What AdSense actually requires, quoted from Google rather than from blogs
Google publishes no minimum post count, no minimum site age and no traffic minimum. One page is genuinely mandatory: a privacy policy.
- How it was measured
- Regex sweep of the AdSense help corpus in raw HTML, extracting sentences verbatim rather than paraphrasing. Cross-checked identical wording across two help pages. The Program policies page is stamped "Last updated: August 4, 2026".
- Evidence current as of
- This corrects us
- Our own earlier note repeated the widely-cited "changing your site resets the review clock". No Google source says it.
Search for AdSense approval requirements and you will be told you need thirty posts, a six-month-old domain, and a certain amount of traffic. We went looking for where Google says any of that.
It does not. The stated requirements are that you are 18 or over, that you can access your site's HTML, that content is "high-quality, original, and attract[s] an audience", and that you comply with the Program policies. There is no numeric bar anywhere in the corpus.
One page is mandatory, and it is the one people skip. From the Publisher Policies, verbatim: publishers must "have and abide by a privacy policy that clearly discloses any data collection, sharing, and usage that takes place as a consequence of your use of Google products and services, including information about the technologies used, such as your use of cookies, web beacons, IP addresses, or other identifiers". It must also disclose "that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users' browsers".
An About page and a Contact page are not required by Google. They are worth having, because a human reviewer reads them — but that is a judgement, not a rule, and the two should not be confused.
The review timing, and a myth we repeated ourselves
Google's only published statement on duration appears identically on two help pages: "The review process usually takes a few days, but in some cases can take 2-4 weeks." There is no SLA and no stage breakdown.
We had also written down, from the same folklore everyone else repeats, that changing your site resets the review clock. A sweep of the entire help corpus for reset, restart, resubmit and delay returns exactly two relevant sentences, and neither says that. The closest is: "Make sure you don't remove your site and resubmit it because this can delay the process" — which is about deleting and re-adding the site entity, and the word is delay.
The real throttle is different and nobody mentions it. From the Policy center: "The Start review process button will be inactive if your site has been reviewed and rejected several times recently."
Rejections buy a cooldown. Edits cost nothing. The folklore says don't touch it; the actual rule says don't submit until you are ready. Those imply opposite behaviour.
The failure that looks like patience
If required account setup is incomplete — notably payment information — then "your site will not be reviewed and will remain in the 'Getting ready' status".
Nothing is queued. Nothing is happening. It is indistinguishable from waiting, and it is the most common reason a review appears to take forever.
Tracked in our ledger as ADSENSE-REQS, ADSENSE-TIME. If a number here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it in place and say what changed.