Problem displaying Google Adsense.

miked · Jul 20, 2007

Hey all,

I'm in the middle of setting up some minisites, as per the excellent thread 'Making a domain earn £1 a week'.

The problem is, I can't go forward as I can't get Adsense Ads to display on my PC to see how they look. I've visited different sites with Adsense ads (including ones in the thread mentioned), have used different browsers (Firefox, IE and Opera), and have even temporarily disabled my firewall (admittedly only the Internet Connection Firewall bundled with XP) and anti spyware software... and all to no avail. No Adsense ads display.

Does anyone have any idea how I can fix this? It's holding me back, as I can't construct pages if I can't see how they'll look with Adsense ads inserted...

It's really frustrating if for no other reason than I can't work the problem out...

Any answers shedding light would be appreciated.

Regards,
Mike.

ScottJ · Jul 20, 2007

Adsense can take a few hours sometimes to show up so put the page live, refresh it a few times an then leave it for a few hours.

Failing that check the domains history - is it clean, could the domain be banned from previous abuse?

miked · Jul 20, 2007

Hey SJI,

Thanks for the advice.

However, I've (finally) found the solution so I'll outline it for if anyone else ever has the same problem.

It was an issue with the windows 'Hosts' file, which contains a list of forbidden sites. It invokes at Windows startup, and seems to override any browser settings: any sites on it are blocked. Of course, this can be useful, but for some reason Google sites were listed there on my PC (I suspect due to incorrectly uninstalled anti-spyware programs).

To allow Google adwords ads to appear, all I had to do was navigate to the hosts file...

Windows NT/2000/XP Pro c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows XP Home c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

...and remove any references to adwords, googlesyndication etc.

A point worth making is that of course the reverse is possible: sites can also be blocked this way if desired, by adding to the list.

Now I can start building...

Regards,
Mike.