Qualifying for AdSense

Does your website qualify for the AdSense program?

Google doesn't offer its AdSense program to any old website.  It sets some criteria that must be met before your site can be eligible for AdSense.  You can check out the details at https://www.google.com/adsense/policies.

Specifically sites in the AdSense program may not include: (taken from Google's policies page)

Over and above these restrictions there are also minimum standards for style and content.  This makes sense because whilst Google does not endorse any particular websites included in its AdSense program, there is a tacit reputational risk for Google each time its ads run on a third-party website.

Google sets out most of its criteria for acceptance with admirable clarity, but there are certain areas that are left hazy (probably deliberately).  For example, there are no hard and fast rules as to how content-rich a site must be before it qualifies. (Sites that don't provide much informational value are unlikely to qualify for AdSense.)

So how do you know if your site is sufficiently rich in content to qualify for the AdSense program?

The short but potentially dangerous answer is: submit your site to AdSense and see what happens.  This will give you the information you need quickly, but it may not be the information you want to hear.  The reason this approach may be dangerous is that there is anecdotal evidence on the internet that suggests submitting a site that fails the acceptance hurdle may adversely impact where the site appears on Google's search results page in the future.

At this stage the jury is still out on the best time to submit but it probably pays to err on the side of caution.  So check and double check your site meets the acceptance criteria AND contains high quality information before you submit your site.

Then sign up for our free 5-day AdSense Tutorial and newsletter. You'll get a step-by-step guide to planning, starting and optimising your own AdSense program so that you can monetize your website quickly and effectively.  We'll also keep you informed of AdSense developments so that you can be up to date without having to do the research yourself.