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AdSense Specials

AdSense issues: The most common problems and how to fix them

Actually, error messages should immediately describe the solution or the way to the solution for the error. But in practice this is unfortunately often not the case. This is probably because the error messages are generated automatically and it is not always clear in advance which cause and which solution is the right one.

AdSense issues

Request cannot be processed

Sometimes you want to do something in the AdSense Dashboard and you get the error message: "We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it."

Yes, good advice is expensive, sometimes users wait several days or weeks for the bug to be fixed by the developers. The solution is quite simple. The cause is probably a technical conflict between a browser plugin or ad blocker. You have the following options:

• Start the function from another computer or smartphone.
• Try another browser, preferably without plug-ins. By reinstalling, you can be sure that no plug-ins are interfering.
• Deactivate an ad blocker if necessary.

It has to be said that the use of an ad blocker together with AdSense is somewhat comical. The solutions mentioned have proven to be very reliable!

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Earnings at risk - You need to fix some ads.txt file issues to avoid severe impact to your revenue.

Sometimes the error message is also: "At least one of your websites is missing an ads.txt file".

Since 2019, the ads.txt is mandatory and if you ignore the warning, you will actually lose revenue. Sometimes the error message comes up even though you have supposedly set everything up according to this guide:

• ads.txt guide

The reason for this is then the following: Your ads.txt must be accessible with www as well as without www. You can test this by entering

• www.yourdomain.tld/ads.txt
• yourdomain.tld/ads.txt

in your broswer and seeing if the file is accessible with both calls. Sometimes there is a forwarding error, which you then have to correct. In my experience, there are two possible causes: It is forwarded incorrectly or the txt files are not taken into account when using a plug-in. If you are not "smarter" now, talk to the person who set up the redirection or, if you are using a plug-in, ask in the relevant forum.

More problems with ads.txt

• If your hoster does not allow you to store the ads.txt in the root directory, there is unfortunately nothing you can do. You will have to clarify this with your hoster, possibly switch to another package or change the hoster.
• Sometimes you get the error message even if everything has been uploaded correctly. One reason could be that the server and thus the file was not accessible for a short time. Depending on how much traffic is on the page, the message disappears again on its own.
• And another tip for the very impatient: After uploading the ads.txt and if everything is correct, it still takes up to two days until the error message disappears. As is often the case in life, a little patience will help.
• If you save the ads.txt as part of the approval process, the status will initially remain 'not found'. The status of the ads.txt will only be updated after approval has been granted and the first ads have been served. Therefore, check that the AdSense script is also included in the source code.

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[OR-BAAVFT-03] or [OR-BAIH-10]

To be honest, I probably don't have a solution for this problem that you can do on your own. But let's take it one step at a time: The problem usually occurs when you want to save a new payment method. You try to save the new bank account and get this error message. Unfortunately, further attempts don't help either, you don't get anywhere.

First of all, there is one thing you can check yourself:

• Is the bank account from the same country as the one you used for AdSense?
• Is the bank an established bank or a FinTech?

Both conditions, same country and established bank, must be fulfilled. So if you are a digital nomad and have no fixed residence in a country and a bank account there, you cannot use AdSense. That's just the way it is. But back to the error message. Check the two conditions and maybe you can solve the problem.

But if you meet the conditions and still get the error message, then this is a Google-wide problem that occurs with the AdSense payment method, but cannot be solved there. To explain: Google has its own department for payment transactions, Google Pay. It could be that you have received an email from Google Pay or Google Play on the subject of a (perhaps different) payment method. I would look for that first.

In the next step, there is a Google Pay help option. This form is then linked as a contact option: Google Pay Support. You will then end up at Google Pay Support, who will hopefully be able to help you.

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Site down or unavailable

This error message can occur during the registration process of a website. The background: Google AdSense wants to check the page via a crawler to see if it is suitable for AdSense. If the Google crawler does not have access to the page, nothing can be checked and you will receive the error message 'Site down or unavailable'.

You should check the following points as the cause:

• robots.txt

Make sure that the Google bots, especially Googlebot, Google-Mobile and Media partners-Google are not excluded by the robots.txt.

• .htaccess

The .htaccess is a configuration file that determines settings for web servers. For example, by locking out spam ip addresses, access by spammers can be prevented, but with a wrong ip address, possibly also a Google crawler.
And beware: if you make mistakes during the creation process, they are usually not forgiven. If necessary, access to the page can be prevented completely. You have to know exactly what you are doing.

• Server settings

As a rule, only the hoster has access to the server settings. Therefore, it makes sense to ask the hoster if crawlers are locked out.

To check whether a Google Bot is locked out, I use atool that is actually designed for testing structured data. However, you can also see if the Googlebot is blocked. If the crawler is blocked, you will get an error message.



Without crawler access to your website, your page will not be approved. Therefore, this problem must be solved. You may need to get professional help for this.

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Observe data protection

"Make sure you comply with applicable privacy laws such as the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) when you place your first ads."

You will receive this or similar error messages if you go through the approval process and have not integrated a data protection consent option on your website. Background: In order to be able to use AdSense in a privacy-compliant manner, you have to obtain the consent of the users of your site in UK and the EEA, for example.

If you now click on GDPR, for example, you will be directed to "Privacy and messaging". AdSense itself offers a privacy tool and you can activate it here.

Of course, you can also use another Consent Management Platform (CMP). These must be Google certified from January 2024.

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TC-String des IAB-Error 3.3

The actual error message is: "We've detected an issue on your IAB TC String on one or more of your sites or apps. These errors may affect your ability to serve ads to European users. A detailed report is availble for you on the EU user consent page. Go to EU user consent"


Here, too, we are at data protection and the GDPR. About theHelp it is easy to find out that error 3.3 means that consent has not been updated for more than 13 months. This means that you can go troubleshooting with the operator of your Consent Management Platform (CMP). The solution is: "The CMP should delete the old TC string and obtain the consent again".

But what do you do if you use the AdSense privacy tool? Is there also a way to delete the old TC string? Unfortunately, you can search for a long time, you have no way of influencing this, as the tool is operated fully automatically by AdSense. There are now two possibilities:

• This error occurs particularly often when, for example, the settings for caching a website prevent the approval screen from being displayed again. You have to check the .htaccess or the server settings to see if the cache settings prevent this.
• The more common case: It is a rare bug. You can download the error file via the link and see when the error last occurred. If it remains an isolated case, the error message will disappear on its own after about two weeks. Under the notifications, the message is then marked as 'cleared' with a green tick.

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Consent message pops up again and again

A very unpleasant error: The AdSense Consent Tool does not seem to save the decision when consenting and the message pops up again with every new page view.

The cause is still unclear and the error occurs very rarely. Apparently there is sometimes a conflict with the activation of automatic anchor displays. A workaround that usually helps: Deactivate the anchor displays and the Consent message works again.

Another workaround that has already helped: In the settings of the CMP tool, use the option 'Commenly used ad partners'

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Screen-freeze-one

The same workaround also helps with another error: The screen 'freezes' when you scroll to the bottom. Since the two conditions, AdSense Consent Tool and activated anchor ads, are responsible for this and the workaround 'deactivating the anchor ads' also helps, I suspect that these bugs have the same, still unknown cause.

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500. That's an error.

Occasionally this error occurs with the following message:

"500. That's an error."



This error can occur when logging in or also when calling functions in the dashboard. Since the cause is unclear, there is no clear option for action. In practice, the following workarounds have proven successful:

• Wait an hour or two and try again. Sometimes the error is then fixed.
• You can delete the browser cache and restart the browser.
• Use a browser without adblockers and plugins.
• If you have multiple Google accounts, log out of all of them and then log back in with your AdSense account.
• Log in to the Dashboard from another computer or smartphone.

As a rule, you can access your account or the corresponding function again with one of these workarounds.

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Automatic ads disrupt the design

Automated ads are sometimes placed in areas where they interfere with the design or structure of the site. It is possible to exclude certain areas from the ad preview, but unfortunately this does not always work reliably. The reason for this is still unclear. Either the automatic ads are not yet fully developed, or the programming of the site is not completely clean.

As an alternative, I can recommend the manual adverts, which you can place more precisely.

If you disable the inpage ads in the automatic ads, you can still use the automatic anchors and vignettes. And in the content area, you can then place the manual ads appropriately.

Another tip: One user wrote on the AdSense forum that he had disabled inpage ads for three days. After re-enabling them, everything worked fine. It's definitely worth a try.

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If you still have questions: Use the free community option in the Google Help forums:

Google AdSense Community

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   If you have any suggestions, comments or proposals for the blog post, please contact me bye-mail.I am happy to receive feedback!