizontal link units, then, you should move them away from the other ads. Keep them above the fold, but close to the navigational links on your site (such as the breadcrumb) if at all possible. You should see better results in a few days.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and the new e-book Uncommon AdSense.
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