What Google requires in your privacy policy
A privacy policy is one of the few page requirements Google puts in writing. Google's Publisher Policies say it must disclose that third parties may place and read cookies on your users' browsers, or use web beacons or IP addresses, to serve ads. The AdSense help page on required content lists what to cover:
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to your website or other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and/or other sites on the Internet.
- Users may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Ads Settings, or opt out of third-party vendors' cookies at www.aboutads.info.
- If other ad networks serve ads on your site, name them and link to their opt-out pages.
What the checker looks for
First we look for the policy itself, then for each statement inside it.
- The policy page: privacy links on your home page and common addresses such as /privacy-policy
- A link to the policy from your home page, where reviewers and visitors expect to find it
- A statement that third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies
- Google's advertising cookies, including older wording about the DoubleClick DART cookie
- How users can opt out: Ads Settings, aboutads.info or youronlinechoices
- A general cookie statement and a way to contact you
How to read the result
Each statement is marked found or missing. We look for several phrasings of each one, but a policy written in unusual language can still show a statement as missing. If that happens, reread the section and make the sentence plainer.
If no policy is found at all, check that the link is a normal HTML link in your header or footer, not one added by JavaScript after the page loads, and that the policy page returns status 200.
How to add the missing statements
Add an Advertising section to your policy. You can reword these sentences, but keep their meaning:
- This site shows ads from Google AdSense. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the Internet.
- You can opt out of personalized advertising in Google Ads Settings at https://www.google.com/settings/ads, and opt out of some third-party vendors' cookies at https://www.aboutads.info. Visitors in Europe can also use https://www.youronlinechoices.eu.
- To learn how Google uses data, see https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
Publishing it on WordPress and Blogger
WordPress: Settings, Privacy creates a starter privacy page, but it contains no AdSense wording, so add the Advertising section yourself. Then put the page in your footer menu so it is linked from every page, the home page included.
Blogger: create the policy under Pages, then show it in the footer with a Pages or Link List gadget. A link in a sidebar that is hidden on mobile is easy for a reviewer to miss.
Whatever the platform, keep one policy at one stable address, and update the date at the top whenever you add a new ad network.
Privacy policy and AdSense approval
A missing or incomplete privacy policy is a documented problem, and it takes minutes to fix. Having one does not guarantee approval, though: content, navigation and crawler access matter just as much. If you have visitors from the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, Google also requires a Google-certified consent management platform (CMP) for personalized ads, and a privacy policy does not replace that consent banner.
This tool checks wording, not legal compliance, so take legal advice for GDPR or CPRA duties. The full Approvalens scan reviews your privacy policy together with your About and Contact pages, your consent setup and more than 100 other signals. Sources: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1348695 and https://support.google.com/publisherpolicies/answer/10437794
FAQ
Does AdSense require a privacy policy?
Yes. Google's Publisher Policies require a privacy policy that discloses third-party cookies, web beacons or IP address use for ads, and AdSense help lists the specific statements to include.
Can I use a privacy policy generator?
Yes, as long as the result includes the Google cookie statement and opt-out links and matches what your site actually does. Run the published page through this checker afterwards.
Do I still need to mention the DART cookie?
Not by that name. Google's current wording talks about advertising cookies. Older policies that mention the DoubleClick DART cookie still pass this check, but updating the text is cleaner.
Where should I link my privacy policy?
In the footer of every page, or at least from the home page. Visitors and reviewers look for it there, and our checker tests for a home page link.
Is a cookie banner enough?
No. A consent banner collects consent, and the privacy policy explains what happens to the data. For personalized ads to visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, you need both.