Skip to main content

Do Not Use The Default Colors for Google Adsense Ads; Bug Spotted

If you are using the default Adsense color scheme to display Google Ads on your website, it's time that you update your Adsense code else your daily revenue from Adsense clicks might drop significantly.

When you create a new Adsense Ad, Google offers you a set of color palettes to choose from. The "Default Color Palette" creates an ad with a white background and a white border which fits just fine on most websites.

The Default Color Palette also produces the smallest Adsense snippet since this color scheme doesn't add the color variables (like google_color_bg, google_color_border, etc) to your code.

Google Adsense engine is smart enough and when the color variables are missing from Adsense code, it will automatically apply the default "Open Air" color scheme while rendering the Adsense ad on your website.

So far so good. But for the past week or so, I have noticed that Google is applying the Seaside color scheme to Adsense Ads that are using the Default Color Palettes instead of Open Air color scheme. That means your ads will have colored borders.

The 120x240 ad unit on the front page of Digital Inspiration was created using the default color palette but Google has rendered it with the Seaside or Mother Earth color scheme. (see screenshot)

Why is this bad ? A thumb-rule of Adsense says that Ads should be borderless so that they blend with the background. The above bug is adding a colored border to the Ad. Since the border color is different from that of the background, the Ad Unit will exhibit poor performance.

What is the remedy ? It's pretty easy to fix this issue at your end. Goto the Adsense setup page and recreate that Adsense unit using the "Open Air" color scheme instead of the "Default color Palette."

Once the right color variables are added to the Adsense code, it would be look just the right way.

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

PhishTank Detects Phishing Websites by Digg Style Voting

OpenDNS, a free service that helps anyone surf the Internet faster with a simple DNS tweak , will announce PhishTank today. PhishTank is a free public database of phishing URLs where anyone can submit their phishes via email or through the website. The submissions are verified by the other community members who then vote for the suspected site. This is such a neat idea as sites can be categorized just based on user feedback without even having to manually verify each and every submission. PhishTank employs the "feedback loop" mechanism where users will be kept updated with the status' of the phish they submit either via email alerts or a personal RSS feed . Naturally, once the PhishTank databases grows, other sites can harness the data using open APIs which will remain free. OpenDNS would also use this data to improve their existing phishing detection algorithms which are already very impressive and efficient. PhishTank | PhishTank Blog [Thanks Allison] Related: Google

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.