Adsense advertising restrictions occur due to abnormal/normal activity on our website. There will be empty ads, fewer ads, and no ads at all.
The way to remove advertising restrictions is not fast, easy and simple, because there could be many causes. Plus, because the cause is not only us, but there could be other people who really intend to disrupt our website without us realizing it.
Google protects advertisers from invalid activity, activity that deceives advertisers, and traffic quality. As Adsense advertisers, we also have to take care of this. Even if we don't make strange things, advertising restrictions can occur. So we have to understand why advertising restrictions occur and how to open or release these advertising restrictions.
Causes of AdSense advertising restrictions
Maybe we are happy when we see soaring traffic, more advertising revenue, high CTR. But on the other hand, this can be dangerous. Wrong website optimization, unhealthy competitors, can lead to ad blocking.
This Adsense advertising restriction is a kind of warning, there are things that must be monitored and investigated. And if it continues to happen and repeats itself, the chance of being banned is very big. Advertising restrictions can last several days, weeks, or even months.
If we look at the monthly Google Adsense income report, usually there are adjustments or deductions for invalid traffic or clicks, which may mean it is still within the reasonable/tolerance stage. However, if the frequency is too frequent and too much, we will get emails and notifications from Google Adsense, the contents of which will explain why advertising restrictions occur, but are not specific. And Google AdSense will never provide data or information about the exact cause.
There are 3 main causes for ad restrictions:
Traffic
The main cause that most often causes ad restrictions is the problem of invalid traffic. Good and healthy website traffic is visitors who come to see the contents of the website, read the content, or look for answers. Invalid traffic usually comes from visitors who may be manipulated to enter our website. Visitors like this do not provide added value to the website. Advertisers of course don't want their ads to appear to people who don't match the advertising target.
Click
Most ads from Google Adsense pay based on clicks on the ad, although sometimes some are paid for impressions. CTR (Click Through Rate) expresses the percentage of the number of ads that are clicked per 1000 impressions (impressions). The higher the CTR means the more ads are clicked.
The average Adsense ad CTR is 2%, if the number is above that it could mean it is good or maybe not good. CTR above 5% is not normal, especially if the CTR is above 10% it will usually immediately be red-flagged, and the account could be placed under supervision. We must be able to understand why our ads are clicked too often.
Content
When we register for adsense, our content will be checked and verified by Google. But that doesn't mean that once accepted we can enter content as we wish. Even though it may be unintentional, unnatural and illegal content will limit the display of Adsense ads.
The average Adsense ad CTR is 2%, if the number is above that it could mean it is good or maybe not good. CTR above 5% is not normal, especially if the CTR is above 10% it will usually immediately be red-flagged, and the account could be placed under supervision. We must be able to understand why our ads are clicked too often.
How to overcome Adsense advertising restrictions
Restrictions on showing AdSense ads could be due to several accumulated reasons. Maybe we've seen bloggers who clean up their traffic but still continue to get restrictions, because maybe that's not the only problem. The steps and methods below try to look at the whole, which doesn't necessarily mean everything needs to be repaired, but it doesn't hurt to check all the components.
1. Don't ignore it
After receiving notification of Adsense advertising restrictions, don't ignore it. Unless we are no longer interested in monetizing and placing ads from Google. Ad restrictions say there is something wrong with our website, and if you leave it alone and don't do anything about it, it means the problem won't go away.
There are those who are successful by just leaving it alone, most likely because of traffic problems, after being silenced, invalid traffic doesn't come again, and the restrictions are reopened. But what if the problem isn't the traffic, or what if the same traffic comes back?
Ad restrictions also mean that Google AdSense is penalizing, monitoring, monitoring, or investigating our website, and we should do the same.
2. Turn off ads
Even though we don't know the problem yet, it would be better if we turned off the ad first. Revoke, clean, turn off, or delete all advertising scripts or plugins on our website, and clear the cache to make sure everything is gone.
Because, during the restriction period, unauthorized traffic and clicks can still occur. And if that continues to happen, it is not impossible that our AdSense account or website will be banned from AdSense. Don't worry too much about losing revenue, fixing ad restrictions will save more ad revenue in the future.
3. Analyze traffic and visitors
One of the most important things to overcome advertising restrictions is analyzing traffic and visitor sources, from where they come to our website. This is why it is important for us to install tags, analytical scripts, tracking codes on our website.
There are many analytical tools and scripts that we can use, such as KissMetric, Facebook Pixel, Bing, Microsoft Clarity, Histats, but Google Analytics is still the best. If you don't have an analysis tool, you should install it now, not only for advertising restrictions, but there are many other benefits.
Go to analytics.google.com, select the problematic website (if you have several websites in one Google Analytics account).
To see website traffic sources, go to the Acquisition >> All Traffic >> Channels menu. Examples like this:
Organic search
Traffic or visitors who come through search engines (SERP). This is normal and safe traffic, visitors who come because they are looking for something on our website. In percentage terms, organic traffic should be the highest.
Direct (direct)
Visitors who log in directly, or type our website address into their browser. Direct visitors are also good and safe, usually visitors who are familiar with our website, and want to see old news, new news, new articles, updates, and others.
Social
Visitors and traffic come from social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others. Although there is nothing wrong with traffic from social media, if the percentage is high, or higher than organic traffic, then it might be a cause for advertising restrictions.
Traffic from social media can be of low quality, because they come to websites because they are attracted to images, click bait, provocative titles, and on social media we can manipulate things like this. Sharing too much, or inviting people to click on our website links, can create unhealthy visitors and traffic.
And after they enter the website, they may immediately leave, or the content and advertisements displayed are not appropriate. If traffic like this is too high, it means the advertiser is not getting the right target audience.
Click again on the link for the traffic source if you want to see a more detailed explanation.
Referrals
Referral traffic is traffic that comes in after clicking on a link or backlink. This traffic source (referrals) is also important to check. Traffic from bots, jingling (auto visitors), paid traffic, is usually recorded here. This bot traffic is garbage traffic, not human, and advertisers do not gain any promotional benefits from this fake traffic. Usually this is the main cause for invalid traffic leading to ad restrictions.
Click the referrals link to see all the links that bring traffic to our website. Jingling traffic usually comes via xxxxx.blogspot.com or xxxxx.blogspot.co.id, or if there are other strange sites that we never interact with, you need to be careful.
Signs of an influx of invalid or unnatural traffic are a sudden, very high jump in the number of visitors to our website.
4. Improve traffic quality
Don't share or reduce website sharing and share links too much/often on social media.
Share as needed and with groups or target people that match the topic or interest.
Don't place unnatural links on spam and unclear websites.
Don't pay, buy traffic, use bots and the like, this will never have a positive effect on the website.
Advertising and promoting your own website to bring in traffic is fine. Use qualified and competent advertisers.
5. Traffic filters
Another way to deal with unauthorized traffic is to filter or limit who can enter our website. Google AdSense cannot block IPs or regions to display ads, but we have to do it ourselves. Even without being subject to advertising restrictions, we should know or understand when to filter traffic, to keep the website safe and of high quality.
There are many ways for this, some of them:
A free CDN like Cloudflare can ward off bots and DdoS
If you want to tamper with your hosting, or you can also ask web hosting support, look for visitor logs and suspicious IP blocks, either at the server level (htaccess, nginx conf) or at the web level.
Use security tools and plugins, such as Wordfence, Sucuri, Ithemes Security, Defender, and others. Even the free version of the plugin can often handle this abnormal traffic.
You can add security by using captcha, akismet, and the like.
6. Don't click on ads yourself
Never click on advertisements on our website yourself, including inviting friends or relatives to click on advertisements. Google can detect intentional clicks, via IP, click patterns, behavior on the website, these methods will be read and considered a violation of AdSense.
This includes inviting visitors to click on advertisements, whether through writing or other methods that direct clicks on advertisements.
Some software or plugins also have click protection, click limit, or click fraud protection features. This tool can help with unnatural clicks, repeated clicks, and will turn off ads to prevent excessive clicks. This software can also help reduce clicks from invalid traffic.
Examples include the Advanced Ads plugin, which can detect click bombs and click fraud, and block them based on IP or region.
7. Improve AdSense ad position
When we place advertisements/Adsense manually, whether intentionally or not, it can cause advertisements to appear in positions where they are not supposed to. For example, ads that block content, ads that appear in pop-ups, sticky/anchor ads without a close button, transparent ads, moving ads, ads that are close together or overlap, and others.
Ads may only be placed in positions that will only be clicked on if visitors want to click on them. Not because of a wrong click, accidentally, or forced. The misleading position of these advertisements will usually result in an abnormally high CTR.
For Adsense auto-ads there shouldn't be any problems, because Google definitely positions them in a safe place. Use the report in the Adsense dashboard to see ad performance.
Go to the Google AdSense dashboard, look in the reports >> ad unit menu. Here a report will appear for each ad unit created manually in Adsense, look at the click and CTR reports. If the CTR is above 3%, check where and how this ad unit is installed, check its position on PC and mobile. Most likely the position of these very high CTR ads is not natural. To get more precise results, it is best for each position or ad placed manually to have its own ad code/ad unit.
8 Repair or replace the website template/theme
Although rare, there are several website templates, WordPress themes, plugins, or there are conflicts between them that create strange ad positions. Keep updating WordPress templates, themes, plugins. If it can't be fixed, inform the developer, remove the ad in that position temporarily, or install it in another position.
9. Improve content
On a website, we need to create content that is useful and attracts visitors' interest. There are many ways, sometimes creating content that is controversial, or illegal, and violates the rules of the Google Adsense privacy policy can attract more visitors. We as website owners or writers must understand the limits on adult content, hoaxes, illegal content, and the like.
Advertisers don't want their ads to appear on content that is considered not good. Including plagiarized content, violating copyright, AGC, and so on. If we have this content, it should be removed. There are no very detailed explanations or descriptions, and Google will not explain specifically which content is bad.
For example, a gaming website has organic traffic, good ad positions, but several times it has been restricted by Google for serving AdSense ads. It could be due to game copyright, inappropriate words, vulgar images or so on. We must take the initiative ourselves to correct content that violates or is in the gray zone
10. Don't immediately advertise again
If we have done things to improve the website, it is best not to immediately re-install the ad. Wait until there is a notification from Google that the account/website that is being monitored has passed the verification stage or notification to return to normal.
Failure to fix these ad restrictions will result in a ban. Adsense accounts and websites registered in them will be banned, and this ban will last forever. We will never again be able to place advertisements through this account and on this website.
Don't ever be tempted by quick ways, automatic methods, shortcuts to make more money from AdSense ads. It may produce for a while, but sooner or later it will be detected.
We also have to monitor the traffic that comes to our website, ensure that quality traffic comes in, so that advertising will be more targeted and generate more income.