Google AdSense is one of the best ways to earn passive income online from your website. This tutorial will illustrate the details of taking care your AdSense account. Once you are earning substantial income from it, your next important step is to protect it. In most cases, failure to take care of your account can result in your account being banned. Once your account is banned, it's very hard to reinstate it.
Start Protecting Your Account
The following are the numerous issues you will be dealing with, which will covered throughout this tutorial.
Invalid clicks and impressions.
Your AdSense code being used by third parties without your permission, then exploited maliciously. A good example of this is if someone pastes your Google AdSense code into a porn or gambling site.
Appearance of highly unrelated ads on your website.
Your AdSense code on content that infringes copyright.
Having competing third-party ads on your site that are formatted the same as Google AdSense.
Encouraging clicks on your site.
Implementing Google AdSense on adult, violent and racially discriminating content.
Your Google AdSense code on a "hacked" site. This violates Google Webmaster quality guidelines.
Altering Google AdSense Code.
Placing Google AdSense in unauthorized places (inside the software, for example).
Source: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48182
Tip#1: Enable the "Allowed Sites" feature in your account
Allowed sites makes it possible for Google to track the impressions and clicks from your own websites only, or only those sites to which you have given some authorization. Suppose you have three websites, example1.com, example2.com, and example3.com. These three websites that you own use only one Google AdSense account (your account). Adding these three sites to your "Allowed sites" lets Google AdSense monitor the impressions and clicks to only those sites.
This solves three issues:
1. Having your AdSense code used in malicious websites. Note that, since Google AdSense code is JavaScript, and it can be seen in the browser source code, anyone can copy and paste your code into malicious websites. If you have listed some allowed websites, then Google will simply ignore the impressions and clicks coming from the wrong sites.
2. If someone copies and pastes your Google AdSense code into unauthorized websites and starts click bombing your site, then you would have a serious problem. By having "allowed sites," click bombing cannot affect your account, even though they originate from other websites. If someone click bombs on your own website, Google AdSense has an algorithm for detecting invalid impressions and clicks; so this won't be a serious problem.
3. Prevent your AdSense code from being used in external sources, such as software.
So how do you enable the "allowed sites" feature in your AdSense account?
1. Log in to your Google AdSense account.
2. Click AdSense Setup link.
3. Click "Allowed Sites."
4. Check the box "Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account."
5. Enter those sites that you entirely own. Enter the root domain (without the www), e.g.
seochat.com
devshed.com
aspfree.com
6. Click "Save Changes."
Tip#2: Dealing with "Unauthorized Sites"
When you enable "Allowed Sites," some "unauthorized sites" will appear in your account under "Allowed Sites" after weeks to months of implementation. These are the websites that displayed your ads, but are not listed in your allowed sites.
This is when you will need to examine these websites to see whether or not they are of malicious origin. Below are the types of websites that are normal and NOT malicious in origin, so you can simply add them in your allowed sites list:
1. Google local search engine sites (eg. Google.ca, google.cl, google.co.uk, etc). Your ads will appear when viewed in a cached result of the page.
2. Other reputable search engines, e.g. Yandex in Russia.
This list can be very big, and sometimes it would be handy if there was a nearly complete list that you can add under "allowed sites." At the link you'll find a list of the domains that it is recommended you add under "allowed sites" in addition to your originally listed websites: http://www.php-developer.org/allowedsites.txt.
Based on experience, it is NOT recommended that you add the following to your allowed sites list:
Low profile search engines. High profile search engines are the ones that achieve status and reputation. Examples are google.com, yahoo.com, bing.com, yandex and baidu. There are lot of search engines on the Internet, and adding all of them to your allowed sites is not a clever thing to do.
Any third-party websites that you do not own and do not have a contract with. An exception are third party websites to which you give consent or are in contract with to publish your ads. A good example is infobarrel.com, where authors are required to use their own Google AdSense code publisher account to earn money by writing on the site.
Other than this, it is not safe to add to your site. If you think that the third-party site is a Google partner site (e.g. from rumors, etc), you need to ask for opinions from the Google AdSense community (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense?hl=en), and possibly you can get an official answer from the Google AdSense team.
Any proxy sites. Proxy sites are those sites that are created to protect their users' privacy. Sometimes this will appear in your account as "unauthorized sites." It is not safe to add them, because they can be a source of abuse.
Here are some tips to follow when researching a site to be added to your "Allowed sites."
First, search for the domain in Google as follows:
"Adsense" "unauthorized sites" "example.com"
OR
"Adsense" "Allowed sites" "example.com"
The examples you get from this search can provide results when other AdSense publishers are also experiencing similar issues; it can also tell you how they dealt with it. Mostly you can get results from the official Google AdSense Forums.
If the unauthorized site looks legit but you just cannot get enough information from the web, it's time to ask the AdSense community (e.g. Google AdSense forums)
