UPDATE: This article has been updated in February 2018 with new information. Read it carefully as it cal help to increase your revenue stream from AdSense.
For the last years there was a restrict limitations for the number of allowed AdSense ads on a single page:
It was 3 ads for content units and 3 ads for link units. (Some premium partners were allowed to serve up to 6 ad units)
In August 2016 Google updated this policy
You can now place an unlimited amount of AdSense ads on a page following the recommendation:
[mashtweet tweet=”Advertising and other paid promotional material added to your pages should not exceed your content.” text=”Advertising and other paid promotional material added to your pages should not exceed your content.” username=”wpquads”]
This mean that all ads on your site, no matter if they are based on AdSense or not, are taken into account for the maximum number of allowed ads on a single page.
There is no longer a strict number of ads limitation. Its more important that you have no more ads on your site than visible content.
An example:
Having more than 2 visible ads at the same time on a mobile device is too much because this the would highly likely exceed the visible content and would lead to a bad user experience.
On the other hand on a large desktop monitor or tablet it is ok to show 2 or more ads as there is more available space.
How can you know if ads exceed your content?
“Should not exceed your content” sounds more like a rule of thumb but we think you are on the save side when you estimate the total space of your ads on a single page and than compare it with the total space of your content. You can also ask friends and visitors if the ads on your site are irritating or not.
So you get a feeling about what is ok and what not. If the user experience is fine and the total amount of ads are not preventing a visitor from enjoying and reading the content you should be fine.
[mashtweet tweet=”See your website from a visitors perspective. If it looks like spamming, it will look the same for other users as well and you should reduce the amount of total visible AdSense ads.” text=”See your website from a visitors perspective. If it looks like spamming, it will look the same for other users as well and you should reduce the amount of total visible AdSense ads.” username=”wpquads”]
How many AdSense ads are recommended?
Although there is no ad limit restriction and no upper limit you should be aware of very short posts on your site. Using a plugin and generating ads automatically on all your posts could lead to a very bad user experience and spamming of your own short posts with a huge number of ads which quickly exceed the total content.
To prevent this we recommend that you check your short posts carefully and consider if the total visible amount should be reduced. If you are using WP QUADS you can easily do this by deactivating specific ads on a single page:
If you are showing too many ads on a single page you could run into less or no visible ads on your site.
“We may limit or disable ad serving on pages with little to no value and/or excessive advertising until changes are made.”
So we suggest you keep less than 5 ads per page. We usually enable 3 or 4 ads on our pages.
But you should do some testing:
- Sometimes 2 ad units perform better than 3 ad units.
- Placing ads above the fold leads to better performing.
- A combination of text and image ads perform better.
Anyway, this limit should be correlating to your own website layout. If you have a lot of content and a huge site it could be ok to enable more than 5 ads on your site. The only thing that matters is the user experience. Keep that always in mind!
How many AdSense ad units are you using on your blog? As Google has lifted the 3 ads limit are you using more AdSense ad units or do you retain to the previous ad limit?
