Definition of Google AdSense

Applying for Google AdSense Account

Applying for a Google AdSense account is a simple process. To begin, you complete a form providing payment information for earned revenues and the URL to your website. You must agree to specific terms and conditions related to not displaying pornographic content or encouraging fraudulent ad clicks. Once you've submitted this information, Google reviews the site to assure that it meets program guidelines, and approves or denies the account.

AdSense Policies

To use Google AdSense, you must comply with policies on quality and content standards. Google prohibits the use of their advertising on sites that advocate racial intolerance, promote the sale of alcohol, tobacco or prescription drugs, and sites containing adult content. Additional regulations regard content on sites that webmasters should review before applying for an account.

Quality Guidelines

Google makes recommendations for Webmasters to improve their rank and performance on sites using AdSense. These guidelines include recommendations on design attributes, including site maps, 'ALT' text in image attributes and the number of links limited on a page. Technical recommendations include checking for accessibility standards, allow search bots from website indexing applications, and using the robots.txt file to control what bots index. Finally, they have specific quality guidelines that recommend against using automatic queries to register your your site, using hidden text or hidden links,

Formatting Advertisements

To make AdSense most effective on your site, you can customize the size and style of your advertisements. While specific colors cannot be customized, you can select the height and width of ads, and choose to display text only or graphical advertisements. Actual ad content is based on site keywords when possible to display relevant advertisements to your users.

Other AdSense Categories

In addition to the standard Website advertisements, participants in the Google AdSense program can also choose to use advertisements in other formats. Additional products include ads for mobile devices, video, RSS and Atom feeds, and domains.