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.
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.
What does the "earnings at risk - fix ads txt" notification mean?
What is Ads Txt?
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?
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.
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 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.
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
04. Make sure your ads.txt files are properly configured
- 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!
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.
Brilliant post as always thank you. I'm off to check mine right now.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! I've tried my best and always aim to bring about the best tutorials possible. I hope this helps you, I'm here if you need more help. I'm glad you liked the post, best of luck for the future, xo.
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