Registering subdomains for Google AdSense

Lambros
Lambros
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

Google AdSense is a great and easy way to make money with your website. When surfing through the web, nearly every website uses it to monetize its traffic. If you want to sign up for Google AdSense, you simply have to provide your website’s URL and your email address.

For one of my web projects I use an URL pattern where the subdomain indicates the language or market. This pattern is quite common and is also used by Wikipedia for instance:

I was quite surprised when the registration form notified me that this URL pattern is not valid for the Google AdSense registration. Google AdSense has the following restrictions on URLs:

So the answer to the question “How to register a Subdomain for Google AdSense” is: It is simply not possible.

Workaround for registering a subdomain

The only way to sign up for Google AdSense with the URL pattern mentioned earlier is to register with a valid Google AdSense URL first. After your application got approved, you can add arbitrary URLs in your Google AdSense administration panel. In the best case you have several websites running and you can register with one that was initially not intended to use Google AdSense but is compliant to the URL limitations.

If this is not the case the only way that I can see at the moment is to change your URL pattern. Due to the monopoly position of Google in the domain of online advertisment, this is probably what most web masters will end up with.

Google AdSense Registration Don’ts

  • Do not try to provide the URL without the subdomain if it only redirects to the subdomain. Google AdSense will reject your application with confusing reasons such as “Insufficient content”.
  • When your application gets rejected, do not apply with the same URL more than two times. Normally it takes less than a day for Google to check your application and inform you about the result. When you apply for the third time with the same URL, it may take over a month.
  • Do not create dummy URLs for the registration only, do not try to fool Google, they will find out eventually.

Lambros

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Lambros

“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.” N. Kazantzakis

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