Your Blog Was Rejected From AdSense: Now What?

AdSense is an easy, fast way to monetize a blog, though it’s certainly not very high paying unless you have a ton of traffic. However, in order to keep the ad network from descending into crap, Google filters the sites they allow to use AdSense. When you apply, they will scan your site looking for any violations of their terms of service. If you’re violating them, then you’ll be rejected. Often times, Google is very bad at telling you just WHY they rejected you, so it can seem to be a hopeless situation.

Being rejected in an AdSense application is actually a better situation than slipping through by the skin of your teeth. If you slip through, Google will occasionally scan and audit your site to make sure that you’re in compliance. If they then find you in violation of their ToS, then you’ll be banned from the program. When you’re rejected, you can change up your site and try again. When you’re banned, you’re out of luck.

Step 1: Keep Calm and Carry On

A lot of bloggers feel dejected when they are rejected from an ad network like Google’s AdSense. Suddenly, their plans of monetizing their blog are no longer viable. You have to find an alternative, fix some issue you don’t know about, or just basically delay monetizing. If you were trying to quit your job and live off your blog - or worse, you were fired and are using this as a last-ditch effort - it can be devastating.

Thankfully, you can always apply again. You can fix whatever issue Google cares about, apply again, and hopefully be accepted the second time around. However, one thing you should NOT do is immediately reapply. If you apply a second time immediately, without fixing anything, you’re just wasting time. Wait at least 2-3 weeks after resolving your problems before submitting another application. Google’s review process itself usually takes 1-2 weeks, so rushing things only gives you frustration.

Don’t panic, don’t quit. But don’t try to jump the gun. Like things in web marketing and web business, fixing your problems will take time.

Step 2: Figure Out Why You Were Rejected

The first thing you need to do when you’re rejected is figure out why. Google will send you an email with something vague, like “insufficient content” or “content quality issues” and leave it up to you to figure out what that means.

Here are the most common causes for rejection:

Your website is too new. Google AdSense strongly prefers sites that have been around for a while and have demonstrated steady publishing activity. If you just created a website, they will check to see when it came up in their index, when the site was put together, and how long it has been running. If your site is too young, then you’ll be rejected on the grounds that they aren’t sure if you’re committed to this whole “blogging” thing. A rule of thumb is to publish at least one post per week for 6-8 weeks before applying, as it gives your site time to establish itself in Google’s index.

Your website doesn’t have enough content. This is one of the most common reasons for rejection. Having less than 10 blog posts is a standard red flag, and while approval may technically be possible at that threshold, having a minimum of 20-30 quality articles published is strongly recommended before you apply, and each post should shoot for 700-1,200+ words, with headings, examples, and images. A site without substantial content doesn’t give Google’s systems enough to analyze, which makes it impossible for them to determine what your site is about or serve relevant ads.

This can also be a problem for otherwise content-rich sites if that content is not in text form. Sites that make heavy use of images like infographics or photo galleries, and sites that use multimedia content like videos, aren’t indexed and will show as having insufficient content.

The content on your website is poor quality. Google has been spearheading the gradual improvement of web content quality since 2011, and it has been a core focus of SEO ever since. Your site needs high quality content or it won’t rank, it won’t get traffic, it won’t earn subscribers, and it won’t be accepted into AdSense.

In order to solve this problem, you’ll have to create new, high quality content. But you also need to revamp or remove your old, bad content. You can make use of old content, but you need to make sure it stays away from these problems.

The content on your website violates the terms of service. There are a number of rules about the content you can have on your site. If your site is focusing on a banned subject, sadly, you’re out of luck. Nothing short of a content revamp can help, and at that point you might as well make an entirely new site.

What content is banned? Google does not allow AdSense on sites that include pornography, adult material, violence, hate speech, hacking guides, illegal drugs, alcohol sales, weapon sales, and basically anything that’s illegal.

The content on your website is violating a copyright. This means trademarks you don’t own, posting content you didn’t create, hosting content you don’t have the rights to distribute - like pirated music or movies - and other such problems. Don’t steal blog posts, don’t host pirated software, don’t sell counterfeit products, and don’t distribute stolen media.

Your site has malware or signs of being hacked. Google will scan your entire site when you apply for AdSense. They’ll look for malicious code, signs that you’re distributing malware, evidence that you’re being used as a landing page for spam emails, and other such problems. Hackers will even leave your site alone when they breach your hosting and basically add pages you don’t see to use for their own nefarious ends. In rare cases, it’s possible that you were hacked and don’t know it.

Clean up all signs of malicious content, whether intentional or unwitting, and you should be free to apply again. I also recommend taking some steps towards securing your web presence, to prevent it from happening again. You may also want to scan your WordPress blog for bad external links as part of your cleanup process.

You can have traffic and still be rejected from AdSense for not having enough organic traffic. If you don’t have enough natural incoming traffic, Google doesn’t expect to be able to make money by serving you ads, so they reject you. Paid traffic is also sometimes unsafe to use with AdSense, either because of the quality of the traffic or because of how it can exploit ad code.

This is one of the hardest problems to solve, because it can take quite a while to build up an organic following. You’ll have to start a campaign of white hat SEO, which can take months or years to bear fruit.

Your traffic is low quality. Similarly, if Google analyzes your traffic and finds that you don’t meet their quality standards, then you’ll receive a rejection. For example, if you’re a small business in Kansas looking to monetize your blog, but 95% of your traffic is coming from India, Google can be pretty sure that those visitors aren’t interested in your page and are coming for some other reason. Rather than show ads to people who aren’t going to click or convert, they reject you.

You don’t have a contact, privacy policy or terms of service page. This is one of the simplest problems you can solve. Google wants you to have some legally-enforceable language on your site that says who you are and how to contact you, gives users an assurance of their privacy while browsing your site, and sets expectations on how users should act and how you enforce violations. It’s pretty easy to find a usable terms of service online, your privacy policy doesn’t need to be complex - these are the minimum standards - and a contact page is trivial to put online.

Your site design is terrible. Anything that violates common sense, usability, or how easy it is to crawl can get you rejected. Sites that have broken scripts, pop-ups or pop-unders, and other kinds of disruptive code all count. The harder it is for users to browse your site, the worse off you’ll be. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to set up a site with WordPress and a theme, so there’s no excuse for this. If you’re rejected for a bad site design, fire your designer and hire a high schooler who knows how to Google, because they’ll do better.

You don’t actually own the site. This is a rare one, but if you’re trying to monetize a site and you apply, you better make sure that the ownership information for the domain and the web hosting match the information you’re submitting for AdSense.

I’ve seen people try to get into their friends’ sites, and it doesn’t work. I’ve seen people try to get into a random site with a name like theirs. I’ve seen people who were authorized representatives use their own information instead of company information and get rejected. Generally, you can work with Google and get approval if you can prove you actually own the site or are authorized to represent it. If you don’t, don’t bother trying again. Make your own site first.

You’re under the age of 18. Per AdSense’s Terms and Conditions, you have to be at least 18 years of age to participate in the program - this applies globally. If you’re under 18, then you’ll need to wait or have a qualifying adult apply using their own information on your behalf.

You’re not on your own domain. You should be using your own domain name, like www.example.com, instead of a subdomain. Sites like example.wordpress.com or example.blogspot.com are going to find it very difficult to successfully apply for AdSense. Primarily, this was because of abuse of the free site hosting.

Generally, if you want to get a site on free hosting like that approved for AdSense, you are going to need to buy a domain to use. Both Blogspot and WordPress allow you to use a custom domain, and most domain names will only cost you something like $10-15 a year, so it’s not a large expense. Learn more about whether you need a custom domain to be successful with your blog.

You’re running ads from other ad networks. AdSense doesn’t want to compete with other ads. You can use other ads on your site prior to enrolling in AdSense. If you remove AdSense you can use other ads again. But you can’t use AdSense and another display ad network at the same time. Unfortunately, that means that when applying to AdSense, you’ll have to remove the other ad network from the site.

This primarily applies to display ads. Affiliate links are fine to use in conjunction with AdSense ads, though you do have to be aware of ad density rules. If you have too many ads on a page, then you’ll experience SEO penalties and probably usability problems.

You have links from or links to bad sites. Bad links show that you’re not organically where you are. If you’re linking to or receiving links from spam sites, it’s going to hurt your SEO and it’s going to jeopardize your AdSense enrollment. Use a tool like Ahrefs or Google Search Console to audit your backlinks and the links on your site, get rid of the bad ones, and disavow the incoming links you can’t get removed.

Your content is in an unsupported language. Google only supports a limited number of languages for AdSense sites. If your content is primarily in a language not on their supported list, you won’t be eligible unless they add your language eventually.

You have been banned before. It’s against the terms of service to circumvent a ban by creating a new account. People can and have done it, but they have to be very careful about using different information, including things like IP address, so it’s a significant risk. If you’re caught with a second account, you can be banned again.

You have more than one AdSense account. Google AdSense policy allows only one AdSense account per publisher. Having more than one account can get you rejected or banned outright. If you find yourself in this situation, close all but one account and then demonstrate to Google that you’re operating a single account. You should be able to get in afterwards.

Step 3: Fix and Repeat

Once you’ve identified the problem, take action to fix it. Most fixes are minimal, though a few might not be possible with your site. When you fix the issue, wait at least 2-3 weeks - use that time to publish extra quality content - then apply again. Remember that when you reapply, Google’s review process usually takes 1-2 weeks, so patience matters. Assuming you’re in total compliance, you should be able to get into the program and start monetizing. Once approved, remember that Google AdSense processes payments after you reach a threshold of $100, with notification emails going out on the 21st of each month - and learning about the highest earning AdSense layouts can help you maximize that income.