Securing an AdSense Account

During the last couple of months we've seen a lot of confused people in the AdSense forum; people that can't login to their AdSense account, or their email address has been removed as a login, or they no longer appear to be an admin on their own account.  Some know their accounts have already been compromised or hacked by someone else, or an invited email address has removed them from their own accounts.

Most of this can be avoided by securing your account. C'mon people, we've talked about this before (more than once in fact), but it's still happening way too often. If you aren't vigilant, you can be locked out of your own AdSense account.

The truth is, this could happen to almost anyone, but using common sense and being aware of what the consequences are of the choices you make can help mitigate these issues.

Inviting Users to Your AdSense Account

URGENT AdSense Help!

How to get your question answered in the AdSense Help forum is NOT to post things like this:

• URGENT!!!!!!
• Answer me fast!
• I need help NOW.
• AdSense URGENTLY needed.
• etc.

Most of the TCs in the AdSense forum have been answering questions there for five years or more ... we've pretty much seen everything, and almost nothing is considered URGENT when it comes to AdSense.  They're just ads ... how is advertising urgent to anyone? It's not. Yes, for sure, people trying to earn a little with it consider it important, but it still isn't urgent. Urgent would  be if you're bleeding to death, or if you've been in an accident, or your house is on fire, in which case you call the appropriate emergency service. Ads aren't urgent.

While a hacked account is something we consider sort of urgent or needing immediate help, we actually can't help you with that, nor can AdSense staff even help you. You have to recover your account on your own. That's the sad truth. Because of privacy laws, AdSense usually can't step in. They can't tell if you're the account owner, or if you're a hacker trying to get into the account. The actual account owner needs to recover their Google Account and mail account. So while this could be something I too would consider urgent, as much as I'd like to help, I probably can't.

AdSense Account Cancelled!

UPDATE: According to staff, yes, this is real. Please see this thread in the forum.


Just a quick note to let you know that we seem to be flooded in the forums with publishers that have
received a notice saying their AdSense account was cancelled and they'll receive their payment in the next payment cycle.

Is this for real? At the moment, we aren't sure what's happening. There are differences in some of the notifications and some of the situations.

• Some publishers are still able to login to their AdSense accounts and have no problems within the account.
• Some publishers are unable to login to their accounts at all.
• Some people are not AdSense publishers and have never had an AdSense account, nor signed up for one.

Because this a holiday week in the US, it may take a little while before we have a response from staff. There is an ongoing thread in the forum for publishers to post in if they have received one of these notices (please don't start a new thread - use the open one instead). If you post in the thread please include the following information:

The Mystery of AdSense Smart Pricing

Lots of AdSense publishers have probably heard the term "smart pricing", but how many know exactly what it is, or how it's applied to AdSense earnings?  I suppose not very many - me included.  While AdSense provides some information and insight into smart pricing on the publisher side of things, they certainly don't spell out the exact details of how it works, nor are they ever likely to.

Is it applied to entire publisher's account? To all their websites? To all their traffic?

When you look at AdSense's basic explanation to publishers and then look at how they explain smart pricing to the advertiser, there is a very slight difference in those explanations, but that difference can help you form your own opinions on how it might work.

AdSense Publisher

"Google’s smart pricing feature is designed to raise advertiser confidence in the AdSense network, which in turn can lead to higher bids on ads that appear on publisher sites. This then benefits the entire advertising ecosystem of publishers, advertisers, and users in the long run."

YouTube Payments with AdSense

For many new YouTube partners monetizing their channels with AdSense, the payment system can be a little confusing. Even if you've been earning with a website or blog, you may be confused by how the payments work from YouTube because to many's surprise, the way you track estimated earnings is markedly different than when using a website or blog. And the timing for finalized (or verified as payable) earnings is different too, making the process a little more difficult to understand.

Included in the confusion is the fact that YouTube will allow you to monetize your videos, even before you have an approved Adsense account (and before you apply!).  At least they used to and I'm not sure if it's still the same. For some unlucky publishers, this fact only becomes clear when they appear in the AdSense help forum wondering how to get their money from YouTube.

What isn't clear is that you need to link to an approved AdSense account in order to collect payments, but even worse ... AdSense will NOT pay you for any of the monetization that occurred before you linked your channel to an approved AdSense account. Once you do link your channel, AdSense only picks up the earnings from that point forward, and those would be the earnings that eventually get transferred to AdSense.

NOTE: At one time, the help center on YouTube used to offer this bonus information, but it no longer does, so I'll be honest and say that as of now, I don't know if they still do offer the bonus or not.