Right now Google Adsense Ads are not showing on our site! The Adsense ads are replaced by blank ad spaces (check this post on our site yourself). Since Adsense ads is an important source of blog income, such an occurence was disturbing, and we needed to investigate why it was happening.
No Adsense Ads
When I found the issue, I was surprised and at first it stuck me that its possible the ads were disabled! Here are some of the things I quickly checked –
- Checked my email for any Adsense warnings for policy violation etc., but there were none.
- I though it might be a browser issue – cleared the cache, then checked my site in other browsers – no ads.
- Then I checked the site in my Android mobile phone browser and still no ads.
- Then I tried to see if the code was properly inserted, as sometimes you can break the code if you use WYSIWYG html editors. But the code was inserted properly.
Then I went searching for possible causes for non displaying Adsense ads, and Adsense Help provides some answers like
- JavaScript disabled in your browser. Since adsense scripts are needed to show ads, the option should be enabled
- Personal firewall software with ad blocking / other ad blocking software – Many times there can be ad blocking software like Adblock, or your Antivirus might be blocking the scripts!
- Disapproved site – Well then you need to go seeking help with Adsense support and see which guidelines you violated.
- Pages with potentially adult or mature content – that is sure to violate Adsense guidelines.
- Any other Adsense policy violation
- Account at risk to advertisers or generating invalid clicks – Check your site design – maybe ads are being confused with content and is generating invalid clicks which is costing advertisers unfairly.
- Too many ad units on your site – Adsense only allows 3 ads per page – If you add more code, does not mean they will show more ads.
But we always take care to strictly adhere to Adsense policies as it is an important advertising revenue source for this site. When I checked the Adsense account, the earnings were not zero, in fact Adsense Search was generating clicks and income.! Which means the Adsense ads were displaying on the site, and Adsense for Search was actually showing ads.
Then I posted to Twitter and checked the forums and realized many people are affected and some even had confirmation that it was a bug and has been fixed now. It did not affect the clicks, earnings and records.