Adsense Policy Violation - Restricted ad serving

[OnlyOne]

I got an Adsense Policy Violation email that states:

"In the last 24 hours:

New violations were detected. As a result, ad serving has been restricted or disabled on pages where these violations of the AdSense Program Policies were found. To resolve the issues, you can either remove the violating content and request a review, or remove the ad code from the violating pages."

The page status in the policy centre is showing as "Restricted ad serving" on six pages with each of the pages being flagged for adult: sexual content violations (very mild content - people kissing). I checked these pages, and Adsense banners are still being displayed. I am left wondering what is the difference between "restricted" and "disabled". Right now, I am happy with the quality of the ads that are being served. What will happen if I do nothing? Does anybody have any experience with this?

Quite frankly, I'm happy if Google wants to disable the ads on these pages as it will save me from having to do the work of removing them. But not if it leads to a site-wide disabling of ad serving.

I suspect these pages were reported by a competitor but are wondering if this sort of content could be auto-detected?

[QuaterPan]

Quite frankly, I'm happy if Google wants to disable the ads on these pages as it will save me from having to do the work of removing them.

It doesn't mean the problem is only with these 6 pages, it's possible that other pages are infighting Adsense's policy. You can take the risk of doing nothing, but if more pages are flagged later,this will be repeated violations, and this can lead to have the site banned.
It would be more wise to take a proactive attitude and show to Adsense that you are taking measures and making the effort conform to their policy.

but are wondering if this sort of content could be auto-detected?

Yes of-course, Google has the tool to analyse images (in your case) and guess what they represent. If you look at your logs, you'll see that the Adsense bot (not google bot) is also fetching images, there is reason for it...

[child please]

I have the same situation as you and it's been ongoing for months. Only difference is mine is just one page. I contacted Google and they told me I could leave that violating leading to "restricted ad serving" indefinitely. They take action on their side to either limit or restrict ad serving on that page.

So to answer your question, you don't have to do anything. I haven't and like I said, I've had that warning for months and also have it in writing from Google that the account standing is not compromised in any way.

[Lagonda]

Somewhere last year I posted this thread: [webmasterworld.com...]
TLDR: health site, sexual content, warning email, lots of work to remove all sexual content, let it be or do something about it?

I currently have +/-9 pages in the Policy Center that have some kind of violation.
Since then I got several emails like yours, at least one once a week.
Since then I've done nothing.

Everything is fine, except that those pages don't get any ads. I'm ok with that.
As you can see, one year has passed and nothing relevant or scary has happened.

This is one of the best unnoticed changes in AdSense for a long time.
Previous to this policy change, I still got my account blocked several times, sometimes for days... for things that I considered by then nitpicking.

So, ignore it, it won't do your AdSense account any harm.
Once it does, I'll be the first posting it here.

[OnlyOne]

I currently have +/-9 pages in the Policy Center that have some kind of violation.
Since then I got several emails like yours, at least one once a week.
Since then I've done nothing.

I have had the "Your AdSense Publisher Policy Violation Report" email each day for the past 4 days. Each time, they add 3 or 4 urls to the list in the Policy Center. I have over 400,000 thumbails and images on my site. Potentially, this could go on for quite a while given the very mild or benign nature of some the images on the list of violations. Thanks for sharing your experience. It is good to know that I don't need to forego any sleep to urgently make any fixes.

It would be more wise to take a proactive attitude and show to Adsense that you are taking measures and making the effort conform to their policy.

Thanks for the advice. The advantage in taking the proactive cooperative approach would be that I can automate the addition of the violating pages to a blacklist and serve those pages with banners from another ad network. The disadvantage is that, if Google decides that there are a restricted number of ads that can be shown on these pages, then I will miss out if I have removed the code. Will there come a time when Google Adsense decides to let Advertisers opt in if they want their ads shown on pages having sexual content?

Yes of-course, Google has the tool to analyse images (in your case) and guess what they represent.

Yes, their tool appears to have become much more advanced! Can detect so much more now.

If you look at your logs, you'll see that the Adsense bot (not google bot) is also fetching images, there is reason for it...

Thanks. I will take a look. I am curious to know the rate at which requests are being made by the bot. How long would it take to request 400,000 thumbnails? My competitor would have over 4 million. How long would that take? Would they give up?

[QuaterPan]

Are you sure you (and your competitors) have the right to display these images? ...

[OnlyOne]

Are you sure you (and your competitors) have the right to display these images? ...

I am not one of those sites that scrapes images from other sites.

I started my hobby site 12 years ago. Original idea (even by today's web standards).

[Omo_Akin]

Mheen I'm having the same issue, I have been running helter skelter to fix this , my own problem is even more complicated, the pages of my won site flagged in the policy center doesn't exist on my page, I don't know where the hell they got the URL from.

[keyplyr]

Hi Omo_Akin and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Probably another site has your Adsense code on one or more pages. Check in your Adsense account under My Sites to see if there are any other sites listed. Then verify only the sites you wish to authorize to use your code.

Also consider using an Ads.txt [webmasterworld.com]

[Omo_Akin]

Keyplr+
The URL contain my domain name
.the url is like this

example.com?S=Keyword1+Keyword2

And no such thing exist on my page.

[edited by: engine at 2:17 pm (utc) on Aug 8, 2018]
[edit reason] No specifics, see WebmasterWorld TOS [/edit]

[Omo_Akin]

So which means if I use URL verification method I'll be deactivating my whole domain.

[RedBar]

Yes, their tool appears to have become much more advanced! Can detect so much more now.

So advanced that it is totally unable to recognise an original image and stolen duplicates found all over The Net?

Don't give Google any brownie points for something it clearly cannot achieve.

Can someone tell me IF G can supposedly differentiate between a kiss and the kiss of life, as in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?

That would be good one to block, NOT!

[NickMNS]

@Omo_Akin
I'm not sure I get you example above.
Assuming your domain is "mydomain.com", is your example supposed to show:

mydomain.com?S=Animal+Kingdom

or:

someOtherDomain.com?S=Animal+Kingdom

?

If you are seeing someOtherDomain.com?S=Animal+Kingdom then what you need to do is go in your AdSense Account in "Settings" (near bottom of left sidebar) then "My Sites" then verify all the domains that you own eg: "mydomain.com". Then if your code is scraped by spammers and shown on another site it will simply ignored by AdSense. They will only pay you for impression for ad code appearing on your verified domains and will also only serve you a policy violation if the violation occurs on your domains.

[not2easy]

Thing is that example.com is a domain that is held for substitution use, so it is preferable to use it in place of mydomain, someOtherDomain and such substitutions which are actual domains.

[Omo_Akin]

Nick, thanks for your reply, I know where things went side ways now, the substitute added to my main domain e.g mydomain.com is the title of another page which my site is liking too and the site has the policy violation.

Seems they want me to remove the link.
They infact removed some of those things themselves since the last few ours, their bots is the one doing the work, they are mad. Let them keep restricting the #*$! ads #*$! on site that is not even displaying their ads.

I just contact them this morning and the lady that replied said she will consult with their policy team, they even have teams? I can't kill myself I'll just let them flagged whatever page that is on the centre like that, I mean after all they don't exist on my site.😂😂😂😂😂

[CommandDork]

I seem to be getting more of these policy violations, these are pages that have been running Adsense without issue for over 10 years and counting. I think the system has been made more sensitive to "false positives" nowadays.

[OnlyOne]

I seem to be getting more of these policy violations, these are pages that have been running Adsense without issue for over 10 years and counting. I think the system has been made more sensitive to "false positives" nowadays.

I am in the same situation with a 12 year old site. I have been seeing "false positives" also. I am also seeing pages disappear from the list and some reappear at a later date. At one point, I had about 40 pages on the list - most very mild content unlikely to arouse or cause offense. About a week later this list was reduced to only 3. These 3 were bad violations which I should have flagged myself. However, when I went back a week later, these 3 had disappeared and had been replaced with another 3 that were much milder in content. Ads are still being served.

The requests for these pages are coming from Hyderabad in India. They typically request the page anywhere up to 40 times. The milder the content, the more requests I see for that page from that location. They are skewing my Analytics statistics - If they were anybody else, I would block them. It feels like they are running experiments and testing the accuracy of their algorithm or are trying to teach a classroom of Indian students what is offensive or not.

The algorithm seems to be set up to detect large expanses of bare glistening or glowing flesh - thighs, necks, upper arms. They are even detecting this on animated cartoon characters!

[Omo_Akin]

Yes exactly