Not sure why exactly, but Google has decided to dramatically increase the size of their cover photos. I wrote about the Google Plus Cover Photos Size back when it was first released and back then the size was 940px by 180px. The new size is now 1556px by 870px. That’s a completely different ratio and significantly larger.
What I think is really weird though is that as I was trying to grab the screen shot of the image above, as I zoomed out in Chrome, the cover photo size appeared to get even larger. I couldn’t adjust the screen display to show just how much of the top of the screen was being taken up by the new larger sized cover photo.
Generally, as you’re creating your graphic, you’ll probably want to keep the bottom 250 pixels of the image fairly blank, or no important information or text, this area is where Google Plus will overlay your selected Profile Photo and page details.
What I think is weird though, is that on one of my other Google Plus pages for the Positively Indy website, I haven’t updated to the new size and I prefer the way it crops and lays out my old photo better. Even adjusting the screen browser window size makes things float around the image much nicer as shown below.