Google AdSense - Allowed sites - any site or only certain sites option? Which one to use?

Google Adsense has a feature called the Allowed Sites List or Authorized Sites List that you can use to limit the websites that display your Adsense code. Now you might ask, why would I NOT want my Adsense code displayed? The issue is that Google Adsense codes can be seen in the source code of a website, and are therefore public.

This is not a big issue for most people, but there are malicious people out there who might put your Adsense code on bad sites, leading to you losing your Adsense code for bad behavior. If you want to protect yourself from this kind of malicious attack, the first step is to collect a list of all websites you want your Adsense code on into one document. This can be quite a list if you are an active freelance writer looking for passive income, or an active web marketer.

The fastest way to make your URL list if you have been careful to add all websites as URL channels in Adsense is to pull a URL channel report for the last year and copy down all the channels that are reporting earnings/views. If you have not been adding URL channels in Adsense, and you have a short list of sites you use Adsense on, than just work from memory. Than go add URL Channels into Adsense so you can see where you are making money from.

If you need to discover where your Adsense code has been used (by you or others) you might try searching for your own Adsense code at reverseinternet.com. This looks like a good idea, and Reverse Internet promotes itself as a place to check what your competitors are doing, but a search for my own code only shows up on this site even though I use my Adsense code on 18 other sites now (including revenue share and my own blogs). So far I have not found a reliable way to find a complete list of sites with a particular Adsense code.

If you know how to find what sites use an Adsense code, please comment. Choose the AdSense Setup tab. Choose the Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account option from the list.

This will bring up a list of URLs that you have allowed to display your Adsense code. If you have not added any sites before the list will be empty. So long as the the option to allow certain sites is not chosen the default is to allow all sites that have your Adsense code placed on them to report impressions and clicks.

If you are going to restrict your Adsense code to selected sites, enter them in the box. Click Save Changes complete the process of adding your sites to your Allowed Sites list.