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Further Adventures in Blogger Advertising

The result of the AdSense review is in and it's time to assess the outcome. I have described my experience of the applicant's portion of the application process for an AdSense account in more detail previously. In total the process wasn't really that complicated, although it wasn't completely plain sailing either. There was quite a lot of information spread across multiple pages that managed to be complex but not specific (as in exactly what Google expects from the website), which I found somewhat frustrating. However the process was completed and left at the review stage in which Google submits the site to an internal review against a set of not-completely-clear-to-me criteria.

I finished my part of the process with an active but non-operational AdSense account.


Over the next week the number of accessible tabs on the menu of the account fluctuated,


but the We're reviewing your site notice remained. I assume that the steady appearance of the tabs was mostly due to automated procedures with overall access on hold for the result of the human part of the review process.

That came 16 hours shy of the full two weeks that Google predicted would be the longest that the review would take. With Covid-19 and the paltry traffic that the blog gets this wasn't really a surprise (or an issue) for me, as there was no reason to assume that the blog would be anywhere but at the back of the queue for review.

The first inkling that the application review was complete was a change in the message displayed on the Earnings tab of the blog.


The message Getting your blog ready to show ads had changed to Your blog isn't ready to show ads yet/you need to fix some things to continue. Well that wasn't a yes, but it wasn't a no either.

My first action was to drop into e-mail to check the response,


which confirmed the must-do-better result on Blogger, informing me that the blog 'does not meet our programme criteria'. But with no specific information other than a link to the AdSense policies page.

I had read through this page (OK, skim read) when I was reading the Discover section of Your guide to AdSense. Obviously I needed to go over it in more detail but first I followed the link on the Blogger message to see if there was anything more specific in the AdSense portal. Another change here as well.


It seemed I had some unspecified policy violations. I wasn't expecting to get accepted straight off the bat, from what I have read it is quite difficult first time round. Also the blog wasn't written with any of the policies in mind.

According to the AdSense page I had two options,
  1. I confirm I've fixed the policy violations on http://skullcinema.com
  2. I'd like to use a different site for AdSense
or,
  1. Try and identify what they didn’t like/couldn't see and sort it out
  2. Use another blog; actually I do have another set up on a hosted account (ie an account hosted on .blogspot.com).
The only thing I couldn't do was try both concurrently, as that would require two accounts (not allowed under AdSense T&Cs). I would have added the second blog onto the AdSense account while the first was being reviewed but the Sites tab on AdSense was always greyed out preventing me from doing so.

Hmm, decision time.

As there is no limit on how many times you can try to get approval I decided to try and work out what the policy violation was. I could always give up and try a hosted account instead at a later point. There was no rush.

Between the e-mail and the AdSense page two different sets of policies were being linked to, the AdSense programme policies (e-mail) and the Google Publisher Policies (AdSense). I was not sure which set I had violated or if there were problems with both. But the AdSense page also provided a link to a Help Centre page, which looked the like the path of least resistance. So I started there.

What to do if AdSense can't activate your account? Basically either, There's a problem with your site's content or You have two accounts. As I could definitely discount the second of these options there must be an issue with the site's content. I watched the embedded video from the AdSense page (How to activate your AdSense account?) as well, just in case. But it went over issues that didn't seem to be a problem;
  • Complete payment address details - no issues here;
  • Phone verification - no issues here;
  • Connecting your AdSense account - as described, this wasn't straightforward, but surely the issues didn't constitute a policy violation?
On the help page there were a further two links, one to the AdSense Programme policies and another to a page promisingly titled, Learn how to address issues with your site's content. Again following the path of least resistance, it was onto the latter of these two.


The page was essentially a list of possible problems.
Of these, the last was definitely not the issue. The first two may be, although there are now 30 pages all containing original, if somewhat dull, content. However, if they were the issue I wasn't going to get into rewriting all the content to comply for £10/year.

Content policy violations are what were flagged in the AdSense interface so here was where I started and that lead back to the AdSense program policies.


There was obviously no escaping reading them.

The first two items, Invalid clicks and impressions and Encouraging clicks or views (non-rewarded inventory) only apply once you have an activated AdSense account.

The next is Content policies.

The first link from this section is to Google's Publisher Policies, which gives a list of content Google doesn't want to be associated with, none of which apply, and some Privacy-related policies that are an issue. Although I am using Blogger across the entirety of the site, it is as an under the hood affair. So the first thing on the list is Privacy disclosures which means that I have to have and publish a privacy policy.

The next item is Identification of users; no cookies are set and no personal data is gathered by the site other than whatever Blogger is taking to track pageviews. But I don't know what cookies Blogger is setting or what AdSense will set. I will have to look into this.

Onto Use of device and location data, again I am not doing this (unless Blogger or AdSense is), so should be OK. The rest of the items also don't apply; Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), no processing of personal data so this should also not apply; Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), nope; Unsupported languages, nope; Minimum content requirements, have content so nope.

Returning to the Content policies section of the AdSense Program policies page I followed the second link in that section to check the list of Google Publisher Restrictions; nothing on that list.

Back to the AdSense Program policies page and moving down the list to Abusive experiences, which links to a list of design practices that the website shouldn't engage in; none of them on this site and fortunately no interdiction on stultifying content.

Authorised inventory (ads.txt) isn't applicable as I don't have an ads.txt file on the website. Traffic sources also isn't applicable as I am using no 3rd party means to drive traffic to the website. Ads behaviour and Ads placement only apply once you have ads on your site. Site behaviour rules out a few more undesirable design practices that aren't applicable and finally Technical requirements and Product-specific policies are not applicable.

So overall it appears that I was missing a privacy policy and some understanding of what cookies are being set on the site.

As you can see if you have been following the links off to the respective Google pages they aren't written in the most accessible language. Indeed the section on Standard Contractual Clauses reads like it is a first draft (", the SCCs incorporated into partner’s contract with Google apply" - missing a participle here I think).

From my (very inexpert) reading it seemed that I was only missing a privacy policy. I was, however, not very confident that this was the entirety of the problem. In these sort of situations YouTube is your friend, so let's see what the commentariat had to say.

While I was watching the Google AdSense (not much) help video I noticed the top of the list of Watch next videos supplied by YouTube was from One Hour Professor entitled "12 Tips to Get Google AdSense Approval Fast". It is definitely worth a watch and gives you information in a more concrete, actionable form than that on Google's pages. At the very least it is a place to start.


The Professors tells us "Google Adsense can be a tricky beast if you’ve never been approved before," I'll buy that. So the 12 tips are;
  1. Have high quality content - As stated above it is all original, whether or not it is high quality is a matter of opinion, if Google disagree then I'm going no further.
  2. Create 10-15 posts - The site has 30 so this is done. Am I going to count the number of words? Not unless I have to.
  3. Create About and Contact pages - About and Contact pages are new, I can do this.
  4. Create a Privacy Policy page - Privacy policy again. He says that there are generators on-line and that there is also some text from Google's page that can be copied and pasted.
  5. Confirm website content isn’t on the Restricted List - Been over this already - does not apply
  6. Don’t use images with copyright - I might be guilty of this depending on how Google views remixing publicly available website content. Also there might be a couple of images that I have snagged off Google at some point as well. Would have to check.
  7. Website age - Not an issue, the website is older than 6 months
  8. Make sure your website isn’t banned - Not an issue
  9. Make the website look decent and have clear navigation - Well am using a Blogger template
  10. Make sure you’re over 18 years old - Not an issue
  11. Remove other ads when applying - Not an issue
But that's only 11? Gift horses… it's helpful content that confirmed my need for a Privacy Policy.

Things are becoming a little clearer now. The blog failed to meet Google's privacy policies and in order to rectify that the plan is to create static About, Contact and Privacy pages for the blog and then resubmit the site for review by Google. If that doesn't address the policy violation issues I'll circle back round for a closer look at any copyright issues.

Onto creating a set of static pages then.
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