It was in March 2009 that I started using AdSense, and ever since it has been a huge part of my blog monetization technique.
In the first 5 years I earned about 2.2 million INR just from AdSense, and realized no matter how many AdSense alternatives we talk about, AdSense is by far one of the best and the highest paying ad network for any blogger.
I have already shared some of the working tips to increase your Adsense revenue but as I mentioned, Adsense is very strict about AdSense TOS, which means you have to take care of certain things to make sure you don’t violate AdSense policies. We all know that getting Adsense approval is not easy and we need to do many things to keep our AdSense account active.
Recently, I got an email from Adsense team saying that Adsense serving had been disabled on one of my sites. I realized it was the right time to update this post and make new AdSense publishers aware of Adsense policies and the things to avoid, which may lead to an account ban.
Little out of context but since 2011, when Google launched Google Panda, they also made some major changes in Adsense quality guidelines. Especially, in 2011-2012 we noticed that many Indian and Pakistani Adsense publishers had been banned due to copyright violation and low-quality pages. Another major reason for Adsense ban is an invalid click, which is altogether a big topic, and I will cover it in another post.
Google Adsense is very strict about the policies and that is why I removed the Global Translator plugin to save myself from getting banned from Google Adsense.
These are the simple mistakes you and Adsense publisher should avoid getting themselves banned:
Understand Adsense TOS and Stop Violating Adsense Policies
Invalid Clicks
This is how maximum Adsense accounts get into the danger zone. Most publishers who start with Adsense usually ask their friends to click on ads or click on their ads from different IP addresses. If the Adsense team detects any such activity, they put your account in the ‘disabled mode’ to safeguard their advertisers.
Also, many new publishers ask their readers to click on ads, which is also discouraged by Adsense as stated in their program policies.
Using Adsense on an unsupported language blog
At the time of writing, Google doesn’t support all languages to qualify for Adsense program. If you have an approved AdSense account, and you are using it to show it on a blog, the language of which doesn’t qualify as per Adsense TOS, you need to make changes ASAP. If you use any method to make your blog multi-lingual and serve ads on it, it can be considered a violation.
Here is the list of AdSense supported language.
Sending ads on email
Many publishers started the trend of sending AdSense adverts within the email, and sometimes it goes viral. Google finds it against the program policies.
Advertisement label
Many publishers started using tricks like “Click here”, “Click to see hot babe, etc., which encouraged clicks. Encourage clicks? Oh, time to look at point 4.
You use pop-up scripts to show Adsense in pop-up and readers have to click on it to read the content? Another BIG NO.
Competitive contextual advertisement
Make sure you don’t use any other contextual advertisement program. Let Google Adsense be your one and only favorite advertisement program. Though for monetization, you can use many other ad networks. Here are some which I have used, and they comply with Adsense TOS.
Altering the Adsense code
So you are a programmer? Doesn’t matter. Changing your Adsense code in any way is not permitted by Google.
Shading with Image: Placing Google Adsense Image ad unit with the adjacent image can be a great and smart move, but guess what? Do it and Google AdSense might ban you. Google TOS doesn’t allow the use of shading your AdSense image ads with the adjacent image.
- Read few more from official Google page
- Meanwhile, do you know a guy named Aaron sued Google AdSense for banning his account? Read the interesting Aaron story here.
Hosting Copyright content
If you are running Adsense on a site that distributes copyright content like Movies, songs or any other files, you are most likely to get an instant ban. Adsense doesn’t allow putting Adsense on the site that distributes copyright stuff.
Linking to the site that distributes illegal and copyright content
This is something which I got to know about in 2012. This is also the biggest reason why most sites are getting the Adsense ban. If you are linking to sites like (streaming movie), illegal or pirated software, Keygen sites, your AdSense serving might be disabled for that particular site. Here is the other type of content, which is not allowed for Adsense sites:
- Porn, adult material
- Violent content
- Racial content
- Hacking/Cracking
- Gambling/Casino
- Pages selling Drugs, Alcohol (Beer or hard alcohol)
- Pages selling Weapons and ammunition
- Distribution of course work. Eg: Student Essays
These are just examples. There could be many more. So, you should avoid putting any such content on your blog or at least avoid serving Adsense on those pages.
Paid Traffic
If you are buying traffic for your AdSense enabled sites, it’s not permitted according to AdSense TOS. Also, consider reading Adsense landing page Quality guidelines, which will give you ample amount of idea as to what Google expects from your pages.
Promoting your post on social media or buying traffic from quality sites is not the violation.
Making ads look like part of the content
You are free to make your ads blend with the content by changing the color or size, but don’t make it look exactly like content. In below image you can see what kind of mimicking is not acceptable:
Quick things to know:
- Don’t make your AdSense ads sticky. Making it sticky is against AdSense implementation policy.
- Using AdSense ads on a site which curates videos from YouTube or other video hosting sites, can put your account in the ban radar. To avoid this, ensure you also have original content on your blog. A good idea is to add 200-300 words content in your words describing the video.
- Don’t place AdSense ads on 404 error page, exit pages, log-in pages and thank you pages.
But if you are a victim of the AdSense ban game, ShoutMeLoud’s earlier post on AdSense alternative program will be very useful for you.
Tip: Use Affiliate marketing to increase your blog income.
I must have been very lucky! I got Adsense approval within two weeks of applying!
This is what I did:
1. Created my Website and chose a really great looking FREE WordPress theme
2. Created Social media pages and linked all of them to my Website
3. Posted 2 Articles within that week and applied for Adsense
4. By the end of the next week, I got an email saying that I was approved
Thank you Harsh Bro,
I have followed up your tips and got approved Adsense account on my 6 days old domain…
ShoutMeLoud is really rocking……
adsense not support tamil language. But many tamil blogs have adsense ads. How its possible?
@Gowtham
That’s AdSense violation & they could get banned anytime.
Hello Sir, I have a website and a approved adsense account and I am using ad of adsense but I want to know what is invalid clicks?
How many ad I can place on a web page?
And last and important question is that if I have 4 ads in a page and someone clicks on these ads twice or many times than will I get ban from adsense or not?
@Mohit
You can place 3 banner ads, 3 text ads & 2 search box . I recommend keep the number low, and place them around your content without distracting readability.
Invalid clicks according to AdSense is:
This includes, but is not limited to, clicks or impressions generated by a publisher clicking on his own ads, a publisher encouraging clicks on his ads, automated clicking tools or traffic sources, robots, or other deceptive software.
Usually you won’t get ban for few in-valid or accidental clicks, but ensure it doesn’t happen on regular basis.
Can i use adsense on site which does not provide any single downloading link but full article is base on download something movie or download something song. i mean whole site contains download word many time but article is full quality not any copy content and more than 600 words article…. please tale me use gogle adsense on this type site is legal or not
@Akshay
As long as it’s not encouraging piracy & violating somebody copyright, it won’t be any problem!
Adsense and infolinks together secure or not?If i used both on my site then it effect on adsense RPM,CTR,CPM??
@Sagar
Yes, you can use AdSense & Infolinks together. It should not affect AdSense RPM, but you need to A/B test it to get exact answer.
if i apply for infolinks before adsense can it effect the adsense aproval ?
Hey Farhan,
You can safely use Infolinks on the same page where you are monetizing with AdSense. The only thing that you need to take care of is; ensure the pop-up created by hovering the mouse on info links ads, should not cover AdSense ads. You need to take care of AdSense placement in such a manner to avoid the same. A good practice is to add < !– INFOLINKS_ON–> and < !– INFOLINKS_OFF–> at the start and end of the content area of your blog. This way info links ads will be displayed only in your content area part.
Hi Harshal, if there are maximum visitors from facebook to my website then if there any possibilities that my google adsense will get ban.
@Akshay
No it won’t affect your AdSense account. Though AdSense perform well when traffic is organic!
thanks for your article, I’ve recently started getting a lot of traffic from gambling sites (the type that pop up when you visit download sites etc). I assume this palces me at risk of losing my adsense? How do I stop this traffic? I can’t find info about this anywhere!
Hi, I got a question. I’m running my blog in English language right now with Google Adsense. But still there are few posts aren’t in the supported language. But I use the plugin in WordPress that can hide this pages from showing the ads. (If Visible and etc)
So the ads just only show for my English content only. Is it okay?
@Shane
That sound prefect! You can do that and use AdSense on your blog.
Shane please share which plugin are you using to hide unsupported language post coz I also do have same problem.
I’ve reply your email yesterday…
” To get the plugin, you must have Jetpack and then go to Jetpack Setting. And activate Widget Visibility. It’s so easy. And when you go to your Widgets, you can find “Visibility” button at the bottom of each widget. Click on it and choose either “Hide” or “Show” and you can do the rest.
hey, i want to know, will it be Adsense policy violent if i run affiliate programm as well on my site, if Adsense are active ?
Hello, Thanks for the information. Can you tell me is it possible to make a blog of youtubes videos such as funny videos within getting banned. Is it permitted by google?
hey i have made a blog which provides all the content needed by a student in my college. It provides the study material in the form of pdf files which are downloadable using dropbox links. Is that violating adsense tos?
And please tell me “adsense application need to be 6 months old in india” What does that mean?
Can I use facebook ads to get traffic to my site? and that site also have AdSense ads.(one of my friend who has AdWords certificate they tell me that yes you can and it’s not agints TOS of AdSense but still I have confusion.. That can we really do?)
If you say yes then please tell me other site like fb (adfly,buyselladse etc.)
Thank you.
Hai Harsh
recently my site got adsense. ..and they had given ad code. I created an ad unit in my adsense account and I generated ad code.
I placed that generated code in my wordpress. I can see blank add on my site. but later I got mail that my adsense rejected now. .what should I do now?.
@Mani
I had a look at your blog and it needs lot of work.
1) Use images with the post
2) Make the design look more attractive/professional
3) Use posts instead of pages
4) Add sidebar element: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/must-have-blog-subscription-options.html
5) The header ad which you have added is not centred.
6) Reapply after making all the changes.
I also suggest you to read: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-get-google-adsense-approval-new-blog.html
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-i-got-google-adsense-within-a-month.html
These are nice and informative suggestions coming from who’ve been in the blogging industry for years.
Thanks and more power.
Hi Agreawal,
Can we use EMBED codes of dailymotion videos for those sites where Google ads are working properly? Will Ad-sense make any issue about these videos? Will my ad serving stop on that website?
Hi harsh
I have a news website and its 3 years old and have adsense on it and I am copying the news from other websites and pasting on my site.I want to know wheter am violating the adsense policy,it is not banned yet but I stop updating my website due to this fear that they will ban my adsense account.
Dear Harsh,
I recently got AdSense for my website, say abc.com Now for SEO reasons I want to change the name of my website to xyz.com and continue to use the same AdSense code. Is it allowed by Google or will I loose AdSense if I do this?
With Regards
P Chandra
Hi Harsh,
I created a personal blog exactly 6 months ago, and i try to add ‘AdSense’ to it, however the option to apply for this is locked and this message appears ‘Your blog doesn’t currently qualify for AdSense’. I am pretty sure I am not doing something wrong with my blog, I created all the content on it, can you please take a look on my blog: chido-fajny.blogspot.com and maybe you can recommend me something to make this option available? 🙂
Also, I have an approved Youtube Adsense already, I don’t know if this would help.
@David
I believe this is because of the language of the blog. Check if your language is supported by AdSense or not.https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9727?hl=en
If yes, reapply.
Hi again Harsh, thank you for your quick response.
My blog is in English and Spanish (both are supported by Adsense).
I really want to apply for this, however I don’t see the ‘reapply button’ (the option of Adsense has been always locked).
how can I reapply?
Or do I need to wait until google check my blog randomly? 😛
Thank you one more time 🙂
i am going to make a new site on live cricket news and scores and live embed channel streaming….so iwant to know that live channel streaming is alow or not by adsence
Thanks for all information Harsh, i never knew that paid traffic is not good for adsense, through I never bought paid traffic.