Know Your AdSense Limits
Keeping abreast of AdSense program policy changes is one of the many things an AdSense publisher must do. Changes occur from time to time and you don’t want to find yourself in violation of the policies, so it’s important to keep up with what’s new in the AdSense world.
One of the important parts of the program policies limits how many snippets of AdSense code you can place on any given page of a website. Here are the current limits, as taken directly from the Ad Placement section of the program policies:
- Up to three ad units may be displayed on each page.
- A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed on a page.
- Up to three link units may also be placed on each page.
- Up to three referral units may be displayed on a page, in addition to the ad units, search boxes, and link units specified above.
- AdSense for search results pages may show only a single ad link unit in addition to the ads Google serves with the search results. No other ads may be displayed on your search results page.
- No Google ad or Google search box may be displayed in a pop-up, pop-under, or in an email.
- Elements on a page must not obscure any portion of the ads.
- No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages.
- No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.
The maximum-of-three limit for ad units hasn’t changed in a long time. Link unit limits changed from 1 to 3 almost a year ago. Referral unit limits have varied, for a while you were able to use up to 2 referral units per product on a page, but the current limit is 3 total per page.
Search boxes are perhaps under-utilized. The limit of two means that you can have one search box for searching Google and one for searching your site.
The remaining restrictions have more to do with anti-MFA (Made For AdSense) initiatives than anything else, but are still good to know.
Remember that checking the program policies is very easy to do. Just open your AdSense management console (i.e. login to your AdSense account) and you’ll find links at the bottom to both the program policies and the terms and conditions. Note that the program policies are considered part of the terms and conditions, so not following those policies is a simple way to get your account terminated. See How can I avoid being banned from AdSense?.
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Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
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4 Responses to “Know Your AdSense Limits”
“No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.”
Would you care to elaborate on that one?
All my pages are published for the benefit of my fellow man and the warm fuzzy feeling I get from seeing my writing in print. However, I have heard rumors that may not be true for everyone
I’m wondering how using your new PLR Site Builder would be affected by that rule? I mean, the credit card site you give as an example has very little content on it and is crammed with AdSense ads from top to bottom. It’s obvious to anyone that it was built to get clicks. Are you in jeopardy of getting your AdSense acct closed by using it? I think that’s a valid question.
I will respond to this in detail later, I have to run out the door, but my quick answer is this: for any given site with AdSense on it, turn off the JavaScript so the ads don’t show. Is there content? Is the site navigable? Is the site usable/useful? If you can answer “yes” to these types of questions then everything’s OK.
I’ve written about this before in this blog, but it sounds like it’s time to revisit the topic…
Eric
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