Quick Start Guide
Getting started with AdSense is easy. By following the 3 steps below, you can have the AdSense code up and running on your pages, ready to make money in 15 minutes or less! This guide will walk you through the process, from signing in to your account, to generating your ad code and adding it to your pages. To best use this guide, please read through it, print it out, and keep it with you while you set up your account.
Step 1: Log in to your account
To sign in:
- Go to https://www.google.com/adsense
- In the Existing Publisher Login box, at the upper right of the browser window, enter the email address and password you supplied during signup.
- Click Login to enter your account.
If this is your first time entering your account, you'll be asked to read and sign the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions. There's important information about the program, so take the time to read through these terms before proceeding.
Once you've read through the document, select the agreement checkbox and click
I Accept to agree to the Terms and Conditions.
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Step 2: Generate your ad code
Now that you're signed into your account, it's time to start generating the HTML code to add to your web pages. To do so:
Click the
AdSense Setup tab. From this page, you'll be guided to choose the type of ads you'd like to add to your site, customize the way they'll look and behave, as well as set some reporting options. We're going to set the shape and the color of your ads - other optional features are covered in
AdSense Support.
Before you can customize your ads, you'll need to choose a product and ad type. From the AdSense Setup tab, click AdSense for content, then follow the guide to select the radio button for ad unit as your ad type and click Continue.
- Ad Format: the ad format is the shape of your ads. There are a number of formats to choose from, ranging from single ad blocks to skyscrapers and banners. All of the available formats are displayed on the Ad Formats page - check them out.
Once you've decided on a format that will suit your pages, select it from the drop-down menu.
Tip: Try using larger ad formats (such as a wide skyscraper or large rectangle) to attract more user attention and increase the number of ads that are shown on your page.
- Color Palettes: Color palettes allow you to customize the look of the ads on your page by selecting colors for the background and text elements. You can create up to 200 custom color palettes by following the steps below:
- From the drop-down list, select a pre-existing color palette to start with
- Select the Border radio button, then click the corresponding color to generate a color table and assign a border color. The preview ad will update to show your current selection.
- Repeat for each element of the ad - background, title, text, and URL.
- Once you've designed a color palette to your liking, click Save as new palette to store this palette for later use.
Tip: You can select up to 4 color palettes by holding down the Control key (for Windows users) or Command key (for Macintosh users) while you select palettes. Your selections will be randomly alternated on your page.
Before continuing to the next step, you may want to learn about and set up channels and alternate ads. We've provided a Getting Started guide with information about alternate ads, and AdSense Support explains channels and their setup.
Step 3: Add the code to your pages
Now that you've generated your ad code, it's time to add it to your pages. You'll see your code in the Your AdSense Code box. This is the code that you will cut-and-paste directly into your web pages. You can place up to three ad units on each page by adding multiple instances of the ad code.
Because every HTML editor is different, and because only you know how you like to build your web pages, we can't give exact instructions on copying the ad code into your pages. We can, however, give you a few tips:
- Make sure to paste the ad code into your source without making any changes to the code, including changes to punctuation, spacing, or line breaks. This is important, as changing the code in any way can cause errors on your page (and is against the AdSense program policies)
- Paste the ad code between the body tags of your HTML
- If you're using a WYSIWYG editor (What you see is what you get) it's a good idea to paste the code into the Code or Source view. Pasting it into the layout view will often result in HTML tags being added to your code, and will result in errors
- If your page uses Frames, make sure that the code is pasted into the frame that contains your page's main content. We use this content to target ads
When you're all done, save your web pages and upload them to your server. If you have questions about uploading files to your server, we suggest contacting your web hosting company directly. If you're adding the code to a Blogspot domain, we suggest reading the Blogger support articles below:
Google ads should appear on your pages immediately. Initially, the ads that you see may be Public Service Ads (known as PSAs) and won't be targeted to your page. An example of a PSA is shown below:
We have to crawl your page's content before we know what kinds of ads to send your way - this can take up to a few hours, but usually occurs within minutes. Once our crawler has visited your page, you should see ads that are highly targeted to your content.
Tip: If it's been more than 4 hours since you added the code to your pages, and you're still seeing PSAs, check that your page doesn't contain any content that is against our program policies, and that you're not blocking our crawler with a robots.txt file. You can also contact us. We'll be happy to look at your pages to see if anything is broken.
