Hi everyone,

[This may be old news now because it was first reported on webmasterworld.com in Oct 2004.]

Google has been beta testing a function to allow website visitors to change the ads served to them. The Ad contains an ad block that reads "Change to Ads About" followed by a search box. If you type in a search topic the Ads displayed in the adjacent Ad blocks will change accordingly.

I believe the ads of this type are referred to as "Rad Links".

There is concerns by Adwords users that enabling users to pick ads provides a perfect opportunity for fraudulent clickers to visit sites of their friends and display ads on high paying topics (e.g. such as "debt consolidation"), and then click on those ads to earn large revenues for their friends.

I suspect however, that the technology could be "tuned" so that the amount paid per click remained roughly in-line with your average click earnings and then there wold be no incentive to carry out such a fraulent search for high paying ads.

If you would like to see screen shots of the Rad Links you can look here -

http://www.jenstar.ca/radlinks/

Cheers, Glen

Hi Glen,

I have also heard about this new beta program of google.

Not all of these new "change to ads about" ad blocks have a search box. Some of them have the text "change to ads about" and then they have a list of topics to choose from. If you pick one of the topic then new ads will appear. I think this is better than the search box feature and will prevent people from "changing the topic" to some high paying topic just so they can carry out fraudulent clicks.

Here is a screen shot of on such beta ad -

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/attachment....ttachmentid=944