On my site I have the banner with a dark brown border. To me the border makes the ad look better, and blends in with the border. The problem is that it also makes google stand out way too much. I was wondering if it was ok to change the border of the ad to the background of the page. The rest of the ad would stay white. It would blend google in more with the page so it is not jumping out at you so much. I don't like the look of the ad when I made the entire ad the exact same color as background. I do have a color that is inbetween the dark brown and the background that I could have used for the border, but it looked pretty bad.
as long as you can change it within the parameters provided by google (ie. the variables for the colours) then you'll be fine. Any funny hiding / obscuring of the code with iframes, divs etc. is a no no
Can't you provide some URL so that we can check and tell you for sure? If you worry to expose your URL in public you can email the Google AdSense support.
Here is the URL www.bibletopicskjv.com Right now I have the banner with the dark brown border. If I change the border to match the background color of my website, would that be considered funny hiding?
Looks just fine. My advice would be to put more specific categories on the front page so users can see them clearly from the get-go - maybe get rid of those ornamental crosses on the left and put a list of topics there. Just my two pennies.
Thanks for the advice. The problem is that my topics is turning into more of a concordance, which means I have alot of catagories. The topics page holds three columns of long rows of catagories, and will no doubt get bigger. I never thought about it, but I could just change the topics page to the main page. Describing the the site map does get a little redundant. I could take out the crosses. I am a little attached to them, since I made them. I could replace the buttons and site map with links in the margin where the crosses were instead. If I did that, I really wouldn't need an introduction would I? How does that idea sound?
You need to make the background of the ad the same as the page background. I know you tried it but it really looks like a sore thumb the way it is now. Try an image ad. One of your ads was for Bible Ringtones!