Where to Find Google Product Help

One of the things that frequently occurs in the AdSense Help Forum are posts from people looking for help for other products that Google Supplies. I expect a lot of this might be due to the fact that the AdSense forum is first on the list of help forums on the Google Support Forums listing page. I imagine lots of other help forums run into this problem too because the AdSense forum gets lots of posts moved into it from other forums.

I'm not sure why this is such an issue - the the support forums listing has direct links to most of the help forums for Google products, but there are several related forums that currently don't have their own help forum (AdMob doesn't have an active help forum; Google Accounts doesn't have a help forum), and I guess when people just want to complain about anything related to Google they'll post on the first forum they find ... fairly often it's AdSense.

So, to that end ... here's a list of forums and what help they offer.  A lot of these products also offer the ability to use Adsense with the product itself, so it's understandable if someone posts in AdSense instead of the product help forum. It's hard to know which place you need to post for help.

In some cases, like YouTube or Blogger, if it's a technical issue that relates to the actual function of the product (like a channel, or video, or blog or blog post), you'd need to ask for help at that product forum, rather than Adsense. If it's an issue that is specifically Adsense (ie: your payments, earnings, or AdSense account, or creating ad codes, etc.) then you'd ask at the AdSense forum.

AdSense 30 Day Suspensions - How to Fix

A recent change in how AdSense deals with invalid clicks has publishers wondering how to deal with it, and naturally, all of them want to "fix" it, and everyone wants to appeal it.

The 30-day suspension period isn't fixable.  This is a decision AdSense has made in order to give the publisher time to try and correct the violations that caused the suspension.

"We may temporarily suspend if our policies are repeatedly or egregiously violated. This will provide you with a final opportunity to review all of your sites and take the necessary corrective actions so that your account is not disabled.

Please note that we’ll continue monitoring your account for compliance. If additional violations are accrued then we may need to disable your entire account. If this occurs then we may withhold earnings for a period of 60 days prior to the date that we disable your account.

AdSense was Approved - But No Ads are Showing!

We've been seen a lot of this lately. People get a notice that their account is "fully approved to display ads" ... but then, after waiting for several days ... well, none of the ads are showing up.

There could be several reasons for this, including the fact that sometimes mistakes happen. We've also seen a number of instances (more than a few) where people received an approval email, and hours or days later received a disapproval. The mistake was the approval email, which is corrected by the disapproval email. This is not a rare occurrence, but it isn't all that common either. It's just that it does happen, so if it happens to you ... find out why your site was disapproved, and make whatever changes are necessary before trying again.

Other reasons for ads not showing include not being fully approved, or being approved with a host account which will only show ads on host URLs, or a host account that will only show ads on host URLs (like YouTube).

Why Doesn't My Blog Qualify for Adsense?

Yep, you got it. That's another often asked question that echoes through the Adsense forum lately. Some are posted in AdSense, and some are moved to the AdSense forum from the Blogger forum. But all of them nearly always have the same answer, BUT, there are several situations that apply here.

Situation #1 - Applying for a new AdSense Account

When you create a new blog on Blogger and want to apply for AdSense with it, you will probably find the "Earnings Tab" is not active, and you can't submit an application.

This is because the blog is either too new, or has too little content to be able to qualify for AdSense, so the ability to apply is on hold (by the Earnings Tab being temporarily disabled) until such time as the maturity of the blog (it's age) and the amount of contents on the blog deem it as being fit to apply with.

When the earnings tab is enabled, you'll be able to apply with your blog. This, however, does not mean your blog is approved yet, it just means that you can apply with it. Whether or not the blog is approved will not be decided until it goes through a 2-step approval process.

AdSense, Where's my Payment?

Over the last month or two I think I've seen more payment related questions in the AdSense help forum than ever before. There seems to be a small flood of them, this month alone. Some of the questions have related to the new line entry on the payments page, where Adsense now shows the amount of earnings that have been deducted due to invalid activity (usually accidental clicks, or from "bad" traffic and/or bots - often not the direct fault of the publisher).

Prior to this change when deductions were made, it wasn't noted how much of that deduction was due to invalid clicks. For more on this update to the Payments page, see the recent article on the Inside AdSense Blog.

But the vast majority seem to be "why wasn't my payment issued?" ... these questions have come from publishers world-wide, and many are from publishers that have been collecting payments regularly without any problems.

Most of the publishers have either reached, or exceeded the payment threshold and have long ago entered all the required details to verify their accounts and payment methods. So where is the payment? Why hasn't it been released (issued) this month?