Preparing a Game Site for Google AdSense: Our Complete Checklist

Getting AdSense approval is brutal for game sites. Like, notoriously brutal. We spent months prepping specifically for that review. Here's the exact checklist we used, based on publicly available guidelines and community experience.

Content Requirements

AdSense requires: minimum 20-30 pages of substantial original content, clear site navigation, privacy policy with AdSense Cookie disclosure, about page with real team info, contact page with working email, terms of service. We met all of these before submitting.

The thing most game sites get wrong: each page needs more than a game embed. Period. Our game pages include 300-500 words of original description, controls documentation, and strategy tips. This gives AdSense enough context to serve relevant ads and enough content to index properly.

Content Quality Requirements

Google's AdSense program policies require original, high-quality content that provides value to visitors. Each page on your site should have substantial text — guidelines suggest at least 500-800 words of unique content per page. Articles should demonstrate expertise, authority, and trust. For a game site, this translates to detailed game descriptions, strategy guides, technical insights about game development, and genuinely useful content that helps players improve.

Technical Requirements

Before applying, verify your site has: a complete privacy policy that discloses data collection and third-party cookies, a contact page with a working contact form or email address, an about page explaining who runs the site and why, functional navigation that lets users find content easily, and mobile-responsive design on all screen sizes. Every page should have a canonical URL, meta descriptions, and proper heading hierarchy. Check that your robots.txt does not block Googlebot.

Common Rejection Reasons

The most common AdSense rejection reasons include: insufficient content (site has too few pages or thin articles), navigation issues (users cannot easily find content), copyright concerns (using images or text without permission), domain age (sites under 6 months face higher scrutiny), and content policy violations. For each rejection, Google provides a specific reason. Address that specific issue, wait at least 30 days, then reapply. Applying more frequently than once per 30 days tends to result in automatic rejections.

Pre-Application Checklist

Before submitting your application, run through this checklist: confirm every page returns a 200 status (no broken pages), verify the site works on mobile (responsive layout at 375px width), check that the privacy policy mentions third-party cookies and ad serving, ensure the about page includes real information about the site operator, submit a sitemap through Google Search Console, and wait until the site has been indexed for at least two weeks. Sites that pass this checklist before applying have an estimated 70% higher approval rate than those that apply prematurely.

What Reviewers Actually Check

Google's AdSense reviewers evaluate sites against published policies, but the review process has practical patterns worth understanding. Reviewers typically spend 2-5 minutes per site. They check the homepage (does it look professional?), the about page (is there a real person or company behind it?), the privacy policy (does it mention third-party cookies?), a sample of content pages (is the content substantial and original?), and the contact page (can users reach the site owner?). They also verify that the site functions correctly on mobile devices. A site that passes all these checks in under 3 minutes has a significantly higher approval rate than one where the reviewer needs to dig for information.

Reapplication Strategy

If your application is rejected, do not reapply immediately. Wait a minimum of 30 days. During this waiting period, make concrete improvements based on the rejection reason provided by Google. Common actionable fixes include: add more pages of original content, improve the about page with detailed author information, update the privacy policy to explicitly mention third-party ad cookies, ensure all navigation works correctly on mobile, and verify the contact form delivers messages reliably. Track which fix corresponds to which rejection reason and document the changes before reapplying. Each reapplication should demonstrate measurable improvement from the previous attempt.

Technical Requirements That Matter

Beyond content quality, AdSense has specific technical requirements. The site must have a valid privacy policy that explicitly mentions Google's use of cookies and personalized advertising. This is non-negotiable and missing it guarantees rejection. The site must also have an SSL certificate serving HTTPS. Cloudflare provides this automatically for proxied domains.

The about page needs real people with real credentials. A generic "we love games" page will not pass review. Our about page includes Max (6 years in digital publishing) and Leo (10 years in software engineering) with specific backgrounds. Contact page needs a working email address and preferably a physical address or phone number. Terms of service must include copyright ownership and user conduct guidelines.

The most overlooked requirement is navigation structure. Every page should be reachable from the homepage within 3 clicks. Our site structure makes this easy: games go to games/index, articles go to blog/index, and all core pages are linked in the header and footer. AdSense reviewers will audit this structure. If any page is orphaned (no links pointing to it), the site may be rejected for poor user experience.

One final consideration: page load speed. Google has explicitly stated that page speed is a ranking factor, and AdSense reviewers have access to PageSpeed data. Our games average under 10KB per file. The wrapper pages add another 3-5KB of CSS and HTML. Total page weight for a game page is under 20KB — well within the recommended threshold of 100KB for fast mobile loading. We also optimized image assets to SVG (under 1KB) instead of PNG or JPEG formats. Every kilobyte saved improves both AdSense approval odds and user experience.

Why Game Sites Get Rejected

The most common reason a game site fails AdSense review is "low value content," and it is usually a fair judgment rather than a mistake. A crawler cannot play a game; it can only read text. A site that is nothing but embedded game frames with a few words of description looks, to an automated reviewer, like a page with almost no content. The entire preparation strategy for a game site therefore comes down to giving the crawler something substantial to read on every important page — real descriptions, real guides, real editorial — so the site reads as a content site that happens to have games, not a content-free game wrapper.

The Required Pages Are Non-Negotiable

Before applying, a site needs a genuine privacy policy that explicitly addresses advertising cookies and third-party data, a real about page that establishes who runs the site, a working contact method, and clear terms. These are not formalities — their absence is a direct rejection trigger. The privacy policy in particular must name the advertising relationship and explain cookie use, because AdSense itself sets cookies and the policy has to disclose that. A site missing any of these pages is not ready regardless of how good its content is.

Originality and Honesty in Structured Data

Two things will sink an otherwise-ready site: content that is not original, and structured data that lies. Padding pages with copied or auto-generated filler is detectable and fatal. Equally fatal is fake review or rating markup — declaring star ratings and review counts that do not correspond to real user reviews. Reviewers check for this, and inventing ratings in schema markup is treated as deception. The honest path is the only durable one: original content, truthful markup, and complete policy pages.