Fixing Adsense Injecting 'height: auto !important' - Solution

AdSense injecting "height: auto !important" is a known issue that can cause display problems with AdSense ads on some websites.

This issue is more often caused when you have scrollable containers on your webpage like a sidebar. Injection of "height: auto !important" by Google AdSense ads can make your website face many problems.

Problems that might occur:

The problems I faced having this issue are listed below:

Overlapping content

If the AdSense ad container height is set to "auto," it can cause the ad to overlap with other content on the page, making it difficult to read or interact with the website.

Inconsistent ad sizes

By default, AdSense ads are designed to fit into specific sizes. If "height: auto !important" is injected, it can cause ads to display in varying sizes, making the website look unprofessional and unorganized.

Unresponsive layout

"Height: auto !important" can also cause the AdSense ad container to expand and contract based on the ad size, which can affect the website's layout and make it appear unresponsive on different devices and screen sizes.

Difficulty in tracking ad performance

AdSense relies on tracking clicks and impressions to optimize ad performance. If the ads are not displayed consistently, it can make it difficult to track performance and make informed decisions on optimizing the ad campaigns.

Poor user experience

Ultimately, the injection of "height: auto !important" can lead to a poor user experience on a website. Visitors may find it difficult to navigate or read the content, which can increase bounce rates and harm the website's reputation.

As it causes many issues so, It's important to fix this issue as soon as possible to ensure the website's ad performance and user experience are not negatively affected.

Solution - Fixing Adsense Injecting "height: auto !important"

The are many solutions available for this issue but the most effective solution I found is using Mutation Observer API

MutationObserver is a DOM API that allows you to watch for changes in DOM elements and get notified when a change occurs. It's very powerful and while you don't need it often in normal page-level development, it can be very useful if you need to generically trap changed content which is exactly the scenario I'm looking at here.

This code will solve your issue.

var element = document.getElementsByClassName("element")[0];
const observer = new MutationObserver(function (mutations, observer) {
    element.style.height = "";
});
observer.observe(element, {
    attributes: true,
    attributeFilter: ["style"],
});

In the above code change the "element" with the class name of the element with which you are having the issue.

Summary:

It sucks that Google is so heavy-handed in explicitly changing content on my page. It's part of the content guidelines, but these days, especially with client-side loaded code it's not uncommon to have content that lives in containers that manage their own page scrolling for a cleaner 'application-like' experience. But alas here we are... Google does whatever the heck Google does and we can either take it or leave it.

At least there's a hacky workaround for this, although I suspect this doesn't make Google very happy as this certainly can be abused to hide ads after they are loaded which I suspect is the main reason for this behavior.