AS Link unit with searchbox?

[zCat]

I've just called up my test site, which is not publicly accessible (and therefore tends to have mis-targetted ads , at least when I forget to turn off Javascript) and noticed that the 728x15 link unit contains a little search box with the tag "ad search" (the text is actually in Japanese, so if there is an English version it might be phrased differently).

My pavlovian anti-click instincts prevent me from doing any experiment, but I haven't seen this format on the AdSense example format page. Has anyone else seen anything like this?

[jchampliaud]

Sounds interesting. I've not seen that yet. Maybe something in beta?

[davelms]

I've seen this since day one of Link Units. I believe it is the Link Units equivalent of a PSA when there is nothing else suitable to show.

[zCat]

Ah, dang, thought I was on to something new there. Thinking about it, that particular link code doesn't have any alternative ad code (on the real site it's always "full" so never saw any need for it), so that would be a rational explanation. Odd that I've never seen one "in the wild" though.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Hi there -

As davelms mentioned, the link unit search box tends to appear when our crawlers are not able to access the content of your site. It sounds like your test page might fall into this category!

-ASA