AdSense rejected: you must own the domain you monetise
AdSense requires that you control the site you are monetising, which means being able to place files at its root and edit its HTML. A free subdomain such as yourname.blogspot.com or yourname.wordpress.com does not qualify on its own, because you control the content but not the domain.
How to fix it
- Register a domain you control. Any registrar, any reasonable TLD. This is the entire fix for most sites that hit this rejection, and it costs about the price of a coffee per month.
- Point the existing site at it properly. Most hosted platforms support a custom domain. Map it so the site is served at the new address rather than redirecting to the old one.
- Redirect the old address permanently. 301 the free subdomain to the new domain so the two are not competing copies of the same site, which causes a separate duplicate content problem.
- Confirm you can write to the domain root. You will need to place ads.txt at the root after approval. If the platform will not let you, monetisation will break later even if the application succeeds.
- Verify the domain in Search Console. Not required for AdSense, but it proves control, and you will want the crawl and indexing data during the review anyway.
What "own the domain" actually requires
The requirement is control, not paperwork. In practice AdSense expects that you
can:
- serve the site from an address you chose
- edit the HTML of your pages, including adding ad code
- place files at the domain root
That last one is easy to overlook and matters most later. After approval, ads.txt
has to live at https://yourdomain.com/ads.txt. If the platform will not let you
put a file there, you have a site that can be approved and cannot be reliably
monetised.
Why free subdomains fail
On yourname.wordpress.com, you control the content. WordPress.com controls the
domain — its DNS, its root, its terms, and whether the address exists at all next
year. From AdSense's side, the entity that controls the domain is not the entity
applying.
The common free hosts in this category:
wordpress.com · wixsite.com · weebly.com · medium.com ·
github.io · netlify.app · vercel.app · tumblr.com
Blogger is the exception. Google owns the platform, so AdSense can be enabled
from inside Blogger on a blogspot.com address. That is a property of Google
owning both sides, not a general rule about free subdomains.
The fix is a registration and a redirect
For nearly every site that hits this, the entire remedy is:
- Register a domain. Any registrar, any sensible extension.
- Map it on the existing platform — almost all of them support custom domains,
usually on a paid tier. - 301 the old subdomain to the new one, so the two are not competing copies of
the same site.
Step three matters more than it looks. Leaving both addresses live and serving
the same content creates exactly the self-duplication that causes a duplicate
content rejection, which would turn one easy problem into two.
The domain age myth
A persistent claim holds that a domain must be six months old before AdSense will
consider it. Google requires this only in a small number of countries where local
rules demand it; elsewhere there is no age requirement.
The reason the myth persists is that new domains and thin sites tend to be the
same sites. A three-week-old domain carrying thirty substantial articles is
eligible. A three-week-old domain carrying four is not — and it is the four that
caused the rejection, not the three weeks.
Frequently asked
- Can I use AdSense on a free Blogspot subdomain?
- Blogger is a special case: Google owns the platform, and AdSense can be enabled from within Blogger on a blogspot address. Free subdomains on platforms Google does not own — wordpress.com, wixsite.com, weebly, medium, github.io — cannot be approved on their own.
- Does the domain extension matter?
- Not to eligibility. A .com is not required and a country or newer extension is not disqualifying. What matters is that the domain is yours and the site is served from it.
- How old does the domain need to be?
- Google publishes no age requirement, and the six-month rule that circulates applies only in a handful of countries where local rules require it. Elsewhere, a new domain with a substantial site on it is eligible. Domain age is not the reason most new sites are rejected — content volume is.
- Why does this matter after approval?
- Because monetisation depends on files at the domain root. ads.txt has to be served from the root to authorise exchanges to sell your inventory, and on a platform where you cannot place files there, you cannot fix it when it breaks.
Check whether this is still blocking you
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