I'd like "collapsing" ads

an option to show nothing if no ads are available

[danny]

I use alternate ads mainly so ugly empty rectangles don't appear on my pages. What I'd like is a "collapse" option, which displays nothing if no ads are available. I'm no Javascripter, but shouldn't this be fairly easy to implement?

[incrediBILL]

The instructions are under "HELP" from the Google AdSense page.

AdSense Support > Your AdSense Account > Alternate Ads
[google.com...]

[danny]

I remember that now... it seemed bizarrely complicated for something that simple.

But maybe I'll give it a go - has anyone else implemented this, and have there been any problems?

[tebrino]

I use them since they implemented them and I did not have any problems.

[RaZor_Edge]

I use them too with no problem.

I hate to have an empty space on my pages...

[arrowman]

I did not have any problems.

It's not perfect on my site: a collapsed unit leaves a small horizontal gap or identation of about 0,5 centimeter or so on a typical screen.

Does anyone else see that too, or is it something in my site?

[danny]

The reason I don't want to use alternate ads is that Google indexes the damn things - and that seems to have screwed up my rankings. I worry that having every page link to an empty "google_adsense_script.html" page isn't going to be any better - I know Google dislikes orphan pages, let alone *empty* orphan pages, so it may well penalise a site where every page links to one.

I know this seems silly, but I'm 90% sure that my AdSense alternate ads have been screwing up my Google rankings - of course Googlebot should know better than to index them at all, but in this case the left hand obviously doesn't know what the right is doing. (Though independence between those units is probably a good thing, of course.)