AdSense's Unacceptable Content Rejection - What is it?

It seems like this is the question everyone's asking right now. There are more and more of these rejection questions showing up in the AdSense Help forums, and most people seem uncertain about what this rejection means. For the most part,  Adsense isn't all that clear about what to do in order to correct this, and won't spell out precisely what the issue is.

In some cases, the unacceptable content is easy to spot when you compare the person's website against the AdSense Program Policies, but it isn't always as simple as that - particularly when English is not the publisher's native language.

Some of the reasons for unacceptable site content that we've been able to come up with in the forums are as follows:

1. - content that doesn't meet adsense policy (read the policies here: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48182)
2. - content that doesn't meet the webmaster guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769) Although the Webmaster Guidelines are listed as "guidelines", AdSense publishers are required to follow these guidelines, making them as important as the Adsense Program Policies. When you are applying to become a publisher, or when you are a publisher, the Webmaster Guidelines are no longer guidelines - they are a requirement, so you'll need to consider these as rules you must follow.
3. - content that isn't original (articles and content you didn't write). Since the inception of "Caffeine", AdSense has been systematically disabling blogs and websites with copied content, auto-written contents, contents of little to no value (re-purposed content from other websites), written content that doesn't make sense or reads as gibberish, and has been rejecting blogs and websites of this nature in the last few months. If you apply with a blog or website with contents such as this, be prepared to receive a rejection notice. What you need is original content that you've created yourself.
4. - no content, or very little content. AdSense requires each blog or website to contain sufficient content. If you have a blog with one or two posts, that's not going to be good enough for AdSense to approve. If your website has only one page, then you'll probably get rejected, unless it's a very big place with a LOT of original content.  If you apply with a site that has "no content", then your "content" is non-existent, which makes it unacceptable content.
5. - blank pages in your website. AdSense doesn't want to see your proposed website, or a website under development. They want your website to be complete, and easy to navigate. It shouldn't have a redirect for the domain URL (unless you've used a 301 redirect), it shouldn't have a frame on the URL that calls the website from another URL (it needs to be a direct URL), it shouldn't have links that don't work or are broken, and it shouldn't have links that lead to blank pages with no content, or with only "ipsum lorem" text. That's the latin text you often see on template pages when you purchase a template or get a free site template. That text is nothing but gibberish - it's meant as a place holder, and you need to replace that with your own text.
6. - copyright infringements (images or other contents you don't have permission to use). Adsense expects it's publishers to "go the extra mile" and create their own unique contents, including images. If you can't create your own images to use with your text (websites and blogs need text, not JUST images or videos), then they expect you to get permission from the image owner BEFORE you use the images, and you'll need to give credit to the image owner. Images specifically marked as being in the public domain don't require permission for use, but you do still need to have a site with mostly original contents, so using a site full of public domain images and nothing else is likely to get a rejection.
7. - a website that isn't six months old and doesn't have six months worth of original content. Adsense requires sites from many countries to be six months old before getting approval, and although we don't have a list of specific countries to point to, it appears that there are many more countries AdSense has added this requirement for.

While there may still be other reasons for unacceptable content, these are the most common ones we've come across. It's up to each publisher to ensure their content follows the guidelines and policies set out by AdSense and Webmaster Guidelines so if you receive this rejection, you'll need to spend some time going through your website or blog and digging through your content to find the areas you'll need to amend, remove, or add to.

If you have taken the time to study your site and the policies and still can't figure out what's wrong, then you can ask in the AdSense Help Forum to see if someone else can see the issues at hand, but it's really the publisher's responsibility to at least try to figure out the problems first. Help is always available, but learning how to decipher your site's problems will help you keep your account in good standing in the future.

AdSense Stole My Money!

Wow, I bet that got your attention!

No, AdSense didn't steal my money, but we are in fact seeing a lot of posts like this in the AdSense forums. And there is a reason for it. Since about April of this year (2010) there have been some display issues with some of the reports pages within your AdSense accounts. Those of you who get cheques every month and don't actually check your stats all that often may not have noticed these issues at all, but they are probably there, in  your accounts. In the past month or so a second display issue has cropped up, also relating to earnings, but on a different page.

The first issue (the one from April) is on your Payments History Page. When you open that page it displays the "default" view, which is usually for the past three months. The earnings displaying at the end of the previous month (right now since it's Sept. that would be earnings for Aug. 31) are probably wrong - some are off by only a little bit, while others are off by a larger amount.

What we're finding in the forum is that people are looking at the default view, and seeing earnings over the payment threshold (that's $100 US) but aren't getting their cheques or payments...and of course wondering why. In order to see your actual earnings (ie: the correct earnings) on the Payments History Page you'll need to reset the view method from the default 3 months to "all time". To do that, select "all time" from the drop-down box at the top of the Payments History Page and let it load. Now check your earnings for the end of August (or the last month earnings are recorded for). There's a good chance that it is under the $100 threshold - in some cases it might only be a few cents or a few dollars under, but being under at all means you won't get your payment until those earnings are at least $100 or more.

The second more recent issue appears on the Reports Overview Page. That's the page you land on when you enter your AdSense account. If you are noticing the earnings in the "Since Last Payment" option disappearing and re-appearing and fluctuating wildly from hour to hour or day to day, then you are probably being affected by the display issues for this report. And it is a display issue - when your earnings are validated at the end of the month and posted to your Payments History Page, they will be the actual earnings. Unfortunately, at the moment, you really can't hang your hat on the "since last payment" report on the Reports Overview Page.

These issues can be found, with their work-arounds, on the "Known Issues" page for AdSense. Publisher's should bookmark this page, or add it to their Google Reader and check it regularly - particularly if you are seeing anything unusual in your AdSense account. If other publisher's are experiencing the same issues you are, you may find the answer on the Known Issues Page in the AdSense Help Center. Even though the issue might still be inconvenient, you'll probably be relieved to find you are not the only one experiencing it...and that AdSense is aware of it and working on it.

The two display issues mentioned above are being worked on by the techs and engineers. It's probably pretty easy to think the one that began back in April should be fixed by now, but the AdSense systems are fairly complicated and getting the same thing to work the same way for everyone probably isn't as easy as we think it should be. The "Known Issues" page will also tell you when these issues are corrected, so don't forget to check it.

Important Reminder for AdSense & AdWords Users!

A while ago I wrote an article about protecting yourself and your AdSense account from phishing attemps. Well today, I want to remind AdSense publishers NOT to click on any email link unless they are absolutely certain the email has come from AdSense or Google, and never REPLY to any of these type of messages with personal information.

The other day I received an email which wound up in my spam box; the email indicated it was from "Google Team" - this was the first red flag for me. Emails to me from Google or Adsense have not ever come from "Google Team".

When looking at the "Re" line of the mail, the word "your" was misspelled "yuor google Account". This was the second red  flag. The third red flag was all the spelling errors in the body of the email, and then there was the fact that this email expected me to reply with:

My User Name
My Login Password
My Current Country

No contact I have received from Google, Gmail or AdSense has ever asked me my current country - they are in fact already aware of this information. Had I requested an address or change of country from them directly, I would expect that question, but not in an unsolicited email.

This email also indicates that I need to "update to a fully supported browser". My browser(s) are supported, and are already updated, and updating my browser would have nothing to do with my account unless I were having problems accessing it...which I don't.  I also don't use the Chrome browser, and it is not listed under my services and products in my Google account.

Finally, when checking the email headers, the sender address and the email reply address are not at all related to AdSense, or Google.

Anybody who responded to an email such as this one would soon find all of their accounts associated with their Google account compromised - this includes Gmail, AdSense, AdWords, Blogger and any other Google product and service you use under that particular Google Account.


Emails such as this are the reason people sometimes find themselves unable to access their AdSense, AdWords or Blogger accounts.

Be very careful before you give out any information such as your User Name, Login Password and other personal details. Never, ever give this in an email you are not sure about. If you receive an email and you don't know or aren't sure if it came from Google or AdSense, then use the help forums and ask someone to confirm it's validity.

You'll note...the date on that email was Saturday, August 10th. Here it  is Thursday Sept. 2nd...and my accounts are perfectly fine without having completed this "validation" and my gmail account hasn't been deleted, either.

UPDATE!! 

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS!

Well, it appears that the above noted "phishing expidition" just wasn't enough for some folks. I guess they weren't all that happy with my decision to ignore them.

This morning (Saturday, Sept. 11 - an interesting date choice for this) I received yet another of these mails. The text of the mail is below:

from    newsdatainfogoogleaccount@gmail.com
to  
date    Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 5:27 AM
subject    Final Warning
mailed-by    gmail.com
signed-by    gmail.com
  

Our technology & science team has recently launched Google web software to protect and secure all Gmail Accounts. This system also enhanced efficient networking and fully supported browser. You need to upgrade to a fully supported browser by filling out the details below for validation purpose and to confirm your details on the new webmaster Central system.

Account Name:                        

Password:

Country:

Note: Your Account will be deleted permanently if you failed to provide the details below within 72hours. Gmail will not be heard responsible for your negligence.
 

The Google web Service. 

Just to be clear - Google did NOT send this if you received one. GMail did NOT send this. Nobody associated with Google sent this - IGNORE it. Mark it as spam and DO NOT give these people ANY of your information.

AdSense Alert - New Formats Need Attention!

Have you seen the new AdSense ad formats yet? If not, you can find out about them and see them in the official "Inside AdSense" blog. You'll definitely want to pay attention here folks.

If you haven't looked at your own site lately, you might want to go and ogle your own ads. Last week I noticed the leaderboard ads on my site were in the new format, but it gave me something of a shock to realize that this new format (which I wasn't expecting) made the ads look too much like the content on my site. That's because I use a blended palette for my text ads, with no border. The background is the same colour as my site, so is the text and title, with the links being the same colour as normal site links (blue). I realized right away that I'd need to change my ad colour selections because of this new format that AdSense has released. Am I happy about it - nope, not at all. I would much rather that adsense release the ad format, but gave publishers a choice of whether or not to use it, or to stay with the old style ads. As it stands now, if publishers don't pay attention to their ads on their own sites, they may end up being disabled for having ads that look like content, which is against AdSense Program Policies - or at the very least, receive a warning about their ad style. I would hope that AdSense would issue warnings to publishers, since they are the ones who instituted this change with no prior notice to publishers.

So, my warning to ALL publishers is to check your sites and look at  your ads carefully to ensure they don't look like your content too much, and also double check the new formats to ensure they don't look like the ads from other advertisers. In the image posted on the Inside AdSense blog, the square ad formats appear to resemble ads from at least one other ad serving platform - a fair bit more than they did before.

It's up to publishers to ensure their sites, ad styles and ad placements do not contravene policy, so spend some time this week checking your own sites for this new ad format - and take action before they have to issue you a warning...or worse, simply disable your account.

Build & Customize Your Blogger Site Using Template Designer!

Since Blogger has come out with "Blogger in Draft" and their new Blogger Template Designer, I figured it was way past the time when I should update my old "how to build a blog" articles with a new one, focused on the template designer and how to use it. If you haven't yet tried the new blogger template designer and wonder how it works, this post if you.

When you login to your blogger dashboard, you'll see a list of all your blogs under your login.

To get started, I'll use a blog I began only as a sample to give new bloggers a start on setting up a blog. It uses an old template, and today we'll convert it from the old style blogger template to one of the new ones that you can "redesign" in the blogger Template Designer. Oh don't worry - it's really not difficult.

First thing to do is select the blog you want to convert and click the "Design" link for that blog from your dashboard. (If you don't see "Design" in your list, then look for "layout" and click that instead).

When your page loads you'll see your page layouts for your current template. Look at the top and you'll see the link for the template designer. When you click that link you'll get the template designer page, which shows your current blog design in the bottom frame, and the template designer in the top.

If you try to make any changes to an old template, you'll get a notice in the template designer that the changes aren't applicable for this template. Before desiging your own blog layouts in the template designer you need to select one of the new templates.

The old templates no longer have the ability to be changed using blogger - the section where you could change the colours and text style of the background, header text and so on no longer exist for these old templates. If you love your old template, then you can still continue to use it - but you can no longer edit it in blogger, except by using the "Edit HTML" function. If you aren't very good with that, you can download the template from blogger (from the edit html page select "download full template") and save it. You should be able to edit it manually if you know how, or use a software like alley code or nvu to edit the codes.

Okay, lets go back to the template designer. We're going to select one of the new templates so we can make it our own.

When you click one of the template designs in the "Templates" tab it will load the template as a preview, showing you what your blog would look like with the basic template design you clicked on. One thing I've run into only recently is when I want to preview a different design, I sometimes have to click the "live on blog" button before it will reload the blog with the new design. If you click through the templates and find they aren't showing the preview in the bottom frame, click "live on blog", then reselect the template you want to preview.

For now, we're going to stick with the template "Simple" by Josh Peterson. Both Simple and Asesome Inc. by Tina Chen are easy to edit and customize, and I personally tend to use one or the other when editing a blog design. You can select anyone you find suitable. And, of course, there is no reason to edit the design or colours if you LIKE the pre-set template that you select. You can simply leave it as it is and continue blogging with a new design.

If you want to edit the template for your blog, read on. Once you've selected a template, the next step is to edit the background. Click on the background tab in the template designer. Here you'll be presented with a set of colour co-ordinated theme colour choices. If you like any of them, you can select one of those.

 But you aren't limited to these, and can make individual choics in the Advanced tab. Also in this background tab you'll see an area titled "Background Image". Click the little arrow and you'll be presented with some choices for your background image. You can look through all the categories, click on images and see them on the background of your blog.

I generally select the option "no background" because I prefer simplicity on the backgrounds and prefer to let my blog contents be the focus of my pages, but for this sample blog, I'm going to upload one of my own free abstract background textures. To upload your own photo, click the "upload image" button. Images should be a minimum of 1800 X 1600, and can be larger. Click the browse button and find the image on your computer. Select it and wait for blogger to load your image.

If you're happy with your upload (or any image you find in the list) click "done". Once your back in the template designer, you can change the alignment of your image, or select tile or don't tile, or have the image stationery, or scroll with the page.

Because the images are often not as long as a full page, when you select the tiling method you'll see the demarcation line between the bottom of the image and the top were it begins again. The same will happen horizontally if your images aren't large enough. If you can upload a "seamless tile" image for your background, you'll avoid this.

For now, I'll leave my background image this way so we can move on with the design.

The next step is to decide on the layout you want for your main post, widgets and footer. Click the layout tab and you'll see three options to the right - "Body Layout", "Footer Layout" and "Adjust Width". We'll start with Body Layout.

  Looking at the sample layouts you'll note the one that currently on the blog (that one came with the Simple template we selected), and options for changing to a "no sidebar" layout to different layouts for multiple sidebars. On the whole, I prefer a simple layout with one main panel for posting and a right or left sidebar. For this blog, I'll select the fifth option with a center pane for posts and a single sidebar on either side.

When you select one of the layouts, you'll notice that this will show in your blog preview pane with your widgets set into the various spots. You can arrange these widgets when you are back in the blogger design page.

Now, select your footer choices. Click the footer layout tab and choose one of the footer options (single, double or triple footer where you can place gadgets like text or images or whatever else you can get with a gadget).

Next, select the "Adjust width" option. Here you can select the width of your post template area, and the width of the sidebars.Play with those adjustments until you like the layout. Now we're ready to move on to the Advanced Tab.

When you select Advanced you'll see a list of options where you can make changes to your blog design, like the page text, and backgrounds of various sections, you can create "tabs" for your "pages", adjust the text and text colours. Ready?

Okay first section is the page text, but I have a tendency to start with "Backgrounds" because once I've selected background colours for areas, then it's easier to decide what colour text works best. So let's ignore the Page Text for the moment and click on backgrounds. You have three choices - outer background (this is where we uploaded our image, so if you have an image, you'll want to leave that alone). If you didn't set a background image, you select a solid colour background here - white, blue, black - pretty much any colour your heart desires. Only select this if you don't have a background image, or if you have chosen a transparent background image, or if you selected a colour these set and want to change it.

 The main background in this template is set to white, but I've decided to set this to transparent. Not so much because I like it, but I want to show you how to get a transparent background if that's what you want. This works best for fairly plain backgrounds and very simple background images - not so good with the background I've chosen. To get it, select "Main Background" and in the little coloured box next to the current colour choice (white/fffff) select the small arrow and you have the ability to decide on exactly the colour you want with the colour editor, or you can select transparent from the bottom of the colour editor.

Now that I've decided on the background colour (or no colour), I'll go back up to the Page Text and set that. You can choose your font (this is for the main text of the blog), the size, whether it's all bold or all italics, and you can also select the colour. Find something you like and set it. Move on to the Links tab and set your link colours for the link, the visited link and the colour you when you hover over a link.

By now you should be growing familiar with these settings. Along with the ability to choose your exact colour, you can also choose from the list of suggested colours below each option. So go ahead and set your blog title text and colours.

Now we move on to the Tabs Text. The "tabs" are part of the "pages" function on blogger. These tabs appear as a menu, either under your header, or in your sidebar. Depending on the colours you choose, this menu can resemble a simple menu from a website. Select your font and font size, and select the text and text colour. Then move down to the Tabs Background. Here you can decide what colour the menu "buttons" are, and what colour they are when you hover over them.

You may have noticed as we click through the advanced options that there are dotted lines around some sections. These dotted lines outline the area you are selecting options and colours for. Click on the "Post Title" tab and you'll see that the outline only goes around the posting section - because what we are setting options for here is the post title - the font and the font size. Complete the choices for your Post title and post footer sections and then click on the Gadgets tab.

You'll notice all the gadgets these options include will be surrounded with the dotted lines. You can select the title colour for the gadgets.

Almost finished with the layouts - for images, unless you really want some sort of colour in the background and as a border, you can select transparent as the background and border colours, the same way as we chose a transparent background above. Otherwise, set the background and border colours to your taste, as well as the colour used for the image captions.

The last thing we'll do is set the accent colors - the accents are those thin narrow lines that separate your sidebar areas from your post area. You can set these to one of the colours in your blog, or you can make them transparent if you prefer a clean look.

And, unless you are comfortable with CSS changes, for the moment we'll leave the very last section alone. That's where you can your own CSS styles to make your style changes to the CSS.

At this point, you are basically done with your design. You can go back and change anything you like before you apply this design to your blog.

If you're ready, click "apply to blog" in upper right corner of the template designer. In a few seconds you'll see a short notice at the top of the page that your changes have been applied to your blog. Now click "back to blogger" at the upper right.

Anyone who has used an image in their header will probably need to replace the header image because most often the size will be a little different. You upload your new header image the same way you did with the old templates - click the edit link on the header gadget to remove the old image and upload your new one.

Now you've converted your blog to the "blogger in draft" Template Designer templates, but it sure doesn't look like the "Simple Template" we began with - it's entirely your own!

Here's the old blog converted using the Blogger Template Designer (you can visit the page to see it action here on blogger):

Any questions? Post a comment with your question and I'll do my best to answer it.

Copied Content Syndrome (Or Why I Got Disabled/Rejected for Adsense)

In the last few weeks we've seen an increasing number of AdSense publishers in the forums with disabled accounts. While we see disabled publishers pretty often, the number of publishers being disabled for having blogs with no original content is increasing.

AdSense has been cracking down on the copied content issue - or so it seems. So why is copied content an issue?

COPYRIGHT

There is of course the obvious reason; content copied from other authors and bloggers is copyright content. If the blogger or author has not given permission, and has not licensed their article using the Creative Commons designation, then the author has every right to expect exclusive rights to their work. That means you can't just borrow or re-use, re-purpose or redistribute the work that someone else has done. Authors discovering their work on someone else's blog will find it necessary to file a DMCA complaint, and this entails work for the author as well as investigation on the part of AdSense (or Blogger) staff. It's time that shouldn't have to be spent when bloggers and webmasters respect each other's creative work. For the author who writes their own original work, it means that they may be subject to having their AdSense account disabled because of duplicated work - in other words, even though they've written their own articles if others have copied their article to hundreds of different places, they may face disablement due to someone else's behaviour. Generally, if an author can prove their work was original they'll have a decent chance of retaining their account, but it causes a great deal of trouble for the authors of original work to have their work copied.

From the AdSense Program Policies (which all publishers must adhere to) we have this excerpt:

AdSense publishers may not display Google ads on webpages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content. Please see our DMCA policy for more information.

PLAGIARISM

When  you use someone else's work without giving that author credit for the work, that's considered plagiarism. Although you may not directly place your own copyright or name name on the work, omitting the credit for the original author is seen as taking credit for the work yourself.

Not only does this put you and your AdSense account at risk, it gives you no credibility at all in terms of knowledge or experience. If you have a blog full of articles about marketing, then you need to have marketing skills and experience to write about it. If you don't, and you are simply copying what someone else has written, how do you know the information you are providing to your readers is even correct?  As an example, I have seen many blogs written by AdSense publishers - some of those have little experience with AdSense, or are new to AdSense and some of the "advice" they offer is not only wrong, it can get a publisher disabled.

ADSENSE POLICY

Regardless of the foregoing, AdSense sets the rules for the type of content they want to see in a publishers blog. By that, I don't mean they'll tell you what you can write about - that's up to you, but they do get to choose based on content whether or not a publsiher even gets approval for an AdSense account.

AdSense expects it's publishers to work for their income - nobody gets money for nothing in today's world. They look for original work - whether it's articles, artwork, photos or other types of information, they want their publisher's to add something original to the internet, rather than just regurgitating someone else's work. They want your own unique thoughts and articles - and most likely, so will your readers and visitors appreciate a thoughtful article you've written yourself over some canned article from an article catalog.

One of the items in the AdSense Program Policies is a link to the Webmaster Guidelines - publishers must also adhere to these, and AdSense expects publishers to read them, and follow their suggestions.

An excerpt from those guidelines:

Scraped content: Some webmasters make use of content taken from other, more reputable sites on the assumption that increasing the volume of web pages with random, irrelevant content is a good long-term strategy. Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site. It's worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.

 This doesn't mean that you can't use an article, or a part of an article as a reference in your own written work (as I've done here by quoting the guidelines directly), it means you can't simply "scrape" the content from other sites and expect AdSense to accept that. Using a paragraph from someone else's article (with references & authorization) is an acceptable method of including content you'd like to highlight or discuss from other sites. Just don't make your entire blog from non-original work.

REJECTIONS FOR CONTENT

Besides the active publishers being disabled for copied content, we are seeing more and more rejections from AdSense for sites that appear to have no original work. For those of us who write original articles, we can only see this as a good thing. It means that AdSense is beginning to value originality...or more likely that the AdWords advertisers (they pay the bills, so they do have a say) are beginning to demand their ads not appear on sites will a lot of copied stuff.

But whatever the reason, AdSense is rejecting applications more frequently for sites whose contents are nothing more than articles copied from other sites. If you are having a problem getting an AdSense application accepted and you are submitting a site that you've filled up with work that you didn't create then you might try writing a blog full of your own articles, and submitting that instead.

References:

Webmaster Guidelines
AdSense Program Policies

AdSense: How Do I Protect Myself?

We often see publishers in the AdSense Help Forum asking us to help them because their accounts were disabled. For many, the policy violations on their sites preclude us from being of much assistance. You must follow the AdSense Program Policies and the Webmaster Guidelines. If you don't, there's a good chance your account will be disabled.

Other publishers have had accounts disabled for reasons such as "invalid activity" and many ask us how this can be when they haven't clicked their own ads.

You don't have to click one (or more) ads on your website to have invalid or suspicious activity. OTHER people can cause this, and while it isn't your fault they've done so, it is your responsibility as a publisher to do everything you can to protect both the advertiser (who is the one paying the bills) and your account.

So...I can see the wheels spinning already. The big question is "well how do we do that?".

Adsense itself provides very little in the way of options that offer any sort of "protection". They offer no blocking mechanism to stop people from visiting your site or clicking your ads (notice I have no ads on this blog? Can you figure out why?)

But because they don't hand you a method to do that doesn't mean there aren't ways to look out for problem areas in your account and on your websites.

The first step: do not place adsense ads on your website and then forget about monitoring them. We've seen many publishers who placed ads on their site(s) and then didn't bother checking their sites after that. Once in a while they'd check their AdSense accounts to see if they earned any money, but never really kept track of what was actually happening on their websites.

The second step: track, track and track. What that means is that you should find a third-party (ie: not one provided by adsense) statistical tracking code and install it on your website(s). Third party trackers often provide useful information that AdSense and Analytics doesn't - for instance, the IP address of all visitors and what those visitors looked at (what pages) while on your site, and what they clicked on . And this is information you need to help protect your account.

Warning: there is a word of warning that goes along with using third-party stats. These third-party scripts CANNOT, CANNOT, CANNOT (I'll repeat that just in case you didn't get it, CANNOT) tell the difference between a valid click for adsense and an invalid click. In a lot of cases, third-party stats register clicks that don't actually occur. I won't get into the hows and whys because that's a technical issue that would take way too long for me to explain, so you'll have to trust me a little on this. DO NOT expect these stats to show you the correct ad clicks for AdSense. What AdSense records as a click and what third-party trackers record as a click WILL NOT likely match. If that is going to freak you out some, then don't use third-party trackers. Unfortunately, this is likely going to be the only way to protect yourself. If you can ignore the differences in click records (just don't look at them in a third-party counter) then get one onto your site.

The third step: visit your third party stats and your adsense stats DAILY, or at the very least every other day. If you only look at them once a month it would be too late to head off any problems, or to institute control over any website that has become the target of some malicious "click-bomber".

HOW THE STATISTICS CAN HELP YOU

In the help forums we have a long-time publisher (known only as Publisher1) who has suffered through a very long bout of malicious behaviour from one visitor. His problem was spread out over many weeks and involved many, many fraudulent and invalid clicks, among other things.

Publisher1 still has his AdSense account though. And he was able to oust the click-bomber by taking a pro-active stance and by taking charge of the situation. How did he do that? I'll let him tell you the story, because he very kindly posted two articles to the AdSense Help forum that explain HOW to protect yourself against stuff like this. You may not be able to stop it from happening, but the steps you take when it does are what will help you keep your Adsense account.

FACING AND BEATING A CLICK-BOMBER'S ATTACK

The Crash Course Emergency Strategy for Click-bombing Attacks

Please, please, please go and read the information provided at those two links, and then bookmark them. You'll be doing yourself a big favour. Some day, you may need this information to keep your AdSense account alive.

Oh - one more thing. Remember to thank Publisher1 for sharing his experience to help others.

AdSense Name Changes - What's In A Name?

What's your name? No, I mean your real name...the name on your identity papers, birth certificate or passport?

Well, when you apply for a personal or individual AdSense account, this is the name you must use. That's what AdSense would consider your payee name. When entering your payee name for AdSense on your account application, it's vastly important that you get it right. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Apparently it isn't as easy as that. I can't even begin to tell you how many people come to the forum trying to find out how to change their payee name after they've been approved.

AdSense doesn't allow complete name changes. Only in a very few areas they allow you to edit your payee name if you've made a spelling mistake on the application, and they allow changes if you've married and had a name change. Other than that, you simply can't change your payee name in your account.

Changing the payee name from your name to your brother or sister's name would be considered an account transfer, which AdSense doesn't allow.

It appears that now most areas (with the exception of a few) don't have the ability to even edit their payee name to correct a spelling error.

In an AdSense account the payee name will have a link next to it to allow you to make corrections. If this link is not active, doesn't appear, or is grayed out, then you have no way to edit your payee name yourself.

The AdSense Help Center has a form that explains how to change a payee name, and includes a list of countries where payee names cannot be changed at all. From what we've seen lately in the forums, there now appears to be more countries that can't make these changes, but AdSense doesn't seem to have added them onto the listing yet. What that means is without a way to correct your name, you would still have to follow the instructions given, even if your country is not spelled out on the list.

Changing the payee name for countries or accounts who can't access the edit link is time consuming and often frustrating. Which is why it is so important to get your payee name right on your application - get it right the first time and you won't need to go through these steps.

To change your payee name if there's no active edit link you must first cancel your current AdSense account. Yes, cancel it. To do that, you must use the cancellation request form - do not simply delete your account. That will cause you all kinds of problems. Follow the steps on the cancellation form. If you have already accrued earnings in your current account and those earnings are over $10.00 US then AdSense will forward those earnings to you - they are usually issued 90 days after you cancel your account.

Account cancellations are permanent. Once you cancel the current account you cannot get it back and will need to open a new account.

Once you have received notification from AdSense that your current account is closed, you need to apply for a new AdSense account, making sure your payee name and address details are correct.

I'm sure some of you are wondering how so many people get their names wrong in the first place. Some are simply due to typing errors; some are due to the characters of different languages; some people apply with their user ID instead of their real names; and many are from invalid account acquirement. Some people have others apply for them, some people try to buy AdSense accounts because they can't get their own - the people actually applying for the account are not the people who will own the account, and very often the payee name is not entered correctly. Some are simply trying to "snow the system" by using someone else's name to get an account, thinking they can change the name later.

These latter reasons and people are the ones you have to thank for AdSense not allowing name changes - too much fraudulent activity in the past and even in the present time is now increasing the list of countries that can't make changes to their accounts - or at least it appears that way.

Although the question has been asked (what countries have been added to the list) AdSense has not issued a new list, nor given any indication that other countries were added, so we're left to guess.

So no matter where you live, getting your payee name right when you apply is crucial if you don't want to have to go through an account cancellation and reapplication later on.

AdSense - It's Not An Entitlement

Did the title get your attention? Good. It was supposed to.

AdSense is a free program operated by Google, but that doesn't mean everyone automatically gets to use it. Because it's free doesn't entitle you to have it.

Even free programs tend to come with some "strings" attached.

This one has guidelines and rules, and requirements for quality. If you don't meet those, you won't be approved.

And yes, they do have to approve you.

And no, they don't even have to tell you why they haven't approved you.

AdSense and Google are like any other business, or any other customer you may approach. They can choose to hire you or choose not to. They don't have to provide you with a reason.

Let's say you cut lawns for a living. When you knock on a person's door and offer to cut their lawn, they can say yes or no. If they say no, do you ask them why they said no? Unless you are really aggressive, you probably won't. You'll just move on to the next possible customer.

Why is AdSense any different then? It really isn't.

AdSense does send emails with a variety of reasons why you may not qualify, and it's up to the applicant to figure out why.

If an applicant takes the time to read the whopping amount of information available in the Help Center, they'd probably be able to figure out why.

To get an AdSense account you must meet the quality guidelines, you must have a viable website or blog with lots of content, in some countries you must have six months worth of content, you must not have had a previously disabled AdSense account, you must not have large amounts of copied content, you must not have copyright infringements, you must not have adult, gambling, drug or firearms content or links...and the list goes on.

Preparing for an AdSense account is work. Free doesn't necessarily mean "easy".

Every success comes from working hard. People seldom prosper by doing nothing.

If you want an account and haven't been able to get approved, there is help. The Help Center contains all the information you need. The Help Forum has a myriad of volunteers willing to help.

Just don't go into AdSense with an attitude of entitlement. Nobody is entitled to it. Everyone can apply for it.

Whether you succeed or not is up to you.

Read the official adsense blog for ideas on what really works - Inside AdSense

originally published by me at Qondio

The AdSense Test - Part 2

Answers to the Test Questions

1. If you don't know what a URL is or where to find your URL, then you aren't ready for AdSense.

A "url" is the address that appears in your browser's bar when you visit a website. The url will start with "http://".

2 & 3. If you don't know what html is or how to access it, then you aren't ready for AdSense.

"Html" is a coding format that you'll find on most websites and you may see it designated as xhtml1. To see this code (or the code any website is made up of) you can use your browser's tool bar. Click on "View" and then look for "source" or "page source". When the dialogue box opens you'll see a bunch of stuff that may not make much sense to you, but makes sense to the robots who crawl and index these sites.

In order to be able to add AdSense codes to a website, you have to be able to edit this html code. You can't do that using a browser (unless you are a web developer and have the proper tools). Most people would use the same tool they used to build their website in order to access their code.

You don't need to know a lot of html or have a lot of coding experience, but you need to have enough to follow the instructions given to insert these adsense ad codes into your website correctly.

Blogs usually have a different method for adding the code, but you still need to understand some basic html.

4. If you don't understand how to copy and paste from one page to another, you'll have trouble inserting the code into your website.

5. If you don't have your own website or blog, you won't be able to access the html or apply the AdSense ad code to a page.

You can't place codes on anyone else's website without permission. All those sites you see that say you can earn money putting links on sites for AdSense are just plain wrong. It doesn't work that way.

Sites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and other similar communities cannot be used as your website.

6 -10. AdSense is designed for websites that are completed, or blogs that have a lot of content and are regularly updated.

If your website isn't launched, then you don't apply for AdSense.

If your blog doesn't have 6 months worth of original content, then don't apply.

What you can do is spend time creating content. AdSense requires publishers to have created their own content. The Webmaster Guidelines say we must have "considerable original content". Original content means content that you create, not content that you copy.

Many countries must have a website or blog that is 6 months old and has 6 months worth of content. An empty blog that is 6 months old does not qualify.

Websites and blogs without at least some visitors will do very poorly with AdSense and may take months before you have enough visitors to see any earnings at all. Placing ads on a website nobody sees is not good for the advertisers who pay for the ads, so it's not good for AdSense.

Putting ads on your website does not bring you visitors. You must have the visitors first.

11. Sites displaying AdSense must not contain, nor link to sites that have illegal content, such as pirated movies and music, hacked or cracked software (open source software is fine), copyright material such as photos and artwork. If your blog contains any of this, or links to sites that contain any of this, then it isn't suitable for AdSense.

12. While there is no reason you can't use embedded videos from YouTube on your blog or website, a blog or website that contains nothing but videos will not get you an AdSense account.

This is not considered "original" content, unless you created these videos yourself. Videos must not contain copyright infringements, like music or movies, or cammed/copied TV programs.

13-15. Since all publishers are required to follow the rules of the program and it's policies, and must agree to the terms of service, it is imperative that you understand what you've read, and yes you must, in fact, READ them. If you don't, it would not take very long for you to lose your account and whatever earnings you accrued.

These policies are your "warnings" - they explain what is expected from publishers, and what happens if you don't follow them.

16. There are thousands of sites and blogs on the internet that purport to have the "secret" to AdSense, and for just $1.97 (similar amounts in different places) they'll send you a free trial of their program. What they don't tell you is that after they send you that "free" trial, you will be charged every month to the tune of about $79 or more.

What they also don't tell you is that nearly all the information they'll provide is information you can find for free - at the AdSense Help Center, or by reading the hundreds of "real" bloggers out there who give you the information you need for nothing.

What You Can Do if You Didn't Pass The Test

Go to the AdSense Help Center and start reading. They have a section called "Newbie Central" that gives you some idea of what the program is about.

Read the AdSense Program Policies, the Webmaster Guidelines and the Terms of Service.

Ask questions in the help forum (after you've read the material).

Sign up for a free blog on Blogger.com and start working on your first blog. Or learn how to build a website using free online tools - just search for "how to build a free website".

Pretty soon, you'll be ready for AdSense.

The AdSense Test

Are You Ready for AdSense?

Contrary to many articles you may find scattered across the internet, Adsense is NOT for everyone. At least, not until you understand a few things and are prepared to follow the program and it's rules.

Are you ready for AdSense? Take the test and find out.

 
1. Do you know what a URL is?
2. Do you know what html is?
3. Do you know how to access html code?
4. Do you know how to copy and paste?
5. Do you have your own website or blog?
6. Is your website complete and launched?
7. Do you already have a stream of visitors to your website or blog?
8. Is your blog full of rich original content?
9. Did you write all your own articles?
10. Did you copy articles from other people?
11. Do you have free movies, music, or software links?
12. Is your site full of other people's videos?
13. Did you read the AdSense Program Policies and understand them?
14. Did you read the Webmaster Guidelines and understand them?
15. Did you read the Terms of Service and understand them?
16. Did you pay anyone for an AdSense "program"?

I'm sure some of you are probably thinking this is a joke, but it really isn't.
These are the sort of things we find ourselves answering in the AdSense Help Forums every day. Many people ask what a URL is and where they find it, or how to get one. Many more never bother to read the rules. Hundreds are taken in by websites selling a "product" related to Adsense. The fact is, you don't need to pay anyone at all to use AdSense.
Stay tuned for the Answers and explanations in The AdSense Test - Part 2


note: originally published on Qondio

Phishing for AdSense - or How Not to Get Hacked

In recent weeks I have noticed an increase in spam email coming into my mail accounts. In particular, these emails are purported to be from:

AdSense
AdWords
Blogger
Google

To date, none of them have actually been from any of those places, except the most recent one. They have been from spammers and scammers who hope someone will click a link in the email. Once clicked, the link will take a person to a page that is most likely set up to resemble a real page from any of those places, however, any sign in information you enter will be captured and used by the scammer.

How Will a Spammer/Scammer/Phisher Use My Information

If you use AdSense, they'll have the information to login to your AdSense account and redirect your earnings to themselves, or the information close out your account, or to do anything you can do in your AdSense account.

If you use Blogger, they'll have access to all your blogs. This means they can edit or change them, including putting their own adsense codes on your blog and removing yours. Most likely they are hoping your blogger login information is the same as your AdSense login. And it probably is.

With the Google account they can login to any service you use under Google.

What To Do When You Get An Email From any Google Source

The first thing you should do - don't panic. These guys often send emails saying your AdSense account has been disabled, and telling you to click the link to have it restored. The same sort of email is also used for Blogger accounts. Whatever you do, don't click any links in an email, even if you think it's from AdSense. Find out first who it's really from.

AdSense may indeed send you an email that your account is disabled, if it really is. And they do contain links, but usually the link leads only to a page on the AdSense Help Center.

The next thing you should do is check the header information. If you use gmail for your login you can show the header information by opening the email.

If you use the newer version of gmail, there is a link near the top and off to the right a little that says "show details".

When you click that, gmail will display the information in the email headers.


Check the information in the "From" and "Reply To" fields, as well as the "mailed by" and "signed-by" fields.

If you are still not certain, go the help forum and ask for help deciphering whether or not it's "really" from AdSense or Google or Blogger. Be sure to use the appropriate forum - if the email says it's from Blogger, use the Blogger help forum, if it says it's from AdSense, use the AdSense help forum.

When you are unsure - under no circumstances should you click any link in the email.

You can check the link by using the google safe browsing diagnostic page for the link. You do that by typing this string in the search bar and appending it with the page named in the link below - the link below is using the url for the blog you are reading now:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://helpfulinformationfornewbies.blogspot.com/

Change the part in red to the page url in the email link.

The linked page in the email used in the example above can be seen below:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http//:www.google.com/adplanner

This tool will tell you whether or not the site is hosting any malware or has been seen in the past to hold any malware.

Other things you can do are to copy the link from your email and enter it into your browser search bar. This will take you to the page that the link goes to, where you can see the information on the page.

Look at the page carefully and note it's location displayed in the browser. In the case of the email I used as an example, the browser displays the following URL ("x" replaces the real information to protect the innocent):

You can see that this URL goes to a secure google accounts login page for the Google Ad Planner.

If you are still uncomfortable about clicking anything on this page, then leave the page and navigate on your own to your Google Accounts page the way you normally would. Click on the service link from your own Google Accounts page (for wherever the email is from - Blogger or AdSense) and login from there.

Take Charge of Your Own Security

Never click links in an email without first ensuring it's security.
Use safe browsing ad-ons or plug-ins to avoid phishing or malware sites.
Use pop-up blockers to prevent scam ads from showing.
Read and investigate things before you sign up or click any links.


Places You can Find Help with Security Issues

"What The Tech Forums" - trustworthy and helpful with useful free software listings

"Safer Networking Forums" - also trustworthy will some excellent free software on site

"Google Search Help" - helpful information in their Help Center for safe surfing & browsing.

AdSense and India

Today's post is directed at prospective publishers from India. I have debated with myself for some time now whether or not to address this issue in my blog, mainly because picking out any one group of people might give the wrong impression. Hopefully, I don't offend anyone with this.

I chose to write this post because we have been seeing some questions in the AdSense Help forums lately that should be addressed.

Please keep in mind, I don't work for AdSense (or Google) and I do not represent them, so these answers are not to be considered "official", but are based on what we've seen, or read in the official AdSense Help Center or the Inside AdSense blog.

The first question of concern is this one:

"Is It True That AdSense is No Longer Accepting Applications from India?"

As far as we can tell, this is not true. AdSense is still accepting applications from publishers in India.

Like any propsective publisher who fills out an application, publishers from India must meet all the qualifications in order for their application to be accepted.

Whoever is telling people that Indian publishers are not being accepted anymore at AdSense because they are from India, is wrong.

The next "most asked" question is this:

"Is it true we can't use a blogspot address and must get a domain name if we are from India?"

The answer again, is no - this is not true.

Any publisher may apply for an AdSense account using a blogspot address. There is no requirement to purchase a domain or webhosting to get started, so don't let anyone talk you into buying a domain name before you are ready, or before you can afford it.

Blogspot addresses are perfectly acceptable to AdSense, providing the blog you use to apply for AdSense with meets all the policy requirements.

The last big question is:

"Why does a publisher from India have to wait 6 months?"

This one is harder to answer. It's one that we can only guess at, based on some of what we've experienced in helping Indian publishers.

The official statement in the AdSense help center says "In some locations, including China and India, we require publishers to have owned their sites for 6 months. We've taken this step to ensure the quality of our advertising network and protect the interests of our advertisers and existing publishers." (notation: quoted directly from the AdSense pages linked above.)

This means that the six month stipulation is not just in India and China, but it does include India and China. To my knowledge, there is no "official" list for the countries, so "in some countries" could mean any country AdSense chooses to include. For the most part, we are noticing this seems to be applied to many Asian countries, not just India.

My own observations seem to show that there are enormous numbers of people from India trying to get AdSense accounts, and trying to do so before they understand what is required of them in order to get approval.

I'm not sure why this is, though in some cases it might be differences in language and how well a person understands what they have read when they signed up for AdSense. (This is not, of course, limited to Indian publishers but to a lot of publishers for whom English is not the native tongue.)

Another thing I have noted with publishers from countries outside of the USA (keep in mind that I am not in the USA either) is that many of them do not understand or even are aware of the differences in legal requirements between their own countries and the USA.

In the USA, copyright infringements can cause all sorts of problems, and many non-US publishers don't seem to understand why they can't use copyrighted items, or why they can't give away things like illegal software.

There are many websites I have reviewed for publishers (many from India as well as other areas) that contain illegal software, movies, music and wallpapers, and this will be one of the reasons for not getting your application approved.

And it's one of the reasons you can have your account disabled too - no matter where you live.

If you read the Terms of Service for AdSense, down near the very end it says that AdSense is bound by the Laws of California and the USA and since they must operate under those laws, any publisher must also conform to those laws. This is an important bit of information that a lot of publishers miss seeing.

Webmaster Guidelines

One other thing that many new or applying publishers miss is the Webmaster Guidelines. These go hand-in-hand with the AdSense Program Policies, and all publishers are required to adhere to both of these.

Webmaster Guidelines indicate that a publisher must have "substantial original content". I suppose "substantial" will mean different things since it's a little subjective, but it really means you must have "enough" content to be accepted for AdSense. So what is "enough"? Since they don't actually give us any stiplulations about what "enough" is for AdSense, we have to guess at it. My own opinion is that you should have at least 10 lengthy posts (175 to 200 words or more per post) in your blog before you apply for AdSense. 20 would be better. And they should really be written works of your own, not articles you've copied from someone else, or from somewhere else.


Other Important Considerations

Other things of importance you need to consider when applying for AdSense.

You MUST use your own identity - your own name and address and country, and personal details. Otherwise, when it comes time to get paid, you won't be able to.

Publishers in many countries may not change their payee name, nor their country. AdSense simply does not allow this.

This means you would be required to cancel your approved AdSense account, and then apply for a new one all over again, using the correct information, so make sure your application for AdSense has the correct name and the correct country. This is very important if you want to get your payments, so don't try to get quicker approval by using a different country. You can't change it later.

If you have any questions about your application before you submit it to AdSense, post a question in the AdSense help forum - don't be afraid to ask for help. If it's a question we can answer in the forum, we will do our best to help you.

If you want to ask a question here, please feel free to leave a comment, and we'll address your question as well as we can. We aren't perfect, and we aren't AdSense, but we are certainly willing to help you have a successful AdSense application.

One final note: there seems to be quite a lot of rejection emails (for everyone, from just about anywhere) for "Domain Ownership not Evident" when people apply with a Blogger blog.

That's because blogspot URLs are considered "subdomains". In order to have adsense approve that blogspot URL, you MUST submit an application to Adsense using the "Monetize" link on your blog's dashboard.

That lets adsense crawlers know that your blog is a blogspot blog, and not just a regular subdomain.