AdSense approval gotchas

Wiring ClientConfig.AdPanel = EnabledAdPanel ... and dropping <AdSlot> into a Feliz view is the easy part. Getting Google AdSense to actually serve ads against your site requires passing AdSense's site-approval process, which has a number of non-obvious requirements. This page is the operator-facing checklist — when the substrate compiles, slots render the <ins class="adsbygoogle"> element, but AdSense returns data-ad-status="unfilled" for every impression, work through the items below before raising it as a substrate defect.

This guide is not authoritative — AdSense policies change. Treat it as a "things to verify first" list; the canonical reference is Google's published AdSense Program Policies and Help Center.

Pre-deployment checklist

1. The site must be on a real, HTTPS-served domain

AdSense will not approve a site served from localhost, an IP address, or a free hosting subdomain (*.github.io, *.netlify.app, etc. — historically rejected; some have been approved more recently but the policy is inconsistent). The site must be on a domain you own, served over HTTPS with a valid TLS certificate.

Implications for development:

• http://localhost:8080 — slots render but stay unfilled. This is expected; AdSense does not serve to non-public origins.
• A dev / staging subdomain (staging.example.com) — AdSense approves the apex domain example.com, and ad serving works across approved subdomains, but staging.* typically isn't on the approved list unless explicitly added in the AdSense console under "Sites".
• HTTP-only origin — AdSense's adsbygoogle.js script will still load over HTTP (mixed-content policy permitting) but slots stay unfilled.

For local development against the real AdSense bundle, use the test-mode parameter (below).

2. Test mode for local development

To exercise the slot rendering path without a real fill, append ?google_adtest=on to the page URL or set data-adtest="on" on the <ins> element. AdSense serves real test ads from its test pool, ignores the site-approval check, and stamps data-ad-status="filled" so the MutationObserver-driven impression event fires for the analytics seam.

The Phase 60 substrate does not currently surface a typed Style-level affordance for data-adtest. Two workarounds:

1. Query-string toggle — append ?google_adtest=on to the dev page URL; AdSense's bundle picks it up globally.
2. Per-slot DOM injection — for a one-off dev verification, run a small post-mount script that adds data-adtest="on" to the <ins>. Don't ship this in production.

If a typed <AdSlot> test-mode flag is needed for repeatable smoke tests, surface it as a follow-up enhancement rather than working around in consumer code permanently.

3. Minimum content depth

AdSense's review favours sites with:

• A homepage that describes the site's purpose in non-trivial copy.
• Multiple content pages (the unwritten threshold is "more than a landing page" — typical successful applications carry 10+ pages of real content; a single calculator with one landing page is borderline).
• Original content, not auto-generated or scraped.

For a public-utility deployment (single calculator, viewer, or converter), the practical fix is supplementary content pages: an About page, a Methodology / How It Works page, a Frequently Asked Questions page, a Privacy Policy, a Terms of Service. This is content the public utility benefits from anyway, and AdSense's reviewer treats them as part of the site's content depth.

4. Privacy policy and consent surface

AdSense's review checks for:

• A linked Privacy Policy that names Google AdSense (and any other third-party tracking the site uses), explains the cookies / identifiers AdSense uses for personalised ads, and explains how users can opt out.
• A consent surface for EU / UK / California users covering the Marketing / Personalisation categories. The Phase 60 substrate's consent-gate composition (via Phase 59's IConsentProvider) handles the gating; the visible CMP banner is provided by whichever consent provider the deployment wires. FundingChoicesConsentProvider is the path of least resistance — Funding Choices is Google's own CMP, AdSense-aware, and free.
• Targeted-advertising opt-out mention in the policy, with a working mechanism (typically the CMP banner's "Reject all" or "Manage preferences" button).

The Phase 60 substrate enforces the technical gating — <AdSlot> returns Html.none until the user grants the configured categories — but does not generate the privacy policy text. Author that yourself.

5. Traffic threshold and review delay

AdSense does not publish a hard traffic threshold for approval; in practice, sites with effectively zero traffic frequently get approved if every other gate is clean. Reviewer delay varies — typically days to a few weeks; the 2026 baseline is "expect 1–2 weeks, sometimes 4 weeks". The site must remain online and compliant for the full review period.

Don't pre-emptively rip out the AdPanel wiring when the first review submission is "pending" for two weeks; that's the normal cadence. Set AdPanel = EnabledAdPanel ... once, push to production, and wait.

6. Sticky ads / layout shifts / interstitial limits

Even after approval, AdSense's content-policy bots check:

• No layout shifts caused by slow-loading ads — reserve the slot's height before the ad loads (use a fixed-aspect AdRectangle / AdVertical / AdHorizontal Format, or wrap the slot in a min-height container).
• No sticky-bottom ads that overlap the page's primary content navigation.
• No more than three ad units per page (current 2026 guideline; was unlimited pre-2018, now policy-throttled).

The Phase 60 substrate does not enforce these limits — that's the consumer's layout responsibility.

Post-approval verification

When approval lands, the AdSense console flips the site's status to "Ready". At that point:

1. The data-ad-status attribute on <ins class="adsbygoogle"> should flip from unfilled to filled for slots in active rotation. Some slots stay unfilled when AdSense has no relevant ad to serve — this is expected, not a bug.
2. Network traffic in DevTools shows requests to pagead2.googlesyndication.com returning ad payload (not just the adsbygoogle.js bundle).
3. The IAdAnalyticsSink.LogImpression callback fires (when a sink is wired) — verify via the recording-fake test pattern in IAdAnalyticsSinkContract.
4. The AdSense console's "Sites" tab shows the domain with "Ready" status; the "Ads" / "By unit" tab shows impressions accumulating.

If approval lands but slots stay unfilled indefinitely after the first 48 hours of public traffic, check:

• The site's domain in the AdSense console exactly matches the production domain (no typos, no missing subdomain).
• AdClientId in ClientConfig.AdPanel matches the AdSense publisher account ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
• SlotId on each <AdSlot> matches a slot the AdSense console minted (not a placeholder like 1234567890).
• The page is fully indexable (no noindex meta, no robots.txt disallow on the path).
• No ad blocker is active in the test browser — even on the developer's machine, an extension like uBlock Origin will block AdSense's bundle and prevent fills.

Common rejection reasons (paraphrased from AdSense's published rejection emails)

Re-submission is free; AdSense's review cadence applies to each re-submission. Fix every flagged issue before re-submitting — partial fixes typically draw the same rejection.

See also

• ads.md — substrate shape, wiring, consent-gate composition.
• migrations/60-adpanel-adsense.md — consumer migration walk-through.
• Google's authoritative documentation: AdSense Help Center "Get started" + "Program policies" pages (search the AdSense Help Center directly; URLs change).