Question about Adsense

[Melissa]

I've a pretty basic question about Adsense.

When you put the Adsense code in your template (?) it runs across the whole site in exactly the same position and you can't then control it page by page or remove it from individual pages. How does that work with sites that have some blank pages that are yet to be filled, like a state-by-state directory that still has no listing for its Alaska section? That seems to be in contravention of Adsense rules, how do you stay compliant?

[BritishARMY]

Hi Melissa. You raise an interesting point. You could perhaps change your site to display ads on certain pages (with PHP). If you're manually uploading each page then you could remove the code from that specific page, but I assume you're using some script for the site?

If you have a page without content on it and adsense is present then I shouldn't worry too much - I doubt Google would find it, but of course it's better to be safe than sorry. Maybe you could populate it with at least one thing.

I hope I've been helpful, sorry if I haven't.

[hooperman]

Hi Melissa. You raise an interesting point. You could perhaps change your site to display ads on certain pages (with PHP).

I think that woul dprobably be the best solution BritishARMY.

Failing that, is it possible to have some generic text that appears on all pages, just so you have at least some textual content? I know when I add Adsense to joomla/wordpress I don't tend to add it to the template. I prefer to add it to the individual pages manually so I have more control, but I'm not sure you'll be able do it with your directory script Melissa.

[3Six]

Failing that, is it possible to have some generic text that appears on all pages, just so you have at least some textual content?

Wouldn't that be in violation of Adsense terms in that the page is "made for Adsense" and not for visitors?

[Clinton]

You could perhaps change your site to display ads on certain pages (with PHP)

That's a good suggestion. Google doesn't seem to be taking much action against sites with Adsense on content-less pages, but you never know when they'll suddenly come down on this like a ton of bricks.

[Melissa]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. Just to speculate, what's Google's most likely action if they do clamp down on sites with even a few pages that have ads but no content? An outright ban would seem kind of severe for what's not an intentional deception.

[Clinton]

It's been a long time since I've been to an Adsense forum so I don't know what the talk on the street is and what people have been experiencing recently, but a while ago they were sending polite emails out.

[kmander]

You'll be fine - you should definitely only have AdSense on pages with content - but the occasional exception shouldn't be an issue. You could tweak your template code so that you could flag pages with no content - then modify the AdSense implementation to only show the ad code on pages without this flag present.

I worked at Google in the AdSense team for over 2-years. That said, the above is only my opinion.

[Clinton]

Did you really work in the Adsense team? Tell us more!

[kmander]

I sure did! I guess it's something which could interest quite a lot of people here. Obviously, much of what I know about the product is confidential and so I can only provide general guidance based on publicly available information and my own experiences. Happy to help where I can