Adsense ads showing white space/403 error

At my wicks end please help!

[newyork]

So I've been with adsense for about nearly a year now, well actually come July it'll have been a year. Anyhow, recently on my website <snip> I've been getting the 403 error where my adsense ads should be.

This started on Wednesday night into Thursday morning around 3am. It's been that way ever since. Now on Thursday I got about 2 impressions or something and today I got about 3. My usual for a day on my main page alone is 200+, with about 150+ on each page where my news stories are. So it obviously blinked in for a second today. Then went out again.

Now I haven't been banned because I can still login, grab code, etc. I haven't been suspended, and I haven't gotten an email from google stating anything like "we regret to inform you yada yada". I've written emails to google adsense support but the two I got back were just the usual song and dance about check your javascript, etc. They obviously don't understand that it's not that I cannot see the ads, it's that they aren't showing AT ALL! ANYWHERE!

So what should I do at this point? I've removed the ads from my main page and have my sideshow collectibles ads up for the time being. I know it isn't my host because if they were blocking google ads out of some new policy then an email would've been sent to me about it which it has not been. Nor is there anything posted about that on their main page. So #*$!? :/

[edited by: engine at 10:09 am (utc) on May 20, 2007]
[edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[fredw]

Have you tried removing all other javascript from the page? (If you can't live without the additional javascript, you could try removing just to test, to see where the problem is.)

Also, sometimes other divs on the page can mess up Adsense as well. Try removing them to see if it helps.

Either of these could be causing your problem even though it broke just recently and you haven't changed these pages in a while. Adsense might have introduced something on their end which no longer is compatible with something on your pages.

[mrfragger]

I have the exact same problem. I highly doubt google cares. I've switched to yahoo. I've gone from $150/day to $10/day. This started about middle of May 17th. Before that it was fine for 4+ years. I guess when the ships go down they go down hard.

I've tried everything from changing javascript, etc. I emailed google but like I said they could careless about small fish in the sea unless you make $10,000/month I don't think you have a chance for help.

[MyNewPC]

This isn't happening on my site but I have seen it on two other sites. One is a celebrity blog that receives several million daily page views. The other is a very large forum where AdSense ads appear between posts. The AdSense ads display fine on the first page of a forum topic but when the topic is more than one page, all of the subsequent pages display the error in place of the AdSense ads.

It's not just happening on small sites and I highly doubt that Google could care less about this.

[newyork]

I've taken everything off of one of my pages and put the google ad there alone and still nothing came up. I emailed my web host and they said they don't know what the problem could be but it's not on their end. I'd switch to Yahoo but they aren't available to the general public yet.

[iwannano1]

HTTP Error 403 means forbidden. This error is generated by webserver. In your case it is generated by Google webserver.

Try following on your own server:
a) Make sure robots.txt is not blocking google media partner bot

b) Make sure your javascript code is correct. Some CMS software may modify javascript little bit due to bug. For example there was a plugin my wp blog which made some modification and javascript code was totally messed up. Open your site and view source code look for AS javascript carefully.

c) Login to your Google AS account and view errors, you may get few hints there also..

The 403 error is equivalent to a blanket… try above suggestions

[newyork]

I don't even have a robots txt file on my main page or any of my other pages

My source code is fine

How do I find errors in my adsense login page?

[MyNewPC]

I suspect what he's referring to is Site Diagnostics. Click the Reports tab and then click Site Diagnostics.

[newyork]

I checked that a long time ago, nothing in the silver box so I'm clean. It's on googles end because I've done some searches and it seems particularly in may alot of sites have been having this same issue all of a sudden. Google needs to get on the ball already, I've lost 5 days of $$$$.

[jomaxx]

It sounds to me like Google has decided they don't want their ads running on that site/domain. Can you think of any reason (e.g. subject matter, copyright issues, traffic sources) why they may feel that way?

If this was me, I'd try to narrow down the problem by seeing if my code works on another domain I control. Or, alternatively, if the code works on the original domain if I remove my publisher ID.

You could also look at your logs to see if Googlebot and the "Mediapartners" AdSense bot are showing up on your site.

[MyNewPC]

It sounds to me like Google has decided they don't want their ads running on that site/domain.

I don't think so. Note my earlier comment about the AdSense ad displaying just fine on page 1 of a particular forum topic but displaying the 403 error on all subsequent pages of that same topic.

[jomaxx]

Based on the original poster's testing, this does not appear to be the case here. Anyway, the main point of my thread was for the OP to keep investigating. We actually have very few details about the situation.

BTW, why would Google care, or even have the faintest idea, that a user was looking at page 2 of a discussion thread? Maybe the effect is as you described, but without an explanation for why the 403's are occurring, I don't see how this helps the OP any.

[newyork]

If google didn't want their ads running on my site they would've emailed me. No my site is a horror film site, nothing graphic on there either, no profanity laced tyraids, no sex, no nothing racist or offensive. So I don't think that's the problem.

[newyork]

By the way I can't run ad code on another domain because I only have one. Between adding news to the page, doing interviews, writing movie reviews, working part time, etc. I don't have time to upkeep any other domains.

[BillyS]

>>By the way I can't run ad code on another domain because I only have one.

Take the ad code and copy it into a text editor like notebook. Save the code with a .htm extention. Open that page in a browser and see if an ad appears. That should tell you if there is a problem in the ad code.

[jomaxx]

I don't think it's the right time to assert what Google would or would not do.

Anyway, I definitely wouldn't put your code on someone else's domain, especially if you're having problems. How about displaying the pages from your hard drive. I see ads when I do that, although they obviously aren't targeted in any way. How about displaying your site using the "www." address if you usually omit it, or vice versa? I'm trying to come up with ways to keep you moving forward.

[BigDave]

Have you tried contacting google and asking them? That would be the first thing I do.

By the way, the saying is "at my wit's end"

[netmeg]

Before they snipped out your url, I took a look at it - I didn't see any ads on the home page, but the ads did come up on some of the internal pages. Never saw the 403. Are you sure that others are seeing the same thing you are?

[newyork]

On MSN I get a blank white space, on internet explorer is where I get 403.

I've contacted google and got nothing but that nonsense about check your javascript etc etc. I did all of that, and like the email said it says to contact them with a screenshot of the issue, which I did and haven't heard back. Their forum isn't any help either.

[netmeg]

Ok, but find some other computers and see if you see the same thing, or ask some of your friends to take a look.

[newyork]

I already did they said they see the same thing. Plus my google control panel shows 0 impressions where I usually get 200+ on my main page a day. So I know the ads are not showing up.

[MyNewPC]

Have you sent Adsense Support URLs to several pages where this is happening and asked them to look at the source code to determine what is causing the error?

[newyork]

I only sent them urls to my main page and two other pages. Although in the email I explained it's happening on all the pages where my ad code is. But when I checked google search, my site was last spidered on May 19th and the cached page shows the ads just fine.

[MyNewPC]

You should email them again with the URLs and ask them to look at the source code.

[newyork]

I just wrote a new email with 9 urls in it. I doubt it'll solve anything, the last 12 didn't.

[mrfragger]

not sure if this helps you are not NewYork but I did get a reply with some suggestions. Unfortunately I already tried everything they mentioned. Then on the reply they said they're escalating this to a specialist who might be able to help. I really can't understand why some of my pages show it and some of them don't. I've compared the source html and javascript and even the ones that do show I copy and paste that code into a non-working page and the same result.

Honestly I don't know what the problem is but yahoo in the meantime is at least making me a little bit but no where nearly as much but then again I've only put yahoo on my main page where I get most of the traffic.

[newyork]

Well this is happening on all of my pages, and to top it all off it just came suddenly. When I first switched to this host back in April everything was fine.

[newyork]

Okay so I finally got a response today to an email I sent on May 17th.

<Paraphrased, see TOS [webmasterworld.com]>Google said issue resolved.</Paraphrased, see TOS [webmasterworld.com]>

So by Thursday if not before shyt should be set straight....hopefully.

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:49 pm (utc) on May 22, 2007]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[MyNewPC]

While you are not allowed to post the contents of an email verbatim, please summarize what the response was so we know what caused the problem and what is being done to fix it.

[newyork]

They basically said they've investigated the issue and have resolved it and ads should be reappearing in 24 hours (earliest time) and if they aren't up in 48 hours (latest time) to contact them again. As for the problem well I was never specifically told what it was but it was obviously something on their end.