AdSense rejected for scraped content — how to recover
This is the most serious of the content rejections, because it alleges you are republishing other people's work rather than merely publishing weak work of your own. Rewording, spinning and translating all still count — the test is whether the substance originated with you, not whether the sentences match.
How to fix it
- Identify every page that started somewhere else. Anything rewritten from another article, spun, translated from a source in another language, assembled from search result summaries, or generated from a feed. Be honest here; a partial cleanup produces a second rejection.
- Remove them rather than rewriting them. Rewriting scraped material produces rewritten scraped material. Delete the pages and return a 410, so the removal is unambiguous rather than looking like a temporary outage.
- Replace them with material only you could produce. First-hand testing, original photographs, your own data, interviews, something you built or broke. This is the only category of content that cannot be scraped from anyone.
- Attribute and excerpt properly where you do quote. A short quoted passage with clear attribution and a link, surrounded by your own analysis, is normal publishing. A page that is mostly quotation is not.
- Wait for re-crawling before re-applying. Removed pages need to leave the index before a review will see the site as it now is. This is why the realistic timeline here is weeks rather than days.
Why this one is different
Every other content rejection says the site is not good enough yet. This one says
the site is publishing work that is not yours. That is a different category of
problem, it is treated more seriously, and it takes longer to come back from.
It is also the rejection publishers most often receive without believing they
deserve it, because the work genuinely felt like work. Reading ten articles and
producing an eleventh takes hours. It is still, in the sense that matters here,
derived entirely from the ten.
The test is substance, not sentences
The intuition most publishers carry — that changing the words makes the content
theirs — is the one to discard. What is actually assessed is whether the content
originated with you.
An article that:
- follows another article's structure section by section,
- makes the same points in the same order,
- and contains no fact, measurement or judgement the source did not have
is a rewrite of that article, whatever its vocabulary. Synonym substitution and
sentence reordering are what "spinning" means, and they are specifically what
this policy exists to catch.
Translation sits in the same place. Moving an article into another language is
republication into a new market, not creation.
Rewriting is not the fix
The instinct on receiving this rejection is to go back through the flagged pages
and rewrite them harder. That produces more thoroughly rewritten scraped content,
and a second rejection.
Remove the pages. Return 410 Gone rather than 404 — it states that the
removal is deliberate and permanent, rather than looking like a page that
happens to be missing today.
Then rebuild with the one category of material that cannot be taken from anyone:
- Something you tested, with the numbers you measured
- Photographs you took of the actual thing
- What you tried, what failed, and what it cost
- A question you asked someone who knows, and their answer
Ten pages of that beat a hundred assembled from other people's research, and they
are the only kind that survives this particular review.
Quoting is still allowed
Nothing here prohibits referencing other people's work. Publishing is built on
it. A short quoted passage, clearly attributed and linked, surrounded by your own
analysis, is ordinary practice and not at risk.
The line is proportion and contribution. If the quoted material is the page, the
page is not yours. If the quoted material supports something you are saying, it
is.
The timeline is weeks
Removed pages have to leave the index before a review sees the site as it now is.
Re-applying two days after a cleanup means the reviewer may still find the
material in Google's cache, and the outcome will be the same for reasons you have
already fixed.
Remove, rebuild, confirm in Search Console that the old URLs have dropped out,
then apply. That is a three to four week process, and compressing it is the most
common way publishers turn one rejection into three.
Frequently asked
- I rewrote everything in my own words. Is that still scraped?
- Usually yes. The test is whether the substance originated with you, not whether the sentences match. An article that follows another article's structure, makes its points in its order, and adds no information the source did not have is a rewrite of that article regardless of vocabulary.
- Does translating an article from another language count?
- Yes. Translation is republication into a new market. It can be legitimate with the rights holder's permission and clear attribution, but as a way to fill a site it is exactly the pattern this policy targets.
- How is this different from duplicate content?
- Duplicate content is usually accidental — a site serving its own articles at several addresses. Scraped content is taking someone else's work. Google treats the second far more seriously, and recovery takes longer.
- Can a site recover from a scraped content rejection?
- Yes, but not quickly and not by editing. Recovery means removing the pages, waiting for them to leave the index, and rebuilding with original material. Sites that try to shortcut this by rewriting in place are usually rejected again.
Check whether this is still blocking you
The free Monetific checker tests your site against this and every other mechanical requirement, and tells you what is still outstanding before you re-apply.
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