You may have seen this after logging in to your AdSense account…
Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven’t authorized. To avoid lost revenue, make sure to authorize any sites where you display ads by visiting your account settings.
When you click the link you’ll find various sites and IP addresses that have been displaying your ads. Some of the sites and IP’s are simply cached search engine URLs and some are not so clear.
I always thought it was strange to see Google’s domains in this list. Why don’t they recognize their own URLs? So I did some digging around and found this article on the Google AdSense Support page:
When using the authorized sites feature, any sites that you haven’t authorized will trigger an alert message on your home page. We currently consider any framed or cached pages to be unauthorized, including when a user searches using Google Images and your site is displayed via frame.
We encourage you to add framed and cached URLs of sites you trust to your authorized sites list. We’re investigating ways to improve this feature.
So I would “allow” all domains that you trust (Bing, Yahoo, Google cache, Google translator, etc.) Now that I understand this is an automated issue from caching and frames, it makes a little more sense why certain sites are showing up in the alert.
Maybe they should consider putting this explanation on the actual page with the alert. I’m sure this has confused quite a few publishers.
please i have this message on my google account
Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven’t authorized. To avoid lost revenue, make sure to authorize any sites where you display ads by visiting your account settings.
and when i go to google account setting i see nothing wrong , only the site i added so why this message is showing ? and i get less money than before after this message
do i have to add some url to my list ? like facebook or googlle transalte ?
I have this all the time. That comes from people who scrape your content and so your ad code appears on their site. It’s not going to harm anything, just make sure have all your sites listed in the “Allowed Sites” box.
Thanks Lisa – and once and awhile I like chat about online income, and since my wife and I think you and your site are GREAT I will spill content here for your cause.
So woke up this morning and realized I that Google made some changes last week and our Canadian debt consolidation blog is seeing 150 unique a day – called a company in Toronto that wants ALL the traffic and they are setting up a deal for a lump sum per month. Apparently AdSense did me a great favor.
This is fun again 😉
Well it happened! After ten years of being in the AdSense program I finally got the dreaded email Wed saying that my account was disabled. Wow, what a sinking feeling that was. Our AdSense earnings were in the finance and loans market and we were making between 7K and 10K a month. Always knew it was possible to lose our account, and I was really edge when our traffic spiked up a lot after Panda and Penguin because I heard of AdSense publishers losing their accounts after their sites(s) saw a dramatic bump.
So all week I have been tracking down CPA merchants and replacing AdSense with their links. Here is the shocker!!!! We’re making more with CPA than we did with AdSense so far. I wondered lately if we would make more money with affiliate programs than AdSense, and by golly it looks like that may be the case.
So good riddance AdSense and no hard feeling either way. We managed to work from home for a decade because of AdSense, and if wasn’t for the Google AdSense program we never would have worked so hard at developing content to the extent we did. If we didn’t create that much content we wouldn’t have traffic and we wouldn’t survive in the CPA world as we are now.
So yes AdSense. It hurts to see you go because we were so close for so long, but now we must part ways. You never called me, and you never gave me a number to call you, and it was strange having such a close relationship with someone who wouldn’t talk to me. I checked in with you a few times every hour for ten years so it’s really feeling weird not poking around your stats and riding your earnings roller-coaster.
But my new friends seem to be more grateful, and call me on the phone. They let me call them too, and give me a number with their extension – hell! they even give me their personal cell numbers. We sometimes have conference calls and sometimes Skype calls.
It’s really neat doing business with flesh and blood;
“Hey Jim, you want your link taken off that landing page, or are your conversions OK there?”
“Hi Sally, glad your conversions went up…..that was a great idea about using the images beside your links like that! Oh and thanks for the 7000 dollar check in the mail again – have a good weekend and hope you licked that cough!”
Yes AdSense, you were like that girlfriend I had in high school that I loved and hated so much. You hung out with me silently because it suited you fine at the time, but in truth you never really gave a damn if I was there or not.
I am SO GLAD I can now visit my sites and poke around the navigation checking out my precious hard work and not worry about inflating your impressions. I am SO GLAD I can now use my mobile phone to view my sites and not worry about my thumb clicking one of “precious advertiser’s ads” – OH AND SPEAKING OF YOUR ADWORDS ADVERTISERS!!! I got a call from one of them three months before you closed my account, and they set up a deal to advertise directly off my site(s) – they used pay you 10 7 bucks a click, and you paid me 2 bucks – now they pay me 3.50 a click EVERY click, and you are out in the cold on this one my friend – sorry about that. So after that I looked up a few more of your advertisers and I have been working on another direct deal with some guy named Earl in Plantation Florida. Yeah…..and Earl gives me his phone number and works with planning smart strategy making sure he converts better.
Well anyway baby, I gotta run…..it was a stone groove while it lasted!
B
I’m sorry that happened, but I love your attitude about what happened and glad you found ways to make even MORE money without constantly worrying about getting banned.
WOW. I’m speechless…. I came here to see how to get my CPC higher since I modify those authorize site part and I read this… I hear about google banning account without reason, but when you read that from somebody and in that way… so deep and sad… I don’t know what to say. I love this site and all the people around here. It’s seems Lisa’s energy attract it. A lot of bless!
It’s not worth it. Google can be hyper-conservative and shut down all AdSense publisher accounts that are receiving clicks from IP addresses that are relatively close to the publishers home address – and they win by protecting their advertisers. I have gotten this alert plenty of times and I did not know what it was about. It was strange to authorize Google with their own program but I just never got deeper into it.
We’ve been running AdSense since inception and at one point we had up to 4 AdSense accounts running between myself and my wife. 2 personal, and 2 registered corps. We lost two of those accounts (1 personal, and one corp.) over the last 16 months, and of course Google never told us WHY? (god forbid we understand what we did wrong, and correct it for a feeling of security – but that is a complaint we are all TIRED of hearing, so I’ll move on).
I wanted to make sure we protected our two remaining AdSense accounts, and we did 2 things that I believe will protect us going forward from anymore account closures;
1. ONLY authorize the MAIN domains that A) make the most money B) adhere to AdSense guidelines to he tee.
Then throw away the rest away (together we make a total of $17000-$18000 from our three important domains, and we used to make an extra $900 or so from many misc. crap sites that we had built back in the days of learning basic site building. We threw away that income because we just can’t afford to risk the big 3 domains. Some would say we are crazy, but we’re not interested in cleaning up all those old sites when we’ll never really know what AdSense will do with past crawl logs – just let it go. Besides I could make more income creating fresh, perfect, and new content for the big 3 domains, then trying to fix and recreate the over 40 crap domains still getting a trickle each month, all of which will likely get hit by an upcoming Panda, Penguin, or the latest (insert “cute animal name” created by Matt’s team here) update.
2. IMPORTANT: we unauthorized ANY sites that are getting visitors (and possible ad clickers) from areas close to our city and country (in Canada). Both sites that got shut down had these two domains that were very new, and they were getting a lot of local traffic, and hence ad clicks as well. We believe this is the true factor that frightened the AdSense team away and said these accounts “could pose a threat to their advertisers”. There are some that say we are crazy with this theory about local traffic and local ad clicks, but I have done a ton of work studying all of our logs and data – I believe this will turn out to be true. So if you lost an AdSense account due to “invalid clicking” and you know you didn’t click your ads, your friends didn’t click your ads, and you were NOT click bombed, take a good close look at your stats to see where your visitors live.
Furthermore regarding local traffic clicks and AdSense account closings. Think about it for a second….
Google can be hyper-conservative and shut down all AdSense publisher accounts that are receiving clicks from IP addresses that are relatively close to the publishers home address – and they win by protecting their advertisers.
Google would never admit that they are shutting down accounts for this reason because it would reveal a pathetic weakness in their system which causes legitimate publishers to lose their accounts, AND MOST IMPORTANT…..they could NEVER change their scripts/code to differentiate legitimate local ad clicks and fraudulent local ad clicks. So they just play is safe and close these legitimate accounts.
I have looked all the data, site design, AdSense policies, etc……. the ONLY time we ever lost an account is after we started getting a substantial amount of traffic from IP addresses close to home address.
There you Lisa — a nice chunk of free content for ya 😉 feel free to punt this comment into a guest post – return link not required – don’t care.
We never go link begging anymore, and have not since 2005 – I figured that working on links was not only becoming Google’s Big Red Herring, but that someday link begging would actually HURT your domain(s). As a result of NOT linking to our sites AT ALL our big three earning domains have seen traffic increases over 200% since all the Panda and Penguin updates.
Have great 2013 all!!
BT
Hi Lisa,
I found Pinterest (a site I use a lot) on this list. Is it safe to authorize that?
Thanks
Tiffany
Thanks for this information, I was already worried by AdSense account was banned.
Many thanks,
Thomas
Great post! I have a question, recently I have been getting money deducted from invalid activity. This never happened and I figured it must be something going on with my blog. I had ads running and removed all of them and still would earn revenue and get invalid activity deductions. So, I decided to authorize one website for ads (www.youtube.com). I really do not care about blogger because I make all of my revenue from YouTube.
So far it has stopped. Do you think it is possible my ads are running in another website with my knowledge? Because I now getting the message you discussed in this post and I only have one website authorized. And if I would like to reinstate my blogger ads, should I only list my blog address under authorized websites only to prevent my ads from running on other websites?
Thanks in advanced! You are very helpful. 😉
Hi a message showed up that I should authorize this site : http://www.visit-tracker.com. It is a site I dont trust however , if I dont add it would I be losing revenue and If I add it what would be the implications.
If you don’t own the site, I wouldn’t trust it. If you do that, you are putting your fate in that site owner’s hands. What if they do something against Google’s terms and you get banned for their actions? It’s not worth it. I would NOT authorize it.
I wonder if we should include www and non-www for domains that can use both. My instinct says it doesn’t matter but I noticed when I clicked “Authorize” Bing it displayed the www structure.
Probably a non issue, I gotta stop thinking with my fingers.
I did authorize lots of my linked sites such as google.com, youtube.com, blogger.com, blogspot.com, hubpages.com, squidoo.com, triond.com, bukisa.com, http://www.twitter.com/#123eilvu.
This help section did help me solve my problem.
Thanks. 5 smileys just for u 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
I have had a few of these recently and was not sure what to do. Today I had google.gr and was not sure if I should allow it (Google search brought me here) so im going to assume its ok and add it. Thanks for the advice.
Lisa, I’m new with the AdSense program. I’ve recently created a blog on blogger and acquired an AdSense account. Should I add my own blog to the Authorized sites?
Bjorn, you are right. Yes, they are all over. do you think that Bing Webmaster tools is better in Google?
Google has a plethora of useful resources. Thanks so much for this info…I’ve been wondering about this and I’m so glad you cleared this up! Like you I feel pretty confident about the google sites, bing and yahoo, but then I get some where I am not so sure.
Lisa, Thank you for the advice! I had the same notifications, but I never acted on it. Can I earn from it if add the Google and other search engine sites?
it happen to me today.i was seriously nervous.thanks lisa for
sorting out this problem.
I just saw this alert, Googled it and came here. I keep adding Google domains to the “allowed list” eg., google.co.in, google.com.uk, etc. *sigh* I think I’ll just switch back to “Allow any site.”
lisa please help me i authorize one of my blog and a website but both of it i m not earn anything my earning shows zero0$
what can i do and please tell how much time it will takes to authorize the website or blog.
One of my blog has 500 visitors and 2000 page views is it good
I also got a alert and had no idea what it was
Thanks for this information, I have not seen the alert but when i see it I now know what it actually means.
One of my blog has 500 visitors and 2000 page views is it good quality content or something fishy going on..?
There are alot of haters online that don’t want to see you get that Google $ gUaP $ and hate on your AdSense. Just stay humble and keep pushing and ignore them. The bible says “This too shall pass”…
There is never really anything to worry about when you see this message.
In the worst case scenario, it means that someone stole your code, put it on their own website, and got filtered out, so that your account isn’t closed.
And in the other scenario, they are good sites, such as google and bing, and you just lost a few click-earnings.
So, check them out very good, and approve the ones you know, and all is even better again 😉
Bjorn, you are right. You need to check the sites and dont just grant access to all.
I just logged in and saw that message and had a little freak out, glad to hear that it’s nothing to worry about and that others are getting it too. In my case I had images showing in the Bing image search, and my site was appearing in a frame below that which was causing the warning message.
I don’t get those AdSense alerts anymore. Not sure why that happened in the 1st place…
I never realised what these messages meant. Do I need to do anything with them?
As long as you have the domains in your account that you have ads on, then you should be a-ok.
Thanks so much for this info…I’ve been wondering about this and I’m so glad you cleared this up!
I have been recieving this and had no idea what it was. So this is something that we should allow? I have been seeing bing appear.
Very good post Lisa and thank you for guiding all of us…….
Lisa I also got a alert. Then i just go to account setting found a site google.com.pk then open this url found google. What to do?
Thanks for this post Lisa. I haven’t seen this alert, seems everything’s OK with my acc 😉 Good to know what it means. Thanks again
I didn’t know it was possible to lose revenues because ads appeared at “unauthorized” sites.
I was always under the impression that you could put your adsense ads on anywhere as long as the site didn’t violated their tos.
I have gotten this alert plenty of times and I did not know what it was about. I was just adding the sites Google recommended. Thanks for letting us know.
Lisa, what I don’t understand is which sites you should trust, and which you shouldn’t. Like you I feel pretty confident about the google sites, bing and yahoo, but then I get some where I am not so sure. Examples include stumbleupon, facebook, some more minor search engines, like proxy search engines, etc. Any suggestions on how to choose which ones are OK and which we should not authorize?
@Taylor Meaning if you don’t recognize the IP address or the site that Google says is showing your ads then don’t “allow” it. If it’s a site you recognize (stumbleupon, facebook, etc.) then it’s probably just coming from frames/cache so you can allow it.
I was worried for a minute, because I knew I was within Google’s TOS, and I would still receive that message. Thank goodness it just wasn’t me alone!
I haven’t seen this Adsense alert in my account.
I know with sites like HUbpages, Youtube, Blogger and Flixya, I had to give authorization for the ads to display on those sites. So I understand what you are saying.
As always Lisa, this is excellent information related to affiliate marketing.
I’ll know what the message means now if it ever appears in my account.
Thanks for this post Lisa,
I’ve been seeing this alert everyday for a couple of weeks now and when I check it was just sites such as Google, Bing, ect. I didn’t realize I could add them to my list of approved sites so thanks for the tip.
Hello Lisa, I’ve yet to see this alert from Google,not much going on for me on the adsense tip. However, great information for many and something to be aware of.
Thanks for this post Lisa. I have never seen it but this might come in handy in the future for me because I use adsense on my blog as well.
Question: why is it that sometimes my adsense impressions are not being recorded?
@PaulSalmon … I usually try to leave well-enough alone. Something like whathappened to you always happens to me if I don’t!
Lisa – when did you first see this? I have not seen one, and I don’t remember mass authorizing either. But it’s good to know the potential cause behind the alert.
What I don’t understand is the following:
“Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven’t authorized. To avoid lost revenue, make sure to authorize any sites where you display ads by visiting your account settings.”
Are we saying that Google is displaying our ads on other websites and that we will not be paid because we have not approved / authorize of those websites? If so why are ads there to begin with?
@Sunil It’s been showing up in my account for quite awhile. Yes, you are correct. Google encourages us to authorize sites we own. I can give a good reason. Once someone stole my content and forgot to change the AdSense code to their own. They began violating Google terms. Google thought it was me (because they tracked the code to my account) so I had to explain that wasn’t my site. So it’s actually good to have this feature for protection.
i’ve seen two of the God Awful clone sites. as usual, they are dead in the water because the web masters find out that there is still work even after the cloning process. that being said, do you set up adsense just to work on your domains. that’s what i do.
Hi Jim,
Yes, they are all over. Now that the engines know the real from the fake I don’t really worry about this like I used to. If I spent time fighting clones I’d never get anything done. 🙂 But yes, I do list my sites as the “allowed domains” in the AdSense Setup area.
Hey Lisa,
I read somewhere a long time ago (SBI forum or maybe it was one of your videos, not sure) that I should allow those sites, like Google, Bing, etc. So I did. And honestly, I have never asked a question why.
It was strange to authorize Google with their own program but I just never got deeper into it. Thanks for the explanation 🙂
Brankica,
do you think that Bing Webmaster tools is better in Google?
Hm, I have never seen that error alert. Seems everything’s ok with my account 🙂
Lots of people wouldn’t have done that research, but it great to know exactly whats going on now..I have seen it plenty of times but never took that next step..
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Hi Lisa, thanks for the heads up. I didn’t see this alert yet, but now I know what it means.
Yeah, I also have the same alerts everyday. And as those are domains from Google, I added almost all of them to the allowed URL without any deliberation. After reading the explanation above, I think I am right. 🙂
Interesting. I got this issue about two weeks ago. I had added an authorized site (not my blog), and the following day I had zero income from AdSense. Apparently, when I authorized a site that wasn’t my blog, all other sites (including my blog) became unauthorized. Once I took out the authorized site everything went back to normal.
Adding all domains is a good option, but I just hope I can get them all.
Didn’t come across such problem. But Google should provide a link to this article with Alert messages
Google has a plethora of useful resources.
http://www.DrewryMedia.com