Blogger: Finally Auto Collapsing Blank Adsense Blocks ! Blogger Rocks!

Blogger user, I don't know if you've already noticed it - but Google's blogging service is now auto-collapsing or auto-hiding unused Adsense blocks! No need for tweaks. It's just doing it by itself. Finally!

Blank Adsense block? What's that?

Adsense users are only allowed to put 3 ad units, 3 link units and 1 search ad block per page. If you go beyond this limit, Adsense will automatically 'kill' the exceeding blocks, leaving you with blank boxes and an awkward looking webpage.

For Non-Blogger-Users, this won't pose a problem as Google had already offered a decent Collapsing Ads solution for hosted blogs or websites:

Collapsing ad units are an optional advanced feature of alternate ads — the collapsing ad unit code will ‘collapse’ your ad unit so that it takes up no page space if there are no targeted ads available. This allows you to minimize any blank space that would otherwise occur through the use of alternate colors.

To implement the collapsing ad units feature, you’ll need to host a small HTML file on your domain. Your alternate ad URL will reference this file, which will be called if there are no ads available for that particular ad unit. Please follow the instructions below:

1. Download the collapsing ad units file by right-clicking the link below and selecting “Save Target as…”

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/google_adsense_script.html
2. Copy this file to any location on your domain. Important: if you are running ads on multiple domains or subdomains, you will need to host this file on each of your domains and subdomains in order to use the collapsing ad units feature.
3. In the Alternate Ads URL text box, enter the fully defined path to the collapsing ad units HTML file on your domain. For example: http://www.example.com/scripts/google_adsense_script.html
4. Click Continue.
5. Copy and paste the ad code into your web pages. You must ensure that the alternate ad references the collapsing ad units script on the same domain or subdomain as your web page. For example, if your alternate ad URL references the collapsing ad units HTML file on www.example2.com, you cannot place this ad code on any page of www.example.com or on any page of forums.example2.com. Doing so will result in errors on your page.

If you have successfully implemented the collapsing ad unit code, your ad units will disappear when targeted ads are not available. Please note that this feature will not work with Internet Explorer version 5.0 or lower – any unused ad units will appear as empty, transparent boxes.

Blogger users, oddly enough, weren't offered this solution in the past - leaving a lot of Blogspot blogs with 'rather funny' looking homepages (since Blogger treats homepage as one page despite the fact that it is a collection of many).

But anyway, the good thing is that Google has finally acted on it and Blogger doesn't have this problem anymore. What can I say? Blogger is getting better by the day.

Google rocks!

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