How to Remove the Underline on Adsense Ads

Remove the Underline on Adsense Ads

It remains a wonder for many publishers how to remove the underline on Adsense ads. Yes,  you can customize your ad display -font size and color, border, background – but not the underline. Since we cannot have this option, the solution oftentimes is to modify our blog’s’ CSS to add underline to all our links. And yet, we see web pages with Google ads that blend perfectly with their contents.  How is it possible for them and not for the rest of the population?  Isn’t it unfair that they have more freedom in monetizing their sites as far the big A  is concerned?

Not necessarily the case.

Those Adsense account holders that are given more flexiblity to customize their ad displays are called premium publishers. When you have 20 million page views per month, or 5 million searches (and some of these requirements are lowered for other languages and countries) you qualify for the Premium Publisher program from Google AdSense. (That requirement disqualifies me and the rest of us!) They enjoy perks like:

• Many alternative styles and sizes of ad units from the ones the regular publishers have access to which means they can also remove the underline on Adsense ads.
• For them, labeling of ads is also optional – they are allowed not to show the “Adchoices” thingy.
• Plus, they are allowed to show Adsense on Gambling related content. One good example  is gamblingcasino.about.com. See the screenshot below:

• Creating direct links to AdSense for search results - Adsense policies do not allow publishers to pre-populate Adsense for search box with keywords or create direct links to Adsense for search pages. Look at this one:

Premium publishers may have these options but their revenues are generally negotiated with Google and they may be paid lower than if they were regular publihsers.

Since I’m not a premium publisher, how do I remove the underline on Adsense ads?

I’m sorry but the title of this post is rather misleading. Unless you have access  to your Adsense javascript and can modify it, then there’s no way for you to remove the underline from your ads. In stricter sense, that this because for one line text-link ads (728 x 15 and 468 x15) there’s a simple trick not to remove but to hide the underline. I’m not sure if this is allowed by Google so implement this at your own risk.

Find the follow part of your Adsense 728 x 15 or 465 x15 text link ads codes:

google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 15;

Just change reduce the height of you ad. Based on trial and error, the best height to hide the underline on Adsense ads is 13. With that, the only parts seen are the text links area and the label. This is best to be placed beside your header menu as many visitors would think that the ads are part of your site navigation.

But would you remove the underline on Adsense ads knowing that your account may be at the risk of being banned? I wouldn’t.