You've probably already noticed it. The look of your AdSense units has changed.
No, you didn't push the wrong button and accidentally wipe out all your formatting. And no one hacked into your code and played with your Web page.
Google has redesigned its ad units.
The changes aren't radical but they do offer a couple of small advantages.
First, the "Ads by Google" tag is now at the bottom of the unit instead of at the top. That means that users no longer get a little warning telling them that what they're about to see are ad links. They see the links then they're told that they've been looking at ads. That's a nice little change.
The other change is the removal of the borders between ads within a unit.
That's not a great surprise. Turning off the borders was always the first step in AdSense optimization. It seems as though Google has seen so many of its advertisers turning off the borders -- and earning more as a result -- that it has now removed the option of having internal borders altogether.
But that also means that you can have an external border around the ad unit without worrying about seeing lines between the ads. The only time that I can imagine someone doing that is if they had a very modular page with content placed in separate boxes. For the most part, this change is just going to lower the chances of new publishers accidentally putting up their ads with the worst form of poor formatting.
One thing we can be sure of though is that Google tested this new look before it came out -- and saw better clickthroughs as a result. We should expect to see the same.
Your comments are welcome!
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