I was turned down for Google AdSense. Now what?

Dave's Answer:

&uotThe first and most important thing you need to do is go back and read the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions and then the even more important Program Policies, which clearly states that you cannot have a site that includes:

• Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages
• Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site's search engine ranking, e.g., your site's PageRank
• Pornography, adult, or mature content
• Hacking/cracking content
• Sales or promotion of weapons or ammunition (e.g., firearms, fighting knives, stun guns)
• Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
• Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
• Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
• Sales or distribution of term papers or student essays
• Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others

Honestly, though, I bet that the problem with your site is more related to whether you have and are producing unique non-copyrighted content. A site where the content is scraped or aggregated (depending on your perspective) is in violation of basic AdSense policy and is not going to be approved. If you have unique content, yes, you might have some that's in violation of their terms of service if you, for example, are overly critical of a neighboring country's foreign policy.

Similarly, read the list above and you'll notice that any sites that play SEO games with keyword stuffing, excessive linking, atypical linking patterns or similar are also unlikely to be approved for the program.

I don't know your site, but most of the sites I have seen that were not approved for Google AdSense are sites produced by spammy "engines" that syndicate content from an article archive site or a collection of RSS feeds. Nothing original about any of it, and nothing ethical about it either.

While people like to think of Google people as being in the proverbial "smoke filled room" making random decisions, the fact is that as a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: GOOG), you better believe that their policies are carved in stone, that there's very little whimsy or randomness about their decisions and that they have a darn good reason to accept or reject any applicant (though that doesn't mean that they need to share it with the applicant).

What I would suggest is that you ask them why you weren't approved and perhaps they'll enlighten you about what you can do to modify your site, change your direction, update your approach and, finally, join the club.

And once you do, please don't forget to check out my popular tutorial on getting started with Google AdSense.