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.
Thanks Really Above Infomation Is Very Helpful.I Was Worried About Invalid Click Which Is Going On My Adsense Now-a-days
Really thanks i love your blog ….. thanks for updating awesome post everyday
Are there any good alternative plugins other than adsense official plugin to place Adsense ads on my blog?
@Ankurman
There are many. You can pick Ad Injection or Easy plugin for Adsense. You can check out some of the best AdSense WordPress plugins here https://www.shoutmeloud.com/best-adsense-plugins-wordpress.html
hello harsh, I would like to know that, If by mistake I clicked one time on my AdSense add, will google block my account?
Hi, I am planning to make a website on wallpapers of celebrities and nature. Will my Adsense account get banned?
@Rohit
With no text content, most likely it will get banned.
Hello sir,
I have created my website using WordPress. I have a doubt before applying for AdSense that, Will I get banned after after previewing my post many times from WordPress dashboard ? Is it invalid activity for Google AdSense.
Waiting for reply !
Thank you !
nope.
Hello Harsha,
I have a Team working offshore and on-shore, I would want to block our team IP address fro adsense so that our adsense account will be in compliance with the adsense policies.
Could you please let me know how to avoid counting impressions of Adsense ads on our own website from our team. Your help in this matter will highly appreciated.
Hello Harsh,
I follow your article and it’s helped me a lot. I have a question is that I have a website with the blog and its contents are in Hindi. I applied for an AdSense and it was rejected 5 times.
We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below.
Insufficient content: To be approved for AdSense and show relevant ads on your site, your pages need to have enough text on them for our specialists to review and for our crawler to be able to determine what your pages are about.
I do not understand what to do now? Can you please help me about further apply.
Thank you
Hey Surbhi,
What is your blog URL. Have you submitted the sitemap?
hello,
I am running youtube channel. since last 3 days I am streaming some live scorecard videos and yesterday I received continue 6000 viewers for 5 hours videos and after this streaming my same video gone viral and received 650000 views in just 15 hours I was very much happy because of this……..but suddenly my AdSense account is disabled due to the invalid activity this problem was happened to me second time first account was disabled for 1 month and now it permanently . I am sure this is happened due to a sudden increase in views. I have also filled appeal form but will I get my account back because I have more than 12000 subscribers on my channel…….pls pls help
A powerful article about adsense is indeed very helpful for bloggers for it being a platform for publishing blogs. The rules and guidelines given for using adsense account have been precisely yet clearly given. An informative piece of writing.
Is beauty & women health website adSense friendly ?
yes
What if someone continuously click on my Ads.
I will Get Banned on Google Adsense??
I thing its great and will work for me, I tried 4 times but they won’t approved any. I have got a adsense before and i deactivated that and deleted that blog, now applied with same address and name, does its make any problem ?
Will my account be banned from AdSense if I dont post videos at all in my channel for a long time?
nope.
Hello Harsh sir,
This important article has let me get a load of my mind.I have most important question I want to ask you:-by linking to other (good) websites or blogs, will cause google adsense policy violation?
I have searched all infos related to that but I didn’t find a suitable information about it.I think of tending toward linking only good website.
Any help would be appreciated.
No shubham, it is not a policy violation.
Hi,
I used Adsense for 6 to 7 months on my food blog. As I need to change my country name I had to close my Adsense account to reopen with a new Gmail account.After I removed adcodes and everything related to the previous account, I tried to add my previously linked site to the new account.It has been 7 days since I closed the account but I couldn’t add my site from my new account.It shows “This URL is not available for signing up for AdSense”.I don’t know how to proceed and couldn’t find the answer anywhere.Could you please guide me in this if you are aware of this situation.Thank you
You can check if your domain has been banned, because I will suppose even if you change your adsense acc, Google already knows you were approved on another acc, don’t know if this violates their terms of agreement. Use Google to search ‘check adsense ban’ you will find a lot of free tools to check the status of your domain
Wish you luck
Hi Benny,Thank you for your reply.Yes,My site has been banned by Adsense.I just closed the account and then only try to apply for a new account.Dont know how to proceed further.Can’t I rejoin into Adsense again.Do you have any idea?
Hello Harsh sir,
Im about to start my blog on how to study MBBS. Basically I want it to be an update on what is to be studied and how . I wanted to add Important questions, books to refer, and certain notes that I shall create …. will this be a violation of the policy…
I actually didn’t understand this part in the article –
Distribution of course work. Eg: Student Essays
Does that mean I cannot write about study topics.
Hi, HARSH AGRAWAL Sir
I am a big fan of your Blog
I have a new blog and going to apply for Google Adsense after some days. So, If I use a free version Template which is downloaded from another website then there is any problem to approve with my Adsense account ? please help me.
thank you
Thank you. And you can use a free template for your blog. it will not affect your Adsense approval.
Nice to know the pitfalls from an experienced Adsense user, Google adsense has a really strict user policy and it will really be sad to have an account disabled. Funny enough google does not give so much reasons for their actions, so will really be better to avoid getting banned.
Hi harsh..
I have an fully approved adsense account and i’m using my regional language on that site which is not a part of adsense languages
This may cause banned from adsense..?
Thank you
Yes, it can.
Hi Harsh, Great article on Google Adsense. Will my google Adsense account get banned if I click on my own website to update it as it increases the page views? Thanks
Yup, it would get banned.