Google is a multinational company, which always tries to improve their services and keep their content clean for users’ best experience. For that reason it is important to monitor and control the kind of ads and websites, which have content that one may find offensive, inappropriate, unfair or forcing users for something. Therefore, for those publishers, who use Google AdSense on their web sites it is often a challenge to keep up with all the requirements and avoid ban from Google.
In this article you will find the list of possible violations. If your web site have already been banned, there is a way of checking the reasons of such measures.
It is extremely important to know policies and to check frequently whether your site have received any violations notifications on your Ad Sense.
While there are more than 15 major points, which consist of many other sub-points, it appears rather frequent and obvious that publishers miss out some of them and cannot understand the reason(s) for ban. For the purpose of simplifying the process of remembering them or just finding out, which of the policies you might have been violated we have grouped them into four main groups:
- Legal
- Behavioural
- Ethical
- Technical/Technological
However, some of them are interrelated, so they can be referred to couple of groups. For your convenience we have decided not to overload you with all those groupings and suggest our version.
Legal and Technical groups are the biggest ones, that is why it would be better to start with them.
Legal
Generally speaking this group of violations mostly consist of diverse restrictions, which are recognised by law as prohibited or illegal.
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Copyright
If you do not have legal rights to use copyrighted material on your web-site, there is very high chance that Google will not display ads on your web site. This includes music and video files, literature, TV shows etc. Also there should be no copy-paste content!
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Counterfeit
It is not allowed to sell or promote any kind of goods, which imitate the real famous brands and/or companies. The examples can be D&C (Docha&Gabanov), Pasunnic, daiads, BSOS (Huan Bsos) and many others.
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Cookies & Privacy
With regards to privacy policy it is extremely important to abide it by informing users that your web site is using cookies and that you and third parties can use the information about the time spent on this web site.
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COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act)
According to the federal law of the United States it is forbidden to collect information from children under the age of 13. This includes but not restricted to marketing, promotion, downloads, sign ups and collection of information of children under the age of 13 without their parents’ or guardians’ consent.
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Gambling
The web sites are not allowed to monetize the web sites and/or web pages with any kind of gambling or gambling related content. The exceptions are those publishers, who were approved by the AdSense Policy Team and who are located in the countries from the list below: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, the UK.
Technical/Technological
To this group of violations we have placed the violations, which are related to using some technologies or not using the required technical requirements.
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Clicks & Impressions
Any methods, which generate artificial increase of ad impressions and/or clicks are not allowed, including clicking your own add. It is also considered to be a violation if users have got encouragement or compensation for viewing ads. Misleading ads which are very difficult to differ from your web site’s own images, content will be counted as violation as well.
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Webmaster & Landing Page guidelines
You web site should reflect honesty, relevancy, clarity and usefulness for users. Hidden text, links or any kind of manipulation, including irrelevant keywords or other approaches for search engines are forbidden. The web site should be easy to navigate and free of viruses. More detailed information you can find in Webmaster quality guidelines and advertising policies.
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Ad placement and ad formats
The restrictions here refer to placing ads in places, which are improper and can mislead users. AdSense codes cannot be placed in emails, email programs, chat programs, pop-ups, pop-unders, software and on pages with dynamic content. Very common mistake is when publishers place 300×250 ads on top of the pages, so that users do not realise that it is an ad and not your content. However, some of those restrictions does not apply to AdMob and AdSense for search.
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Technical specifications
The web sites, which use AdSense should meet format requirements (WebView) and be in the languages it supports. The list of languages supported by AdSense can be found here : https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9727
Behavioural
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Language
Even though you and your users are allowed to freely express thoughts, it is not allowed to use any kind of hate speech, swearing or things, that are offensive to different kinds of people or falls under the category of Adult & non-family safe content (or third-party ads with such promotions). Therefore, it is publishers’ responsibility to monitor web site and remove such posts or ads.
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Navigation
Publishers’ web sites should not only be simple for users in navigating, but also it shouldn’t perform any kind of activity against their will. Such activity can be redirecting users to other web sites, initiating downloads etc.
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Do not overload
Google AdSense allows to place up to three AdSense ad units on one webpage, including just one 300 x 600 ad per page. In addition there can be placed up to 3 link units and 2 search boxes.
Ethical
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Family safe
Due to the fact that your site might be viewed by different kinds of people, it is important to remember that all your content should be Family safe. This means that Google AdSense forbids any kind of nudity and pornography, advocacy against certain group(s) of people or separate individuals, offers of sexual services, comment spam etc.
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Health safe
This includes suggesting or promoting products and services, which can cause harm to other people. Under such category falls drugs and drug use, alcohol, tobacco and tobacco-related products, medication prescriptions or unapproved medicine, weapon-related content.
As you can see, there is quite a list of how your web site can get in trouble with AdSense. And it is fair, as usually Google offers the best CPM rates. So with this regards, they have some sort of monopoly on their services. Therefore, if you have passed the tiresome process and got approved, try to endeavour not to get banned by continuous monetisation of your account for any further possible violations. As ones say, it is always easier to prevent catastrophes than correct those, which have already occurred.
