We’d like to personally invite you to share your thoughts with us in this 10-15 minutes survey so that we can keep improving your experience with us.
In the past, we have used your responses to improve how we help you, ways you interact with our product, and what type of features we offer. This year the survey is shortened and mobile friendly. Our questions should take about 10-15 minutes to answer.
You may have received a survey by email over the last few weeks, if so please take the time to respond to it as we value your input.
To make sure that you're eligible to receive the next survey email, please:
Whether you’ve completed this survey before or you’re providing feedback for the first time, we’d like to thank you for sharing your valuable thoughts. We’re looking forward to feedback!
Posted by Susie Reinecke - AdSense Publisher Happiness Team
We always hear from publishers that you’re looking for actionable tips and best practices for growing your site. Our team of product, monetization and website optimization experts are constantly building new resources and insights to help publishers like you grow your business. We share personalized suggestions for your website via email in addition to news on the latest product features and invitations. Additionally, we send periodic invitations to live video sessions and events offering personalized tips for your region.
To ensure you’re getting this information from us, we need to have up-to-date contact details and communication preferences for you. Here are a few quick and simple steps you should take when you log in to your AdSense account, to make sure we can get in touch:
Step 1: Make sure that the email address you've listed in your account to receive communications from us is correct and is one that you’re regularly checking. You can check which email address we’re using to reach you by logging in to your AdSense account and going to your Personal settings under the Account section on the left menu bar.
Step 2: Opt in to receive emails from us. We categorize the emails we send based on the content they include. Here’s a quick breakdown:
Customized help and performance suggestions - Includes personalized revenue and optimization tips customized specific for your website.
Periodic newsletters with tips and best practices - Includes general AdSense tips, best practices and product updates.
Occasional surveys to help Google improve your AdSense experience- Gives you a regular opportunity to share your feedback on AdSense.
Special Offers - Includes invitations to events in your country and live YouTube events..
Information about other Google products and services which may be of interest to you - Occasional updates on other Google products like Google Analytics or DoubleClick for Publishers.
You can update your email preferences by checking the boxes in your Personal settings section.
Step 3: Choose your language preference. Did you know that AdSense emails are available in 38 different languages? We’ve recently added Hindi, Malay and Filipino. You can choose the language that suits you best by using the Display language drop-down menu directly under the email preferences checkboxes. Get the most from the AdSense team and ensure you can hear from us. Log in to your account now and check your contact details and communication preferences. It takes no more than two minutes.
In today's post, we'll be discussing AdSense account suspensions due to invalid traffic.
We have found that there are two types of publishers who may have invalid traffic issues with their accounts. The first are publishers who may unintentionally send invalid traffic to their accounts, typically by testing on live ads. For those, we hope that increased transparency into our policies and processes can decrease these unintentional violations and help our publishers play by the rules. The second are publishers who intentionally bypass our rules, ending up with a variety of invalid traffic issues in order to artificially inflate their ad revenue. That’s why we work hard to maintain a policy compliant ecosystem for our publishers, advertisers, and users. In short, if you play by the rules, AdSense is here to help you grow your business.
We receive many questions about account suspensions, so let's go through the top questions about this process and what steps you can take to help keep your account in good standing.
What is invalid traffic anyway? Invalid traffic includes any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. Invalid traffic covers both intentionally fraudulent traffic as well as accidental clicks.
Please note that clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest, and any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions is strictly prohibited by our program policies. If we observe high levels of invalid traffic on your account, we may suspend or disable the account to protect our advertisers and users.
Watch our #AskAdSense video for more information on what invalid traffic is and tips to help prevent invalid traffic on your account.
What is an account suspension? If your account was suspended due to invalid traffic, ad serving has been turned off on all of your content for a fixed period (most frequently 30 days). This includes any website, YouTube channel, and/or mobile app. Please know that we will deduct revenue from your account and will credit advertisers with the withheld revenue where appropriate and possible. If there are no further compliance issues with your account, it will be automatically re-enabled after the fixed period.
Please note that your account is still active, and an account suspension is not the same as having your account disabled. If your account was disabled due to invalid traffic, your account is no longer serving ads, and you will be unable to monetize with any Google ad solutions. As with account suspensions, please know that we may deduct revenue from your account and may credit advertisers with the withheld revenue where appropriate and possible.
In addition to monitoring for policy violations, we analyze all clicks and impressions to determine whether they might artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. If we determine that your account has invalid traffic, then we may suspend or disable your account. Please know that we may deduct revenue from your account and may credit advertisers with the withheld revenue where appropriate and possible.
Here are some common reasons for why your account may get suspended:
Clicking ads on your own site and/or YouTube channel: Publishers may not click their own ads or use any means to inflate impressions and/or clicks artificially, including manual methods. Testing your own ads by clicking on them isn't allowed. Additionally, YouTube publishers should skip ads when viewing their own videos to avoid artificially inflating advertiser costs.
For AdSense ad placements on sites, please use the Google Publisher Toolbar if you want to click the ads to check the landing pages or view more details about the ads. The Toolbar will allow you to check the destination of ads on your page without the risk of invalid clicks.
One or more users repeatedly clicking your ads: Don't encourage or ask your friends, family, co-workers, or general users to click on your ads. This includes asking for users to support your site or YouTube channel, offering rewards to users for clicking ads, and promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior.
We also recommend that you check your associated AdSense email for more information regarding your account suspension.
What steps should I take during the suspension period?
Account suspension gives you time to investigate the sources of invalid traffic, identify and block suspicious traffic, and put measures in place to ensure clean traffic. We recommend learning how to segment your traffic to help you best understand, monitor, and evaluate the traffic to your site. This may also help you identify sources of invalid traffic.
Visit our Help Center for more information about suspended accounts due to invalid traffic.
How can I appeal an account suspension?
Account suspensions are currently not appealable. You can use this time to investigate your traffic sources and make adjustments to help prevent invalid traffic in the future. Provided that there are no further compliance issues with your account, it will automatically be reinstated once your suspension period is served.
Please don't fill out the invalid traffic appeal form because that form is reserved for disabled accounts, and you will receive an email that says we can't process this appeal.
If you would like to provide additional feedback to help us improve our processes and communications, you may do so using our suspended publisher feedback form.
When will my account be re-enabled?
If there are no further compliance issues with your account, it will be automatically re-enabled after the fixed period (most frequently 30 days).
What happens if after my account was re-enabled, my account continues to generate invalid traffic?
If, after your account has been re-enabled, invalid traffic persists and continues to contribute low value traffic to our ads ecosystem, then we may need to disable your account.
Visit our Help Center for more information about suspended accounts due to invalid traffic. We look forward to your return to the AdSense network in good standing after the suspension ends.
Posted by: Danielle Chang, Ad Traffic Quality team
Today, we'd like to demystify one of the most common reasons why AdSense applications get disapproved: the site has insufficient content. What exactly do we mean by this, and how can you fix this issue on your site?
If a site is found to have insufficient content, this means that the site may not have enough text, and/or the site was deemed to be "under construction." 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. Sites that contain mostly images, videos or Flash animations may not be approved. Additionally, sites that consist only of a site template and very little content may not be approved.
Why is it important for your site to have plenty of content? The AdSense program policies are designed to foster a healthy ecosystem that helps protect users, advertisers, and publishers. Our policies prohibit Google ads to be placed on any non-content-based page or placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads. We use factors such as keyword analysis, word frequency, and font size in order to determine what a webpage is about and precisely match Google ads to each page. Therefore, it's important for sites to have lots of high quality and unique content in order to provide meaningful user experiences and allow Google to serve relevant ads to users.
If your AdSense application wasn't approved due to insufficient content (or for other reasons), you're welcome to make corrections to your application and/or improvements to your site and re-submit your AdSense application for further consideration. Before you re-submit your application, check out our AdSense policies: a beginner's guide and additional tips to help ensure that your site's pages are ready for AdSense.
If you're wondering how to make improvements to your site, remember that there are lots of published sites already, so think about what it is that makes your pages unique. You should aim to create original and relevant content that keeps users engaged and encourages them to visit your site again and again.
Check out our help article for more information about insufficient content and other common AdSense application disapproval reasons. If you're still having issues, check out our troubleshooter for disapproved applications. Hopefully after reading this blog post and our other help articles, you can take steps to get your AdSense application approved. If you have questions, join the #AskAdsense conversation Thursdays at 9:30am PT on Twitter to speak with our support team.
Posted by: Danielle Chang, Ad Traffic Quality team
