Ads Limits Notices from AdSense

For the last month or two the AdSense help forums have seen many, many publishers complaining about their ads being limited.  This is a recent development from AdSense; something we haven't seen before.

Most people don't know how to address it, or why it's happening. To be honest, many of the Product Experts don't have exact answers for this either, so we can't offer a lot of help; we can't point out one thing that's causing it; we can't help you fix it. We can only point you at the help center information and urge you to review your sites and traffic.

The explanation in the Help Center is pretty generic, and most people don't understand it. The limits are placed for a variety of reasons.

• Some new accounts and/or new sites are seeing this notice.
• Some sites (perhaps all sites in an account, depending on the traffic) may find Adsense is reviewing their traffic.
• Some might be older sites or accounts (5-10 years or older) whose traffic is being reviewed, or whose sites are being re-reviewed.

The reasons why they are doing this are anybody's guess ... because for most of us, that's what it is. A guessing game. Some older sites that were initially marked as ready might not have been reviewed before being marked ready, but are being reviewed now.  Some newer sites may simply be having their traffic analyzed.

After all, what was suitable for AdSense 5 or 10 years account may not be suitable for monetization now.  Before these recent (last 6 months) changes to Adsense, publishers didn't need to get every site they added reviewed, but now they do.

Older sites added a few years ago could certainly be violating policies without meaning to. Publishers have a tendency not to review changes to the policies in the help center, so some of their sites could be violating newer policies. Including the type of traffic/visitors they are acquiring for their sites.

Publishers need to keep in mind that AdSense is not a static product, and it's rules and policies change rather frequently. If you don't keep up-to-date with those changes, your site(s) or traffic could suddenly be violating policies now, even if they weren't 5 years ago.

Ads limiting isn't something you can appeal; nor is it something that has a specific time frame. The best thing you can do if you've received that notice is not to panic. Take time to read the pages available in the help center.

1. Then review for your website content to ensure it still complies with policies.
2. Review your ad placements after re-reading the ad placement policies to make sure that the places you've put the ads are in line with the current policies.
3. Start reviewing your traffic sources - where it comes from, what the visitors do while on your site. 

Being pro-active in reviewing all your own content and analyzing your traffic and visitor patterns will be important during the time ads are limited. They aren't limiting ads for no reason. They are assessing your site; your site's traffic and your visitor behaviour.

For new accounts, and new sites that might simply be to ensure the traffic is coming from good sources. For older accounts, it could be that your sites have had some invalid traffic. It could be any number of other reasons too, so taking the time to ensure your traffic is in line with traffic policies, and changing or fixing anything that seems like it isn't in line with policy may help shorten the time your ads are limited.

Currently, there is no specified time frame for the ad serving limits - it could be a few days, a few weeks, or like some publishers are experiencing, it could be a few months.

Doing nothing is really not an option.

posted by J.Gracey Stinson