Word Of The Day: Accidense
What do you call it when you accidentally click on a Google ad? Accidense, of course!
Make You Go Hmmm makes the excellent point that the blank space in Google AdSense ads that is still clickable is basically cheating. If I click on blank space, am I really interested in an ad, or is it more likely my mouse cursor is there so it won’t click anything? Why does Google put so much clickable ad space in its ads, and are advertisers being cheated?
Every single original content use of the word “Accidense” I can find:
Scoble
Randy Morin
Henning Lange
eWealth Forum
Its just google being a bit excessive with their application of Fitt’s Law. All the cool web2.0 (:P) web pages have padding around important links so that people can click them easier.
That said, I’m sure lots of that lots of money is generated from accidenceal clicks.
Comment by sidd | November 29, 2005
Offtopic:
I suspect the link to http://www.paidcontent.org/jup/index.xml is causing your sidebar to explode. I have to block rpc.bloglines.com to make your blog display correctly in Internet Explorer 6.
Ontopic:
Well, I don’t really mind the blank space being clickable (as a user), even though I’ve had some accidenses myself. When another window is on top of your browser, and you click on a webpage to move it on top of other open windows, you can’t always see you’re clicking on an ad. I can imagine that advertisers don’t like it, though.
Comment by Tim | November 29, 2005
Must be an IE or FF problem, since Opera is just fine. Either way, its fixed. Thanks for the heads up!
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | November 29, 2005
accidense or accidence ?
Comment by spellcheck | November 30, 2005
Wow. Three points to whoever figures out who doesn’t get it.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | November 30, 2005