AdSense

When you sign up for AdSense, you’re required to adhere to our online Terms and Conditions. We understand that it’s a lengthy read, but it’s important to familiarize yourself with our program policies to ensure long-term revenue growth and a healthy account.

Content Guidelines
Sites with Google ads may not include or link to the following content: Click on each category for more information and examples.

• Adult content
• Copyrighted material
• Drug, alcohol, and tobacco-related content
• Gambling content
• Violent content
• Weapon-related content
• Content that advocates against an individual, group, or organization
• Hacking and cracking content
• Sensitive content
• Sites that offer compensation programs
• Sites that use Google Brand features
• Other illegal content

Ad Implementation Guidelines
To protect our network from artificially inflated costs, we carefully monitor clicks and impressions on Google ads. Invalid activity that we detect will be deducted from revenue at the end of the month and returned to advertisers. High or suspicious amounts of invalid activity can eventually lead to a disabled account. Additionally, due to smart pricing, high amounts of invalid activity will decrease publisher revenue. This is because invalid activity decreases advertisers’ conversion rates, which will in turn reduce the amount that they are willing to pay to show ads on your site.
Publishers may not ask others to click their ads or use deceptive implementation methods to obtain invalid clicks. AdSense code may not be altered, nor may the standard behavior, targeting or delivery of ads be manipulated in any way that is not explicitly permitted by Google. This includes but is not limited to the following: Click on each category for more information and examples.

• Encouraging to click
• Deceptive ads placement
• Formatting content to mimic ads
• Modified ads behavior
• Too many ads
• Placing ads in pop-up windows
• Too many pop-ups
• Ads in software or emails
• AFS abuse

Webmaster Guidelines
Webpages must adhere to the webmaster quality guidelines. Publishers should avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. Keep in mind that low quality content on some pages can cause the ranking for the entire site to decline.

Hot topics and resources

• Top reasons for account closure
• Top 5 policy resources to know
• Keeping your AdSense site family-safe
• Creating unique and valuable content
• Tips for monitoring user generated content

Troubleshooting and issue resolution

Ready to test your knowledge? Take this policy quiz!

Take policy quiz now!

To create your first AdSense for content ad unit, we invite you to click the below button.

Create your first ad unit now!

The next step is to select your ad size from the "Ad size" drop down. Wider ad sizes tend to perform the best, due to their reader-friendly format. The sizes we've found to be the most effective are these:

• the 336x280 Large Rectangle
• the 300x250 Medium Rectangle
• the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper
• the 728x90 Leaderboard

Keep in mind that while these ad sizes typically perform well, you should use the size that best complements your page.

See below for an example of these ad units and watch our video on high performing units to learn more:

Leaderboard

Wide Skyscraper

Large Rectangle Medium Rectangle

The more types of ads that compete to show on your pages, the more you can earn. From the "Ad type" drop-down, select "Text & image/rich media ads" to ensure that all available advertisers can bid to appear on your site. Not all sizes can support image/rich media ads, so we suggest sticking to the recommended sizes noted above to maximize your earnings.

You'll also see the option to select back-up ads and create custom channels for your ad unit. Let's skip these optional steps for now. We'll explain custom channels in detail later on.

Ads usually perform better when colors are customized to the text and links that already exist on your site. To integrate your ads with your site, make the background and borders of your ads the same color as the background of your page where the ad will be placed.

Let's briefly define the three techniques you can use to design color palettes that will be successful for your site:

• To blend, make the background and borders of your ads the same color as the background of your page where the ad is placed. If your site has a white background and you don't want to spend a lot of time choosing ad colors, we recommend using our pre-designed Open Air palette.
• To complement, use colors that already exist on your site, but don't match the background and borders exactly where the ads are placed.
• To contrast, choose colors that stand out against the background of your site. Contrasting is recommended only for sites with dark background, so we suggest using a palette with white background, white borders, and blue titles.

Blend	Complement	Contrast

Once you've selected your colors, hit the button that says "Save and get code" at the bottom of the page. This will generate the code you need to add to your site in order for ads to start showing. Before you paste in the code, make sure to read the next section on where you should place your ad unit.

You can place ads on any page that adheres to our program policies. We've highlighted some of our policies below to get you started, but we recommend that you read through all of our policies in detail to ensure your ads stay active.

Sites with Google ads should have original and quality content. They may not include or link to:

Pornography, adult or mature content

Webpages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content. Please see our DMCA policy for more information (link)

Webpages that violate the webmaster quality guidelines. Publishers should avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

Once you've ensured your site is policy-compliant, you need to decide where to place ads on your pages. Ads located above the fold (the part of the page users can see without scrolling down) tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near navigational aids and other engaging content also perform well due to high visibility among users. Darker colors in the heat map below indicate where most users are looking. Use this as a guide for where to place your ads, but keep in mind that the optimal location on the rest of the page may vary depending on the type of site you're working with. Find the best ad locations for your type of site using our One Click Optimizer guide.



You should also be aware of where and how not to place ads on your page.

In order to keep your ad placement compliant with our policies and ensure a good experience for users and advertisers:

Don't encourage users to click the Google ads using phrases like "click the ads," "support us," "visit these links" or other similar language.

Don't place misleading labels above Google ad units. For instance, ads may be labelled "Sponsored Links" or "Advertisements", but not "Favorite Sites" or "Today's Top Offers."

Don't format site content so that it's difficult to distinguish from ads. If you have video content, for example, don't overlay AdSense for content ads on video content.

Don’t place all ads together or place ads too near to each other. It’s suggested to show content accompanied by ads and not the other way around.

Once you've identified the best place on your site for your ad units, go on to the next step to paste in your code!

Now that you have your code and know where you want to place it, the next step is to paste the code into your website's HTML source code. If you need help, refer to our code implementation guide.
After the code has been placed, live ads won’t immediately appear as we want to review your site again. Since the application hasn’t been fully approved yet, temporary “blank ads” will be shown instead. These blank ads will blend in with the background of the page, so users won’t see them and the user experience won’t be impacted. Soon after these blank ads appear, a final approval decision will be made and you will be notified by email. If you’re approved, live ads will appear within 48 hours in the existing ad units on your pages.

More information about the AdSense approval process, please refer to this blog article. If you can't see ads on your site after 48 hours, use our troubleshooter to diagnose the issue. Either way, you should bookmark this resource for future use just in case.

You can place up to three AdSense for content ad units on every page, so keep creating and implementing to maximize your coverage.