If you've been reading my blog you'll know that as a designer, developer and blogger I love and recommend using blogger (formerly known as blogspot) as a blogging platform. And it's not just because it's free, it's because it has the potential for customisation that parallels WordPress itself. If I may be so bold as to say so.
I've been able to develop an e-commerce system for blogger, and have a range of other widgets that I'm currently testing out that is sure to make bloggers on blogger go "whoa! I didn't know blogger could do that!".
Fun Fact : Last month I met a wonderful client who not only wanted a few customised widgets for her blogger blog but is so fun to work with as well. We developed a rating widget for her book review blog, custom Facebook like buttons, and more for her blog.
Moving on to the topic at hand though, you probably have a blogger blog that you are monetising using Adsense, and one fine day you logged into Adsense and BAM! You're panicking because Adsense tells you your earnings are at risk.
Nobody, whose a blogger and depends on blogging to make an income, or wishes to make an income wants to read this message ever. So how do you fix this and what does it even mean?
What does the "earnings at risk - fix ads txt" notification mean?
Apart from the fact that your earning is it risk, it means that the Adsense bot crawled your website and could not detect your ads.txt file, or could not access it or for "n" number of reasons just did not find it. Hence, it has pit your earnings at risk.
What is Ads Txt?
I'm not going to get into all the detail here, as I believe that this topic needs more detailed information but I will tell you this.
Authorized Digital Sellers for Web, or ads.txt, is an IAB initiative to improve transparency in programmatic advertising. You can create your own ads.txt files to identify who is authorized to sell your inventory. The files are publicly available and crawlable by exchanges, Supply-Side Platforms (SSP), and other buyers and third-party vendors. - Google
How To fix the Ads txt earning at risk notification from Adsense?
INFO : Please keep in mind that this tutorial is written for blogs hosted on blogger. And it will work only for Blogger.com blogs.
There is one thing for sure, receiving this notification means that something is not right.
The good news is, if nothing is wrong with your blog and everything is fine and it is set-up properly then as a privileged blogger on blogger, you will NEVER see this warning.
Why do I say you're privileged as a blogger blogging on blogger?
Because if you're using Adsense and are hosted through blogger then blogger takes care of ads.txt declarations for you. And this will only happen if you use the Adsense widgets to show ads, not the HTML/Javascript widgets.
INFO : You'll still need to set-up custom ads.txt in your blogger blog if you use other ad companies along with Adsense.
Now, to be able to fix this issue, much like any issue you need to get at the root of this issue. Most probably, there could be two reasons this is happening:
- Your ads.txt is not set-up at all (should not happen if Blogger is taking care of it for you.)
- Your domain is not set-up properly, redirects are not proper or working and/or for some reason the Adsense bot is unable to crawl the ad.txt directory hosted in your blog.
01. Check your domain set-up
If your domain is through Google then it's rare that you'll encounter an incorrect domain set-up as google services gel well along with other Google services, a.k.a blogger and Google Domains = a match made in heaven.
But if you used a third-party service you'll have to set it up yourself, and the instructions blogger gives are incomplete. I have no clue why Blogger does this, but it does.
If you've bought a domain from a third-party service such as GoDaddy or any other registrar, you need to follow these instructions. These instructions are mainly for GoDaddy but the process remains the same for any domain registrar.
Once you've made sure your domain is set-up correctly, or if you had to make some changes then wait for 48 hours.
After you've waited for 48 hours, remove your custom domain from blogger. Then set-up your custom domain again on blogger's end in the dashboard.
I repeat, DO NOT touch anything in your DNS, only make changes in your blogger dashboard.
If you've bought a domain from a third-party service such as GoDaddy or any other registrar, you need to follow these instructions. These instructions are mainly for GoDaddy but the process remains the same for any domain registrar.
TIP : If you have a request for a tutorial on your own registrar, let me know in the comments down below and I'll be happy to make one.
Once you've made sure your domain is set-up correctly, or if you had to make some changes then wait for 48 hours.
02. Re-do your custom domain set-up on blogger
After you've waited for 48 hours, remove your custom domain from blogger. Then set-up your custom domain again on blogger's end in the dashboard.
I repeat, DO NOT touch anything in your DNS, only make changes in your blogger dashboard.
How to re-do custom domain set-up on blogger
- Log in to your blogger account
- In the blogger dashboard click on Settings (located on the left side in your blogger dashboard)
- Then click on basics and then remove your custom domain by clicking the close button that looks like an "x".
- Refresh the page, and add your custom domain again. If you've completed step 1 then this will be instant and you won't get any error or have to add any information, if not it might give you an error at which point you'll have to re-do all the steps in the step 1 portion.
- Click Save.
03. Check your HTTPS
If you're one of those people whose site still shows as not secure because you haven't bothered to or just didn't have the time to switch to HTTPS, well, this could cause issues with the Adsense crawler trying to crawl your site.
The crawler and real people could receive privacy and security issue warnings on your blog and not be able to visit. If you're curious, it looks like this:
And this does not only deter bots and crawlers but actual readers that might think that you are up to something.
This is an error a client of mine was getting before I helped her fix the problem. You HTTPS has a problem even if it's working on HTTPS but not holding on to the lock icon on all pages because you have mixed content. I recommend that you fix this as well.
04. Make sure your ads.txt files are properly configured
As I mentioned before if you're only using Adsense, and the Adsense widgets to show your ads then blogger will automatically take care of this for you. Otherwise, you'll have to download the ads.txt file from Adsense and any other ad company you use and install them on your blogger blog.
These are the steps you need to take to install ads.txt file in your blogger blog:
- In your blogger dashboard, click Settings.
- Then click Search Preferences.
- Under the Monetisation tab, you'll see the option to set custom ads.txt
- Make sure it is set to Yes
- Add your Adsense ads.txt file contents and your other ad companies ads.txt file contents
- Click Save.
05. That's it, you're done!
You need to understand and know that it might take quite some time for the Adsense notification to go away as it will only do so when Adsense crawlers scan your site the next time.
Some other related and frequently asked questions
Blogger will automatically declare your ads.txt if your ads.txt is enabled and you are using Adsense widgets in the layout section to add Adsense codes in your blog. To check, you can write your domain in your browser's address section accompanied by "/ads.txt" if you see declarations by google.com there along with your pub ID then that means your ads.txt is managed by blogger.
Please don't worry! I'm here to help and all you have to do is leave a comment about where and how you're struggling and I'll help you out. Please make sure not to include any links in the comment section or your comment won't be published. There's a separate column for a URL in the comment section where you can add your URL if you want me to check out your website.
Of course, as a blogger product expert, that's what I'm here to do. Please get in touch using the contact form. I charge $35 to help fix your ads.txt issues.
Unfortunately, this notification does not go away instantly. It will only disappear when Adsense crawlers crawl your website the next time which can take at least 4 weeks and there is no max to this limit because there are millions of blogs out there using Adsense. If you want to confirm your ads.txt are visible, then type in your browser's address section accompanied by "/ads.txt" to check if declarations are visible.>/p>
Fortunately, this has nothing to do with your Adsense notification, however, it's important to add all your ads.txt for receiving proper amounts of ad revenue. You should ask your ad company to provide you with the ads.txt file and then add it to your blogger blog.
Have any more questions that you think I missed upon? Or suggestions for elaboration on some topics? Let me know through the comments so I can make this post even better for you! Hope this has helped.
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