Disable Google Ads on One Page

By Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)How To

After my adventures with Google telling me I was hosting adult content (again, this is actually my third go-round with them), I’m here to inform you that you can now block Google Ads on one page only.

Add a URL Channel

First you have to tell Google what your URLs are that you want to treat differently. For that, we’ll use a URL channel which you can find at My Ads > Content > URL Channels. Now, you only get 500 of these, which means you can only flag 500 unique URLs as … well … unique.

Add a new URL channel - It gives you some examples, but basically forget using wildcards.

You may notice, no wildcards. So I can add halfelf.org/2012/legitimate-porn-plugins/ but not halfelf.org/.*/.*[porn].*/ which would be pretty cool. Once you’ve added your URL, you’ll see it like this:

URL channel in place, it's basically a list of all the URLs you treat special. Nothing fancy.

Edit Ad Settings

I’m using Auto Ads because I’m incurably lazy, as my friend Syed knows. So I go to My Ads > Auto Ads, but if you were using specific units, you’d go to My Ads > Ad Units. There you go to the Advanced URL Settings section and click on the add button for a new URL Group.

Advanced settings, there's a button for "New URL Group" and nothing else explanatory.

This brings you to a page where you can select the URLs for this group. 

A massive list of all URLs. This could get messy, Google. Thanks.

When you’ve picked all your URLs (and yes you can add more later), click next and you’ll get a list of all the possible ad units. Uncheck them all. That’s the point of this, right? Finally you’ll review the group and give it a name. I picked “No Ads” since that’s what this was.

Review the group, come up with a name, make sure the URLs are correct.

Annoyances

  1. You have to add in each URL one at a time
  2. There’s no wildcards or regex
  3. You only get 500 urls
  4. You still can’t talk to a human

All in all, it’s another day with Google.