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I know blasts and flame templates have gone for good now. Are there many similar area-of-effect items out there in the indexes? Or is there literally no disadvantage to me marching my 50-man conscript blobs in ranks now?

This would be very good as I could use movement trays

Hmmm, none that I can think of, barring the obvious to still watch out for multi charges.

Most aoe buffs I've read seem to say unit not models so ranks could be great fun and visually epic

There's some powers that affect units within x" of target unit, but not many, and that's not a direct problem with bunching models in a single unit up. The straight answer to your question is no, there is no downside (that I can think of anyway).

Bunching units up together has a bunch of potential downsides, the biggest being getting sucked into assault by enemy units piling in and whatnot.

Cool, just wanted to check. This is great news for horde armies - it'll make them so much quicker to play when you don't have to worry about making sure there are no bunch-ups that can be targeted by blasts and the like

I think this, as much as anything else, is what GW was after when they got rid of templates. And it worked IMO. I've avoided horde armies like the plague, but I'd consider one now.

Kind of funny that you used to bunch up (rank) models in WFB, but with the new edition you don't anymore.

In old 40k, you never bunched up your models, but with the new editions it's more likely.