COMMON ADSENSE CRAWLER ISSUES AND HOW TO FIX THEM

It’s not easy being a publisher – it demands time and focus, not to mention some necessary technical knowledge to be able to manage your websites.

For publishers who focus on monetizing their ad inventory, it is a huge plus to know what AdSense crawlers are and how they can help you to fix issues.

Fixing these AdSense crawler errors will help Google’s crawlers better access your site so it can display more relevant ads based on content which we know can drastically improve your ad revenue.

So before we ramble on, let’s clarify that AdSense crawlers are different from other Google bots and are used to index website content to send appropriate ads.

More often than not, this type of crawler will access site URLs where the AdSense tags are already implemented, including pages that redirect. This is why regular website maintenance is imperative to avoid any issues with Google.

Solving AdSense crawler issues can be quite challenging. If you’d like one of HEIKALINE’s experts to take a look and provide a solution, book a free consultation today.

Google crawls websites automatically at any time while reports are usually updated on a weekly basis. You may find a variety of errors when checking the crawler report in your AdSense account, and we can help you figure out exactly what to do.

 DIFFERENT TYPES OF CRAWLER ERRORS:

1) Page Not Found

Also, know as Error 404, this is one of the most common errors seen by webmasters and page visitors alike. It merely means that the crawler attempted to crawl a page that may have been previously deleted or repositioned elsewhere on your website.

A temporary URL can cause this as well. There is a fantastic tool that can help you find these pages to avoid this type of error: Webmaster URL parameter tool.

2) Robot Denied

This means that the AdSense crawler tried to crawl a page in the domain or subdomain level. Check the reports to find out where exactly.

If this happens, Google will not be able to index that specific page, and they won’t be ready to serve ads on that page.

To resolve this, just remove these two lines from your robots.txt file to grant Google crawler access:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow: /

3) Content Behind a Login

There are lots of websites that require login information to get premium access to the site’s main content. It usually means that a crawler login hasn’t been set up for that premium content.

As with error #2 above, Google will not be able to access this page, and Google ads will not be served.

Imagine if you have 1000’s of premium users, how many lost impressions do you think will that be?

This is thankfully very simple to resolve. Go to your Google AdSense login page; under Access and Authorization in Settings, go to the crawler access and provide login details for the crawler to use to access your site.

You may want to check out the Google’s step-by-step guide to displaying ads on login-protected pages.

4) You Have Ad Crawler Errors for a Site I Don’t Manage

This error means that someone is using your ad code on a different site without your permission. The impressions and clicks will still be counted but will not pay out. Therefore, you will not be earning as this is not authorized.

If this ever happens, set your AdSense account to “Only allow certain sites to display ads for my account.” This is an option available under Settings > Accounts and Authorization. Expect changes to happen in 48 hours.

Crawler issues are remarkably straightforward and easy to fix, and you don’t even need a Swedish assembly guide.