If you run AdSense ads on your site alongside any other advertising platform, listen up.  Last night Google refreshed the look of the their AdSense Program Policy page.  And while the search company says that "nearly all of the policies themselves have stayed the same", they did make one change to the program that might impact a lot of website publishers.

The Competitive Ads and Services section of the policy now reads: 

In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

What does that mean, exactly?  In a nutshell, it means if you run AdSense and, say, YPN ads on the same site, you will now have to change the appearance of one of the ad blocks so that they can't be confused for one another.  It doesn't matter if you run the ads on different pages within the site or if your ads on set on a rotation.  You must change something about the ads to make them different.  JenSense contacted Google to ask if link color was enough of a change.  The answer from Google:  no.  It must be a more significant change.

So a lot of publishers are probably going to have to change the way they display ads on their sites.  I'm not sure what Google was thinking with a change like this.  Sure, they can get away with things like that because they have the textual advertising system that most website owners are going to use and stick with.  But this is certainly going to alienate more than a few website owners.  Combined with the changes being made to SERPs and the public response to those changes so far and it looks like Google's sterling reputation might be starting to tarnish just a bit.