300x250 rectangle

URLs being cut in half?

[Play_Bach]

I'm seeing the URLs being cut in half in the 300x250 rectangles. Anybody else?

[Play_Bach]

Am I the only one seeing this?

[edited by: Play_Bach at 4:05 pm (utc) on Jun 24, 2011]

[netmeg]

Same thing happened a couple weeks ago with the 468x60 - about the time they flipped 'em all to Ad Choices. It did seem to correct itself in a day or two.

I'm not using any squares or rectangles at the moment, so I got no personal experience with that particular ad unit.

[Play_Bach]

Thanks netmeg. Guess the good news is that the new underlining URLs aren't an issue anymore -- 'cause you don't see 'em! ;-)

[Atomic]

300x250 is one of the two ad units I have on all my pages and I have yet to see a URL cut in half.

[Play_Bach]

@Atomic

Well that's interesting! I'm seeing it all the time now. Wonder if it's only affecting some locations? (SF Bay Area)

[JCKline]

I see this often, mainly with long URLs.

[Play_Bach]

> I see this often, mainly with long URLs.

The URLs I'm seeing are being cut in half width-wise, not lengthwise (though I've that too). It looks like the space between the ads got reduced too much so that's why the URLs are being cut. Are you using 300x250 blocks?

[Play_Bach]

@Atomic
@JCKline

Just sent you a screenshot

[Atomic]

Whoa! I am seeing nothing remotely like that! That can't be helping CTR.

[Play_Bach]

Yeah, it's pretty bad. I'm surprised they let stuff like that out in the wild.

[Play_Bach]

Just noticed the problem seems specific to Firefox for the Mac and Safari on the iPad when there are four ads in the block. ASA? You around?

[Play_Bach]

Still messed up. I abandoned the 336x280 because of the underlined URL by the title nightmare for the 300x250 since it at least (thankfully!) still has the URL below, only to find out the 300 block has it's own formatting problems (primarily no space between the ads). :-|
Here's to hoping somebody in design at AdSense takes a look at these blocks and gets them restored to their former glory. ASA, is that you?

[anteck]

Same Problem. The font size is too big and each ad overlaps the next... it's looking screwed up and my CTR has dropped out. Font size and type is set to default.. so can't do anything about it. WTF Google?

[numnum]

Consider switching to a 250X250 box. The maximum number of displayed ads in a 250X250 box seems to be 3, which leaves some space between ads. As for 728X90, using a narrow font (e.g., Arial instead of Verdana) means more ad text will fit on the line and the font size is less likely to be automatically reduced from the size you might prefer.

[anteck]

Google once again have screwed up royally across the board. I'm seeing the same ad problem across a bunch of other sites. It just looks really messy and unprofessional. Dumbarses! Happened ever since the 'ad choices' change.

[Play_Bach]

I'm back to the 336, the 300 block is just too cramped and confused looking with the URLs being chopped. I'm hoping this is all just some kind of strange test to rule new "improvements" like these out - completely. Maybe earnings will be so obviously poor from these blocks that Google will put things back the way they were? In the meantime, my visitors can continue to enjoy/ignore the poorly targeted, poorly laid out AdSense ads.

[anteck]

I CANNOT believe google STILL HAVE NO FIXED THIS!

My CTR's dropped like a rock... and all i see... in sites everywhere... is this stupid crappy spammy looking font size error.

Google? Hello? Anyone home? ;)

[netmeg]

They're obviously not here. If you want to complain to them direct, you're going to need to go over to the Google forum. There you can post a link to a screenshot.

[Play_Bach]

JenSense posted about it with screenshots on her blog May 31st. Hard to believe they wouldn't know about it by now.
[jensense.com...]