Policy
AdSense policy violations, by their exact names
Every policy name Google can put in front of you, in Google's order, with one plain sentence each. Use your browser's find to jump to the name in your notice.
By Mario Bailey · Published
When Google has found some policy violations on your site, the issue description names the policy. Google's own example reads: "Your site is not currently in compliance with the Google Publisher Policy for Sexually explicit content." AdSense requires you to follow the Google Publisher Policies plus its own Program policies, and Google warns that breaking them can mean "blocking ads from appearing against your content, or suspending or terminating your account."
Where violations show up: the Policy center
In AdSense, click Policy center. Google says it lists your sites with issues that affect ad serving, describes each issue (with screenshots where available), and shows how to request a review; you are also notified by email. Click Fix in the Action column to open the Issue details page.
Google sorts what it finds into three types. Policy issues must be fixed: "You will not receive advertising where there are policy issues." Regulatory issues (consent rules such as GDPR) and advertiser preferences (including the separate list called the Google Publisher Restrictions) do not have to be fixed, but usually mean less advertising.
Enforcement levels, in Google's terms
Each issue carries an ad serving status. These are Google's labels:
- Disabled ad serving. All advertising is blocked on the site because of a policy violation. Fix it, then request a review. Google's example: Sexually explicit content.
- Restricted ad serving. Only some advertisers can bid, and Google warns of "little or no buyer demand." Google's example: Google-served ads on screens without publisher-content.
- Ad serving at risk. A warning. Nothing is affected yet, but there is a "fix by" date. Google's example warning is "Ads & Content Overlap."
- Limited ad serving. An account-level cap on how many ads you can show, about traffic quality rather than content. See the serving limit page.
- Confirmed Click on. Google Ads detected unintended clicks and added a confirmation click. It lifts automatically when the accidental clicks stop.
- Restricted ad personalization. A consent issue for users in the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland, fixed with a Google-certified consent platform.
Scope matters as much as status. Google's notifications say whether the action is at the page, site, or account level. A page-level notice names the page. A site-wide one gives the violation and one example URL, and Google requires you to fix "all violations across your entire site, not just the example provided."
When Google finds a violating site, it either warns you or, if the violation is severe, disables ad serving at once. For repeated or egregious violations, Google says it may "move beyond action at the individual site level and take action at the account-level." That can mean a temporary suspension (no ads, a payment hold, and "account suspensions are unappealable") or closure, for reasons including an extensive violation history, deceptive behavior, or egregious content violations such as "sexually explicit content, copyright infringement, as well as cases of extreme violence and gore." Closures are covered on the disabled-account page.
Content policies
| Policy name | What it means |
|---|---|
| Illegal content | Content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes other people's legal rights. |
| Intellectual property abuse | Copyright infringement, and selling or promoting counterfeit goods that copy another brand's trademark. |
| Dangerous or derogatory content | Hate or discrimination based on traits like race, religion, or disability, plus harassment, threats or promotion of harm, and extortion such as blackmail. |
| Animal cruelty | Promoting cruelty or gratuitous violence toward animals, or selling products from endangered or threatened species. |
| Misrepresentative content | |
| Misleading representation | Hiding or misstating who you are or what your content is for, or faking an affiliation or endorsement. |
| Unreliable and harmful claims | Demonstrably false election claims, harmful health claims, and content that contradicts scientific consensus on climate change. |
| Deceptive practices | Luring users under false pretenses, phishing, scams, and hiding your identity or country on political or social content. |
| Manipulated media | Doctored media that deceives users about politics, social issues, or matters of public concern. |
| Enabling dishonest behavior | Helping people mislead others (fake documents, essay mills), hacking tools, and spyware for tracking someone without consent. |
| Sexually explicit content | Graphic sexual material, non-consensual sexual themes, and promoting sexually explicit deepfakes. |
| Compensated sexual acts | Anything that may read as promoting sex for compensation, including escort services and sugar dating. |
| Mail order brides | Facilitating marriage to a foreigner, such as international marriage brokers and romance tours. |
| Adult themes in family content | Content made to look family-friendly that carries adult themes, including misuse of popular children's characters. |
| Child sexual abuse and exploitation | Any content that sexually exploits or endangers children. Google says it may report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and disable accounts. |
Behavioral policies
| Policy name | What it means |
|---|---|
| Dishonest declarations | Everything you tell Google, from payment details to your ads.txt to the URLs in ad requests, must be accurate and complete. Our explainer |
| Ads interfering | |
| Google-served ads interfering with content or user interactions | Ads over or beside navigation that invite accidental taps, ads that cover content or push it off the screen, and ads on dead-end screens. |
| Inventory value | |
| Google-served ads on screens without publisher-content | Ads on empty or low-value screens, pages under construction, or screens used for alerts and navigation. Our explainer |
| Out of context ads | Ads in background pages, ads outside the visible display, or ads shown when the user's attention is expected elsewhere. |
| Google-served ads on screens with replicated content | Ads on copied or embedded content from others with no commentary, curation, or other added value. Our explainer |
| More ads or paid promotional material than publisher-content | Ads on screens where ads and paid promotions outweigh your own content. Our explainer |
| Unsupported languages | Content that is not primarily in one of the languages Google supports. |
Privacy-related policies
| Policy name | What it means |
|---|---|
| Personalized advertising | No personalized ads built on children's activity or sensitive data such as health, finances, or religion, plus US and Canada limits on housing, employment, and credit ads. |
| Privacy disclosures | You need a privacy policy that discloses your data collection, including third parties placing cookies or web beacons through ad serving. |
| Cookies on Google domains | Never set, modify, intercept, or delete cookies on Google's domains. |
| Identifying users | Never send Google personally identifiable information, never merge it with non-identifying data without opt-in consent, and follow the EU user consent policy. |
| Use of device and location data | Precise location data requires disclosure, opt-in consent, encrypted transmission to Google, and a mention in your privacy policy. |
| Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) | Tag sites or sections covered by COPPA for child-directed treatment, and do not target interest-based ads using the activity of users under 13. |
Requirements and other standards
| Policy name | What it means |
|---|---|
| Spam policies for Google web search | Screens that break Google Search's spam policies, such as scaled content abuse, doorways, or thin affiliate pages, cannot carry Google ads. Scaled content abuse |
| Abusive experiences | No Google ads on screens with deliberately misleading experiences, such as fake system messages, hidden click areas, or a hijacked back button. |
| Malware or unwanted software | No Google ads on screens that carry malware or software that breaks Google's Unwanted Software policy. |
| Better Ads Standards | Ad experiences must conform to the Coalition for Better Ads standards. Our ad density study |
| Authorized inventory | If your domain uses ads.txt, you must be listed in it as an authorized seller. ads.txt problems |
| Sanctions compliance | Google publisher products are unavailable in sanctioned regions (Crimea, Cuba, the so-called DNR and LNR, Iran, North Korea) and to sanctioned parties. |
The AdSense-only layer
On top of the Publisher Policies, the AdSense Program policies page has its own named sections: Invalid clicks and impressions; Encouraging clicks or views (non-rewarded inventory); Traffic sources; Ad behavior; Ad placement; Site behavior, which includes Deceptive site navigation; Technical requirements for web content viewing frames for apps; and Sensitive events. The first three are the policy side of invalid traffic, which has its own page.
Messages that are not policy names
These get pasted into search the same way, but they are statuses or outcomes, not entries in the policy list.
- Getting ready. A Sites page approval status. Google: "We're running some checks on your site," usually for a few days, in some cases 2 to 4 weeks. Getting ready, explained.
- Needs attention. Also an approval status. Google documents four reasons a site is not ready: missing or incomplete ad code, an unreachable site, too little unique content or a poor user experience, and policy violations. Needs attention, explained.
- Low value content. A site review outcome publishers report; we found no Google help page that uses the label. Google's closest wording, for sites not approved, is "there isn't enough original, rich content that would be of value to users." The Publisher Policies glossary defines low-value content far more narrowly, as unintelligible filler text. Low value content, explained.
- Site down or unavailable. Also publisher-reported. Google's closest help section, "Your site is unreachable," covers a wrong URL, a site that is not live, a login wall, robots.txt blocking the AdSense crawler, or an invalid SSL certificate. Site down, explained.
- ads.txt alerts (searched as Earnings at risk). Publishers report that wording; Google's help says only that an ads.txt problem raises an alert. The Sites page shows Not found, Unauthorized, Authorized, or Not applicable, and Unauthorized is the costly one: "All ad requests from this site are being rejected." ads.txt not found, explained.
- Invalid traffic. Google's term for clicks and impressions it will not bill, accidental clicks included. Invalid traffic, explained.
- Ad serving limit. The Limited ad serving status above. The serving limit page.
- Account disabled. A closure for invalid traffic or for policy reasons, each with its own appeal form and rules. The disabled-account page.
How to request a review
- Fix it everywhere, and leave the ad code in. Fix the issue across the whole site, not only the example URL. Google says a review request without AdSense code on the site may be rejected.
- Open the issue. In AdSense, click Policy center, then Fix next to the site.
- Start the review. In the "Issues found" section, click Start review process.
- Pick your reason. Removed the ad code, Fixed the violations, or "I don't think these violations are present on this page." Tick the confirmation checkbox and click Request review.
Request a review for each site with an enforcement. Page-level issues can be batched, but Google caps page-level reviews per 30-day period, and after several recent rejections the button goes inactive until a date Google shows you. Google says it typically responds "within a week but sometimes it can take longer"; a rejection arrives by email. The other exit is removing all ad code: the issue leaves the Policy center within 7 to 10 days, though Google says it remains in its system.
No checker can clear you
There is no AdSense policy violation checker that can certify compliance, ours included. Only Google's review decides, and its verdicts arrive in the Policy center and by email. What a tool can do is catch the mechanical problems first: our free site scan checks whether your ads.txt is present and valid, and the readiness check covers crawlability and policy pages. For content, Google's own monitoring advice is manual: a human evaluation of each site before placing ad code, a weekly review of high-traffic pages, and keyword filters plus a "Report a violation" link wherever users post.
Most of the names above describe something a reader would never defend. The ads that respect the reader are, not by coincidence, the ones that survive review.
Scan your site Check AdSense readiness
Source: Google, Google Publisher Policies, Understand policy issues, regulatory issues, advertiser preferences, and ad serving statuses, and Fix policy issues that affect ad serving. Quotations are Google's. Current as of October 2026.