AdSense on 404 (Page Not Found) Error Pages

Yesterday in 172 AdSense sites? Eric, are you crazy? I listed a number of things you could do to build AdSense sites using whitehat techniques. One of them was:

• Adding AdSense to 404 error pages

I subsequently removed it in response to some comments. Not because I was wrong to say it, but because I didn't say it well enough.

(A “404 page”, by the way, is the “page not found” page that gets displayed when you try to access a page that doesn't exist or no longer exists on a site. The “404″ refers to the HTTP return code that the web server sends to the browser.)

Alright, let's go back to the AdSense terms and conditions and quote the relevant section:

5. Prohibited Uses. You shall not … (v) display any Ad(s), Link(s), or Referral Button(s) on any error page, on any registration or “thank you” page ….

It seems fairly cut-and-dry, doesn't it? Well, it's not. For one thing, notice the omission of “Search Box” from that list. It's OK to use AdSense for search on an error page. That only makes sense. After all, if a page is missing then it's helpful to the user to provide them with a way to quickly search the site for relevant pages. (You cannot, though, pre-fill the search box — users have to type in the search terms themselves.)

But even ad and link units are fair game on these kinds of pages if they have relevant content. See message #60 on this Digital Point forum thread for Google's OK on this. Let me quote the important bit of the clarification an AdSense publisher received from Google:

After looking up ticket #70447117, I noticed that your questions were
about placing Google ads on customized error pages that contain sufficient
text-based content. For this type of pages, you're welcome to place Google
ads on them, as our crawlers will be able to serve relevant ads.

However, regarding your question in ticket #70532660, it sounded like
the 404 error pages you've mentioned were the default error pages with no
content. According to our program policies
(https://www.google.com/adsense/policies), no Google ad may be placed on
any non-content-based pages.

So you can't just plaster your 404 pages with ads if all they do is say “Page not found”. You have to put some useful content on them. What's useful and relevant depends on your site and what you think the user was looking for.

Please note that I try hard not to give incorrect or bad advice about AdSense, which is why I'm posting this long clarification of what I meant. If you have any concerns about what you can or can't do with 404 pages, your best bet is to create a mockup page showing what you want to do and sending the URL to the AdSense team. They can then look at it and give you the yea/nay. Even if they say “no”, they might give you suggestions as to what you could do that falls within the rules. It never hurts to ask!

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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?

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