Using the AdSense Help Forum Effectively

If you want to get answers that help resolve your problems or questions in the AdSense Help Forums, there are some things you can and should do before you start posting to the forums.

First, you need to read the AdSense Support Forums Terms of Service. You shouldn't post profanity, or advertising. You also must not use your website address as a signature. This is considered advertising. You can, however, use your Google Profile to list your websites if you so choose. Posters can access your Google Profile from your nickname on the forums. (You may post your website url in your question if it's necessary to the question, just not as a signature.)

Next, at the Help Forum "home page" you'll see a list of discussion categories. These links will bring up questions in each category, filtering out other categories. It's helpful to read through other postings, because often your question will already have been answered in someone else's post. On the right side of the page is a listing of "popular" discussions that may already answer your question as well.


At the bottom of the home page is a link to "browse all discussions". When you click on this you get all the discussions and threads in the forum, including some you should check before you begin a new post. At the top of the help forum discussions are "pinned topics". These are topics posted by AdSense/Google Employees, and often will include things like current problems (ie: "Known Issues"). If there are system bugs that many publishers are experiencing, you will probably find it here in the pinned section, unless it has already been resolved. Many duplicate complaint posts could be avoided if people would check the pinned topics first.

Another thing to do before posting your own topic is to search the forums. Just think about where you are. You are in a forum hosted and run by Google. And who are Google? They're the people who are pretty well known for their search engine, which means they do "search" extremely well. You should make use of this. Type your problem into the search bar at the top and click the "search help" button.


Look through the results and see if your problem (or a similar complaint or question) is there, and if it has been answered or not.

After doing all of that, if you still have a question that hasn't been asked or that is more specific than what's listed, then go ahead and post your question. Click the "post a question" link on the left menu.

How to Post an Effective Question

If you want an answer to your question, then you need to post a question that addresses your issue as clearly as possible and contains details. Questions like "I can't get approved" or "What's wrong with my website" or "Why?" are really not going to get you helpful answers.

Don't:

• post questions unrelated to AdSense problems
• post the full question in your title
• post one word questions (why? when? what? help!)
  
• post the same question over and over again (simply edit your question or post a "bump" and it will move back toward the top of the forum again)
  
• post "bumps" every minute
• post without checking the help articles (link is in left sidebar)
• post in any language except english (there are help forums available in other languages - down at the bottom of the page linked here is a drop down box with the avalilable languages for help forums)
• post spam (this will get you banned from the forum)
• post your email address, publisher ID or personal details
• post your website address unless the help you are asking for is AdSense related
  
• post personal insults and profanity
• post links to pornographic websites
• post adlinks in the forum

DO

• use a title related to your question
• post a full explanation and question within the body of the post. If your question doesn't make sense, we can't answer it properly without asking further questions.
• use the search function before posting
• read the help articles before posting
• include your website url if you think people need to look at your site to offer help (this is necessary for questions on ads that won't display, help with disabled accounts, ad placements, ads that aren't related to your content etc.)
• check your posts for answers instead of posting again
  
• try to be patient. There are a lot of questions every day and not that many of us to answer them.
• try not to take your anger a frustration out on the people answering your questions. Almost none of them are employed by Google or AdSense. Most of them are volunteers who are publishers, just like you. Unless a responding poster has "Google Employee" by/under their name, they are just ordinary folks trying to help others.

If you post a question and can't find it later, you can check your profile and see a listing of your questions. In the menu bar at the left is a link for "My Discussions" this will take you to your profile where all the questions you've asked are listed. You can click the link for the post you want and it will take you to that thread.

If you post a question that doesn't get answered, amend your original question to bring it back to the front of the forum where people can see it again. Posting the same question multiple times simply makes everyone annoyed. There are some types of questions that we just can't resolve in the forums, so you may not get an answer.

Please note that questions related specifically to how to place your AdSense code into your website are often more related to:

1. the specific website creator you are using
2. the webhosting or blog service you are using
   

than they are to AdSense. Unless one of the volunteers has used your specific website builder, questions of this nature may not get answered. Your best choice for questions relating to your website is to ask at the webhosting help center, or the web builder help sections.

Please try to remember that as AdSense publishers most of the volunteers have experienced similar problems and have experienced the same frustrations as you have. Please don't come into the forums with a nasty attitude towards those who are trying to help you. All this will do is make the volunteers reluctant to try and help you.

You can express your frustration, just don't make it a personal attack on your helpers. That won't resolve anything.

If your question is related to other Google services (YouTube, gmail, google search, blogger, etc.) then you need to ask your question in the help forum for the related product. You can start here at the "Getting Started with Google Help" page, or if you want to look at all the help forums and groups available for Google services and products you can do that here.

Frequently Asked Questions...With Simple Answers

These are some of the questions we see over on the AdSense Help Forum on a pretty regular basis. In most cases, the answers are mostly simple and can be found in the AdSense Help Center pages by doing a search - a topic which we'll cover in another post.

1. How long does it take to get an Adsense account?

Although the AdSense sign up pages say that you should receive a notice from them in about 48 hours, over the past year that has changed. While some applications might actually get reviewed as quickly as that, most do not. Currently it can take anywhere from a week to a couple of months.

1(a) - Why is it taking so long?

This is because the influx of applications has grown tremendously over the last year. The growth of "get rich quick" sites and scam sites using AdSense and Google to further their scam earnings has created an enormous backlog and constant increase in applications for AdSense accounts.

Along with this, the fact that the economy all over the world has taken a nosedive over the last year and half means that individuals who would not have thought about using AdSense previously are all trying to get in on "the money", which many websites tell you is "hundreds" or "thousands" of dollars a week. Which is a very large misrepresentation.

Because of the thousands of applications every week (perhaps even every day), it now can take anywhere from a few days or a weeks, to longer than two months. The wait time is long, and you'll need to have patience.

2. How old do you have to be to have an AdSense account?

AdSense requires that you be 18 years of age to have an account. This is because in most US states you must be 18 years old to legally enter into a contract. Agreeing to the AdSense Terms of Use is considered entering into a legal contract.

3. How many times can we click per day?

Yes, we do get questions like that.

The answer is NONE. Publishers are not allowed to click on ads on their own websites. Ever.

If you are visiting another publisher's website you should only click on an ad if the ad is something that you are looking for or interested in. One click is enough. If you see more than one ad you are interested in, visit the site a little bit later and view the ad then.

4. Can I use AdSense ads in my e-mails?

The answer is NO. AdSense policy does not allow AdSense code to be place in an email.

You can, however, place a simple link to your website in your email signature. You mustn't use this for sending unsolicited mass emails; that would be considered email spam and sending email spam can get your email account disabled.

5. Can we ask visitors to click ads?

Again, the answer is NO. AdSense publishers must not draw undue attention to their ads in any way.

You may not write "please support us and visit the advertisers", "please click the ads to help me" or anything similar.

You also may not write things like "please don't click the ads" because that draws as much attention to the ads as asking someone to click them.

6. Is there a phone number for AdSense?

I'm sure there must be one, but it's not one that we get to know about.

A simple search for a telephone number for Google or AdSense will get you a phone number, but the phone call would be very short as it's highly unlikely you'd get past the answering receptionist.

There really is no telephone support for AdSense publishers. Many have tried, and many have failed.

7. What is the email address for AdSense?

The email address to contact AdSense can be found throughout the help pages on the AdSense website. Unfortunately, the only reply you will probably get is one directing you to their help forum, so you might as well start there and save yourself the aggravation of waiting for an email reply.

8. Can I use other advertisers on my pages with AdSense ads?

Yes, AdSense allows it's publishers to use other advertising and affiliate programs. They do have rules for other ads - these other ads must not be formatted to look like or be confused with Google AdSense ads.

You can find out the details about AdSense requirements for using other advertisers on this page.

Why Was My AdSense Application Rejected?

There can be many reasons for having a rejected application - from incorrect personal data, or a typing error in your website address (url), to poor navigation on your website, or content that's not suitable for AdSense.

Application Details

The details you fill in on your AdSense application must be correct, and complete. Your name will be the name your payments go to if you are approved for an AdSense account, so you need to make sure this is correct in your initial application. The same thing goes for your address, and other personal details.

AdSense applicants must submit their website url when they complete an application. The website url is the part that looks like this: http://helpfulinformationfornewbies.blogspot.com/ or www.google.com .

Your website url must be correct because AdSense reviews your website to ensure it fits with AdSense policy, and contains the type of content their advertisers want to place ads on. If you type the url incorrectly, or if your website doesn't yet exist, then AdSense is likely to reject your application because they can't access your website.

Double check all the details in your application before you click the submit button. Once you send it, you can't edit it. You'll have to wait for them to review it (this can take anywhere from a few days to a few months) and send you an email. At that point, you can edit your application to correct any errors and resubmit it again.

To learn more about the AdSense application, visit their help center.


Website and Content Issues

When AdSense rejects an application, the email they send is usually pretty generic. It might say "wrong page type" without giving any further details, or it might list "poor or no navigation", or "under construction" or any one of a host of other reasons, most of which aren't very detailed.

The best place to get help in determining the actual issue(s) will be at the AdSense Help Forum. Volunteers and "Top Contributors" deal with questions like this every day, and most of them are pretty good at being able to tell you what the reasons will be, and can sometimes offer other suggestions to help you get your application and website "AdSense ready".

Page Type issues can mean anything from content that isn't acceptable to AdSense and doesn't comply with their policies, to not enough content.

In the forums we constantly see applicants whose blogs or websites have almost no content - one post or article is not "content". It's a beginning, but it's not enough to satisfy advertisers, so it's not enough to satisfy AdSense.

For some areas of the world, AdSense requires that a blog or website must be 6 months old - this actually means they want you to have six months worth of content. If you open a blog or website in January, make one post and wait six months you probably still won't get approved. The blog might be six months old, but there is still no content.

There's a saying over at AdSense... "Content is King".

Content must also be useful to people, and interesting. A blog full of posts that aren't going to interest people, or provide some useful information isn't likely to interest AdSense either. The sort of content that's going "out the door" (ie: getting less approval) at AdSense are sites that are built specifically to earn income with "get rich quick" schemes, or money making sites that have no purpose other than to accrue income from AdSense.

All content on your website or blog must adhere to AdSense policies. If it doesn't, you probably won't get an approved account. To see what the content policies are, you can visit the AdSense Program Policy page.

Poor navigation issues can be anything from having "flash only" navigation, to having no navigation, or to having navigation or menu buttons that don't link to any page, to broken menu links.

All flash navigation is difficult for the bots to follow, and if they can't follow a navigation link, to them, it's broken - they may be able to follow some of the links, or none of the links. On top of that, many people still don't allow flash in their browsers, so those people can't use your website. You need to create text links as well as flash links. You can put the text navigation in your website footer or sidebar, or create a sitemap with text links and link to the sitemap with a text link on your home page.

Menu buttons or links that are meant for future pages should either be removed, or should link to the page. Don't leave incomplete links in your navigation menu.

One of the biggest navigation problems we see are with blogs. Everyone thinks because it's a blog, it already has navigation. In some cases, this is true, it does have a form of navigation...but only if you have a bunch of posts. It's the posts and their pages that create navigation in the form of the archives on most blogs. If you have only one or two posts, you really don't have much in the way of navigation.

You'll notice in the sidebar of this blog, the first thing is titled "Pages". That was created using a blogger gadget, and the blogger pages function. You could also use the links gadget to create a menu. In the links gadget you can enter a url (in this case, the url of the page with the post on it) and a website title (instead of a website title, I use the post title) - everytime I make a new post, it is added manually to that menu. Anybody visiting my blog doesn't have to hunt through the archives looking for a subject they want. It's in the post menu. As a blog grows and has hundreds of posts, you won't want to use this method. You'll need to do something else, like only include important posts. You should always have an archive listing in your sidebar for navigation, and a text sitemap can be very useful as well.

Under Construction might seem like a pretty specific reason, but for many it is anything but. We see lots of people in the forum whose websites aren't under construction, but that's the reason they are given.

We see this a lot with websites that contain mostly graphics or images, and very little text. Landing pages or home pages that have an image and no text are another problem, as are photoblogs and videoblogs (nothing but videos in a blog is not considered good content for AdSense).

Photos and images should always have "alt text" tags so they can be "seen" by the AdSense bots and crawlers. They can't see an image if there is no text, so a website or blog of nothing but photos will look completely empty. A bunch of pages with nothing on them is a website under construction.

Websites built entirely of flash can create problems too - sometimes they can crawl them, and sometimes they can't. The best flash sites I have seen are the ones that also have a plain html version of the site for users without flash in their browsers. Some of the worst sites I've seen are those that require you to use a specific browser, like IE only sites.

Language - AdSense has a list of supported languages, and if the language your website was built in is not on that list, you won't be able to get an approved AdSense account. You can learn more about the languages AdSense supports at the AdSense Help Center.

In the end, there are some websites and content that are just not suitable for AdSense advertisers. Not everyone is granted an AdSense account.

Google Green?

No sermon here today, folks, but thanks to one of the "Top Contributors" (Dan) over on the AdSense Help forums, we're going to shoot for taking a news article and video the "viral" route.

What that means is, grab the link for the article, and post to your blogs - everybody. This will help get the word out that not every website who talks about Google or AdSense is on the "up and up".

You know all those "almost scams" and "google scams" we've been talking about? Well, here in this article at the link Fox News tells it like it is. Let your friends know there are places they need to be careful of- especially if they are thinking about signing up for AdSense.

Fox Twin Cities - Investigating Google Green

Remind your friends, if they want to apply for AdSense, then they should do it right at the Google AdSense homepage and not anywhere else.

Getting Started with AdSense and Blogger

Everyday on the Google AdSense forums you'll see lots of questions about using AdSense with Blogger blogs. Today's post will help you get started using AdSense on Blogger. More complex questions will come later, and of course you can always post a specific question to the comments, or use Google's AdSense Help Forum.

1. Can I use AdSense with Blogger?

• yes, Blogger blogs accept AdSense code very easily.

2. What's the best way to sign up with my blog?

• Blogger has a "monetize" link which many people use to get an AdSense account, and currently, if you try to apply for adsense without using this monetize link, you'll get rejected for "domain ownership issues.
• Adsense does not accept "subdomains" for their applications, so signing up at the Adsense home page with a blogger URL will get your application rejected because a blogger URL is a subdomain. To avoid that, you need to apply using the monetize link.
• Using the monetize link in blogger lets Adsense know that this is a blogger URL, which is acceptable to use for Adsense, so please do not try to sign up at the Adsense homepage for your blog.

3. My Adsense account for my blog was approved. How do I add the code to my blogger?

• There are different options for adding AdSense code to your blogger. You can use the monetize link to place the ads, you can use the Adsense Gadget in Blogger, or you can use a Text Gadget and add code you generate from your AdSense Account.
• See this step-by-step tutorial (includes snapshots and text) for the ways you can place your code on blogger blogs.

4. Why don't all of my ads show up on my blogger? I have all the code, but you can't see all the ads.

• The main reason for this is that you probably have too many of the same kind of ad on one page.
• AdSense only allows for 3 ad units, 3 link units and 2 AdSense for search boxes on one page.
• When you choose to have the AdSense ads display below each post, the number of posts allowed to display on a page has something to do with this problem. Many people leave the "posts per page" set at the default, wich I think is 5. That means there may already be three ads on the page (one ad after every 2nd post). What happens is that any other ads of the same type you put on your page won't display.
• There are two ways to remedy this. Set your post count per page to 1, 2 or 3 posts per page. This will result in one or two ads being displayed leaving you one ad of the same type for another spot. Or you can change the add type. You can use ad units between your posts, and ad links in your sidebar, or vice versa. This allows you to display 3 ads between your posts, and 3 ads in your sidebar (or below your header if you choose).

5. How much does it cost to use Blogger and AdSense?

• Nothing. Google provides both services freely. If anyone asks you pay anything for a Blogger blog or an AdSense account, then you are in the wrong place.
• There are many websites on the internet that ask you for money in exchange for providing information about earning money with AdSense, and they trade on the Google name, but they aren't associated with Google, and their practice is not condoned by Google.
• Information about AdSense or Blogger is available freely from their respective home pages at Google. You should never pay for something that is offered free. Any payments you might make to these other sites go to them, not to Google and Google cannot help you get your money back, nor will they refund you something they didn't charge you for.