How to Submit AdSense Policy Violation Appeal Request Review?

Earlier days creating a website was geeks job. But nowadays every common people can create website without understanding the technical needs. The growth of the website building arena was phenomenal in the past decade. It is grown into such a level that people consider blogging as one of the career options. There are two major reasons for this growth – one is robust content management systems like WordPress and other is monetization platforms like AdSense. We have this site running on WordPress and monetized with AdSense.

But things will not be smooth all the times. Few days back we have received an email from Google mentioning that they disabled the ad serving on one of the pages on the site. Though it was for only one page, we would like to explore the review process to see how it works.

So here is an experience, a short one though, if you are looking for the process to submit review request for AdSense policy violation. You can also check out how to file Google search reconsideration request.

What is a Policy Violation?

It’s common attitude among all of us, not reading the policy and terms documents similar to applying for credit cards. Google has many AdSense policies for publishers to show advertisements on their site.

Though Google needs to approve the site for getting AdSense account, there are many other reasons publishers will end up in violating the terms. For example, using too much of brand names without permission, showing ads nearer to images, clicking on their own ads, etc. We recommend you to read AdSense policies and eligibility criteria before applying for the account.

How to View AdSense Policy Violation?

Being said that there are lot of reasons for policy violation, recently we have received one such violation email from Google. When opening the AdSense account, the policy violation message was shown in red color asking you to take action.

So when you violate the policy, you will get email alert as well as notification in your AdSense account.

Checking the Issue

Next is the root cause for the violation. Go to ‘Policy Center’ and check the violation. The first section is ‘Section enforcements’ – will have three parts of enforcements – site, section and page enforcements. Depending upon the severity, Google will disable the ad serving either few pages or sections of website or the entire site. In our case, it is section enforcements on one page.

You will see the list of affected URLs, under the enforcement section. Under the under violated URLs, there will be two tabs. Click on ‘About the Violations’ tab to see the root cause of the problem.

In our case, it was showing ‘Ads & Content Overlap’ issue. The explanation shows that there should be no drop-down menus covering the ads when expanded.

Verify the Problem

Depending upon the violation, you should first take time to go through the affected pages and understand whether it has any real problems. Remember, it is not always the case that there are violations. The pages would have marked for violation mistakenly.

We have checked the page listed as violated and couldn’t find any dropdown other than the main navigation menu. The top navigation menu is also not hiding any ads, so it was bit of confusing why this violation came. We use WordPress template and the layout is common for thousands of other pages on the site. So we assume the violation could be due to mistake or caught when we tried some floating social plugins (social icons floating on the content, might have created the effect of dropdown hiding ads).

You should do the followings to identify your problem:

• Think what was the last action you did on your site.
• Analyze the issue and understand what exactly is the problem on the list of violated pages.
• Disable ads on the affected pages (if possible).

Remember, other non-affected pages will still show ads and continue to earn money.

How to Fix?

Google provides two options – one is to submit an appeal review and other is to accept the violation and stop ad serving. If you accept the violation and don’t want to show the ads on the affected pages then disable the ads on the affected pages.

Disabling ads on affected pages is easier when you use auto ads. But this will be a difficult task when you show ads from site’s template files.

We decided to apply for an appeal by submitting a review.

Submitting Appeal Review Request

Once you have done the work, click on the ‘Submit Review’ link. You will see a ‘Review request form’ like below.

Follow the below instructions to fill the review form:

1. Google recommends removing the ad code on the affected pages before submitting a review. But it depends on how you display ads on your site.
2. Enter the action taken under ‘Additional info’ section. You have merely 120 characters to enter here. So make it simple like – there are no dropdown on the page to hide the ad. This is for our case; you should enter relevant action taken for your case.
3. Add the URL on which you have taken the action.
4. Choose appropriate choice from the dropdown against the URL. In our case we select, ‘I don’t think these violations exist on the site’ option.
5. Click ‘Add URL’ link to add up to 5 URLs.
6. Select the checkbox confirming you have done the necessary actions.
7. Click on ‘Request Review’ to submit your request.

Review Processing

You will see a message showing the site has been submitted and you will get notification after completion of the review. You will also receive an email after submission.

At this point of time, policy center will show you that the review of this page was submitted and is currently pending. The review process may take some time (1 week or later). You can’t do anything during this period other than waiting and looking for the result.

Review Result

In our case, it only took few hours to get the confirmation email. The email shows that they reviewed the site thoroughly and detected no violations. They will enable ad serving again which will be effective within 48 hours.

Now the policy center will not show any violation message.

The result may be different in your case, but we believe if you have resolved the problem then the review should be a successful one.

Conclusion

We have written this article to inform the community that AdSense appeal request review process works perfectly. Google employees will review your request and respond appropriately. So don’t get panic when you get the violation unless you don’t have really policy violations. Check patiently, work on the fixes and submit appeal review. If everything is fine your ad serving will be enabled again.