AdSense Stop Words & PSAs

What`are “AdSense Stop Words”?

These are certain words that trigger ads to show PSAs or Public Service Ads. PSAs are fairly common for new content but you should be getting normal ads after a few page refresh (threshhold is 4 hours). See example of a PSA here. Since these ads are “pro bono”, you as a publisher don’t get a single cent when they appear on your site.

However, aside from websites with unsupported languages, stop words can also trigger them. These are words that are not in good taste.

Profane or cuss words can trigger them as well as sex-related words. Other categories might include the following:

If your blog has any one of these as a “theme”, or maybe even words as being part of your domain name, you’ll most likely to get PSAs all the time.

Other factors include frequency of appearance of these words in your content (not sure if the 3% keyword density applies), combination and proximity with other words, among others. One reason why you should also monitor your reader comments for such words.

If this is the case and you can’t stop from using these stop words, either be creative in morphing them (use of special characters), using images instead of texts or drop Adsense altogether.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

15 Comments

ildamos says:

15 years ago

Does reviewing free pc games that have military themes trigger PSAs? I don’t have them at the moment but my last post has fewer ads showing. All the ads are unrelated to PC games to boot. (All my other posts are ok.)
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TechPinoy says:

17 years ago

Hi there. I am currently having problem with one of my blog. Maybe you can help me.

about 80% of my traffic is from this page:

http://techpinoy.blogspot.com/2007/11/funny-ust-scandal-aviexe-remover.html

the problem is, my adsense unit on THAT page only shows public service ads, it started just a week ago. I’m not having problem with other posts on my blog.

any idea?
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Mike Abundo says:

18 years ago

If you want to donate to charity, talk about f*cking.
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kidlat says:

18 years ago

During typhoon season, i post lots of news and updates about typhoons that hit our province. When i have this type of posts, i get mostly relief and all those donate and help ads that i assume are all PSAs. I also notice the drop in my adsense revenues. from .25 cents a day to .01 :-). There goes my 10$ per month loot.
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Abe Olandres says:

19 years ago

I noticed it as well. Could be something else that could have triggered it. Read here for more details.
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Abaniko says:

19 years ago

The PSA’s are all over. If the regular ads don’t appear in my next few posts, I don’t have a choice but to take Adsense out. I read your other post on the potential earnings of Adsense given the number and type of visitors, etc.. My estimates led me to say I’ll earn my first $100 from Adsense in a decade. Haha.
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Abe Olandres says:

19 years ago

@ noemi

Keyword density is also a trigger. If you have 3 out of every 100 listed as stop words, it could trigger the PSAs.

@ Manuel

There’s still the threshhold and if you notice I made the “stop words” as an image instead of a list. I think it still needs the 3% keyword density too.

@ Abaniko

It only affects pages which has these stop words so once your entries with the stop words are buried in the archives, the regular ads will appear.

However, if you get PSAs all over, then there could be something else that could be triggering them.
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noemi says:

19 years ago

Manuel: the PSA’s have stopped. It used to show up during the first posting. Haha, the weird thing is it ‘s showing ads of the resort where my son drowned :P silly google.
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Abaniko says:

19 years ago

So this is the reason why the PSA reappeared in my Adsense box. I used the words “death” and “drowned” in my recent post. Any idea when I could get the regular ads back? It’s like that for 3 days now and to think my Adsense is only an “experiment” which I put up 5 days ago.
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Manuel Viloria says:

19 years ago

Hi Abe,

I noticed this page isn’t showing PSAs even if you displayed some of those trigger words.

I wonder if section targeting will allow Noemi to include those stop words in her posts, but not trigger PSAs.
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Noemi Dado says:

19 years ago

lol, I have a lot of those stop words i.e. death related ones. It can’t be helped. I talk a lot about death and grief. :)
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