Question Regarding Page Level Violation

Page No Longer Exists

[vegasrick]

It's been quite a while since I've received an Adsense Page Level Violation.

One of our older articles got cited for "gambling" because we discussed the odds for the Trump-Clinton election outcome.

There was literally no gambling involved and we probably could have fought it, but instead we just removed the article.

After I removed the article and requested a review and then a few hours later I see a message next to the policy violation with Past Review Outcome: Policy Non-Compliant

It's not even sending me an email regarding the review, I just happen to catch it in my account when checking every few hours.

But the page no longer exists.

Is it displaying that message because there is no page for them to review (it goes to a non-ad 404 page) and since there is no page to review I assume the violation will just vanish off on it's own since in turn the ad code has been removed?

[keyplyr]

since there is no page to review I assume the violation will just vanish off on it's own since in turn the ad code has been removed?

I also assume... only Google knows.

If you have doubt, reinstall the page without the gambling terms...
I mean "election" :)

[vegasrick]

@keyplyr, I believe because there is no page to review they can't deem the page as being in compliance.

I'll give it a few days, because technically they tell you "Pages without any AdSense ad code will be automatically removed from the Policy center within 7-10 days. No other action on your part is needed."

So I believe once I deleted the page (or removed Adsense code) I wasn't supposed to request a review.

[keyplyr]

I believe because there is no page to review they can't deem the page as being in compliance.

Yes, I get that... and is likely to be the case. That's why I said you could try reinstalling that page, but fix it first. Then after the issue is resolved, take the page down again.

I would suggest serving a 410 Gone, but Google doesn't seem to get the point with 410 responses and considers them errors when it compares then to indexed pages (or maybe Google *does* understand a 410 response, but hasn't conf'd their Search Console Crawl Error tool correctly.)

[Travis]

Are humans really reviewing pages? I mean, I assume that detection of possible problems are done automatically, but once detected is there a human checking himself? Or is it only AI-powered?

[child please]

I wouldn't worry too much about page level violations. Google told me you can leave them there pretty much forever without it affecting your overall account standing as they take action on their end for those types of violations (by restricting ad serving to that page, or disabling ads on that page altogether). From my understanding, you take action if you feel it is a legitimate page and want to monetize it.

[vegasrick]

@keyplyr

So yesterday the violation goes away, as a week went by without any ad code on the page. I basically made it a blank page with a removal message.

Today I get another violation notice, for the same damn page that's blank. A buddy of mine said the same thing was happening to him for 6 weeks, for a page that had no ad code and then the violations just vanished for good.

[MercuryHero]

If you remove the page make sure the URL returns a status code eg 404 or a permanent redirect in order to signal that the page really no longer exists. Don't be surprised if it hangs around in their system for ages (eg many weeks) as they need to be tolerant of temporary problems with people's sites and give the benefit of the doubt when a page disappears. Eventually they'll decide the page really no longer exists.

Obviously don't reinstate the same page later whether at the same URL or otherwise as they may still keep a record of the issue in case it comes back even if they don't keep reporting it as a violation.

For what it's worth I've never had Adsense report a page level violation but I have noticed them restrict ad serving on particular pages just by viewing the page, and have been able to figure out the reason eg page too short, page too similar to another page. Funny enough they take that option of disabling ads on the page but never mention it as a violation. Of course I always fix it when I notice it.