Learn more about what Google AdSense is in this article.
Google AdSense, also known as AdSense, is a service provided by Google that provides website owners with a way of making money from their website by publishing ads from Google Ads. Google AdSense matches ads to websites based on the content the visitor is viewing or searching for. The ads are created and paid for by advertisers that are willing to promote their products and services. They generate revenue for website owners on a pay-per-click and CPM basis. In 2021, it was estimated that over 38.3 million websites use AdSense.
AdSense has become one of the most popular services for creating and placing banner and responsive ads on websites and blogs and has been proven to be useful for generating advertising revenue for small websites that do not have other major sources of revenue. Google removed the policy of restricting AdSense ads to three ads per page and AdSense publishers can now place multiple ads on a page given as long as there is sufficient content on a webpage. According to Google's guidelines on ensuring proper placement of ads, advertising and promotional material should not exceed page content.
How Does Google AdSense Work?
Google AdSense works by the following steps:
Website owners sign up for the service. They can sign up with their Google account. Participation in Google AdSense does not cost money for website owners.
Website owners make the ad spaces available on their website by copying and pasting the JavaScript code on their site and choosing where they want the ads to appear.
The highest-bidding ads will then appear on their website. Advertiser's bids are displayed in realtime. Once the ads are up and running, anyone, including the publisher can see them. However, an important thing for publishers to remember is that they are not allowed to click on their own ads for any reason, according to the AdSense programme policies.
Google will then take care of the process of charging advertisers and networks for the ads on their website and ensuring that the website owner receives their payments.
Google uses its technology to display ads based on the content of the website, the viewer's geographical location, and other factors. Google Ads are also designed to be responsive, meaning that they adjust themselves based on the user's device size.
Google AdSense Programme Policies
AdSense has programme policies that publishers must abide by if they choose to sign up for the service. Violations of these policies can lead to suspension or termination of their AdSense account and the team will review sites before they can start displaying ads on their sites. The AdSense program policies by Google include:
Invalid clicks or impressions - Publishers must not click on their own ads or use any methods of artificially boosting their impressions or clicks.
Encouraging clicks or views - Publishers must not ask others to click or view their ads or use deceptive methods to gain clicks or views. This includes offering compensation for viewing ads or performing searches, encouraging users to click on the ads using phrases like 'click the ads' or 'support us', and designing a website so that it is difficult to differentiate the main content from the ads.
Traffic sources - Google Ads must not be placed on pages receiving traffic from certain sources. For example, publishers must not engage in paid-to-click programmes, send unwanted emails, or display ads as a result of the action of any software application. Sites displaying Google Ads must not use third-party services or bots that automatically generate clicks or impressions.
Deceptive site navigation - Google Ads must not be placed in a way that might be mistaken for menu, navigation or download links to obtain clicks or views.
Requirements For Google AdSense
Before signing up and applying for Google AdSense, you need to meet the requirements below:
You must have your own domain name. You cannot get AdSense on a free subdomain provided by a web hosting service as AdSense checks eligibility per domain name and free subdomains are not evaluated separately.
You must have a Google account.
You must be at least 18 years of age.
You must understand how AdSense works and read the programme policies.
You must have a website with unique and high-quality content (More information about content can be found below).
You must use a supported language.
Content Policies
In order to get approved for AdSense, websites must have enough unique and high-quality content. Not enough unique and high-quality content is a common reason why websites get rejected. Google Ads cannot be placed on sites with copyrighted or scraped content. This can include:
Sites that republish content from other sites without adding any unique value.
Sites that embed content from other sites, such as videos or images without adding any unique value.
Sites that copy content from other sites, alter it slightly (e.g. choosing synonyms or using sentence rephrasers), and then republish it.
A common error that comes up when sites get rejected due to not enough unique and high-quality content is "low-value content". The error will look like this:
This error has nothing to do with the number of articles or pages on a site or the amount of traffic it is getting. It is about the quality and originality of the content, not the quantity. The following types of content are considered to be of low value and will increase the chances of a website being rejected for AdSense.
Pages with little to no content. Having pages with simply little to no content will increase the chances of a website being rejected for AdSense. This includes keyword stuffing and doorway pages. If most content is below 500 words, it should be increased with more accurate information and may help to solve the low-value content error on AdSense.
Spun content. Spun content is content that has been copied and altered slightly (e.g. replacing words with synonyms or rephrasing sentences) to avoid duplicate content penalties. This adds no unique value to content and only provides a slightly different variation to create what looks like new content from existing content.
Duplicate content. Duplicate content is copied from other websites without adding any original value to users. To fix duplicate content, website owners should carefully check their website for duplicate or plagiarised content and remove it. There are lots of online plagiarism detectors that can scan and detect content that already exists online.
Content with broken links. Broken links are internal or external links to non-existent pages that return errors. These lead to a poor user experience and make websites look unprofessional.
False or misleading information. If the content is designed to mislead users or does not match the keywords, it may be considered to be low-value by AdSense.
Does AdSense Have A Minimum Traffic Requirement?
There is no minimum traffic requirement to apply for AdSense and get approved. Google has never stated in any of its articles that a minimum amount of website traffic is required to use AdSense. We urge you to be wary of any sources that say that you need a certain amount of visitors, website traffic, impressions, or views per month, week, or day to get approved. AdSense focuses more on the quality of content and user experience. But, without a decent amount of website traffic, website owners will have a hard time earning money from their ads as there wouldn't be enough visitors to view and click through them.
Advantages and Disadvantages Of Google AdSense
The advantages of Google AdSense are:
It is easy to set up and not much technical knowledge is required.
Users can connect with advertisers all around the world.
Ads are matched based on the content of the page and user's past behaviours. This will help display ads they may be interested in and increase the chances of clicks.
It is completely free to sign up, register, and display ads as a publisher.
You can place ads on multiple sites from a single account. There is no specific limit on the number of sites you can monetise from one account.
The disadvantages of Google AdSense are:
Approval criteria is strict, especially in terms of content. It usually takes sites a few weeks or even months to get approved. It is estimated that only around 5% of submitted sites get approved. As a result, AdSense is not always easy to get approved for now.
Minimum payment threshold is very high, compared to advertising networks. The minimum payment threshold in the UK is £60 and for the US, it is $100. This means that it will often take a long time to get paid at first.
Limited support. Although Google AdSense allows users to contact an AdSense expert for help that's specific to them, it is only available to websites with over 300,000 monthly page views. This means that publishers with websites less than 300,000 monthly views cannot directly contact the AdSense team by email or live chat. Instead, they will have to ask the community in the forums.
History
Google launched its AdSense service in March 2003. The AdSense name was originally used by Applied Semantics, a competitive offering to AdSense. The name was used by Google after Google bought Applied Semantics in April 2003. Google launched it publicly as AdSense on 18th June 2003.
Some advertisers complained that AdSense delivered worse results than Google Ads, since it served ads that were contextually related to the content of a webpage and that the content was less likely to be related to a user's commercial desires than search results. For example, someone browsing a blog about flowers was less likely to be interested in ordering flowers than someone searching for terms related to flowers. Due to this Google allowed its advertisers to opt out of the AdSense network in 2004.
