The requirements to join Google's Adsense Program have changed significantly.

Now that I've said this, I've got to add that I belong to way too many Webmaster forums, as I thought I had posted this information - and I have, everywhere but here!

Google has changed it's requirements for Adsense. All of us who were previously registered for Adsense are lucky.

You must have a top level domain, which means you can no longer join the Adsense program by setting up a free myblog/blogger.com site. It has to be registered to you, i.e. myblog.com

You site must be registered and active for six months. No more buying a bunch of domains and running them into the ground by the end of six months.

The information you give to Google must match the domain registration information. This would have actually affected me, since some of our domains are registered to my SO and some to our joint business name. It also tells me, that eventually, we have to clean up registry details on who owns what sites or have separate Adsense accounts for the both of us.

The website you use to apply for the Adsense account must have substantial, original content. Is this a bid to stop MFA sites (Made For Adsense) before they can spawn?

And finally, your site must comply with with Google's Adsense program policies. So, don't forget the little things like having a Privacy Policy posted on your site. Google will not tell you specifically that's it is missing, they'll just send you a "Page Type" denial letter and let you figure it out.

Taken directly from Google Support:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/...301417b6&hl=en

Page Type: In order to participate in Google AdSense, publishers'
websites and application information must satisfy the following
guidelines:

- Your website must be your own top-level domain (www.example.com and
not www.example.com/mysite).
- Your domain must have been registered and active for at least 6
months. before you apply for AdSense.
- You must provide accurate personal information with your application
that matches the information on your domain registration.
- Your website must contain substantial, original content.
- Your site must comply with Google AdSense program policies:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US which include Google's
webmaster quality guidelines:

I actually think this is a good policy - for current Adsense account holders. With the recession, many new Adsense accounts were producing MFA sites, you know, sites that only list Adsense ads with a minimal amount of content.

These types of sites actually make Yahoo a better Search Engine, somewhere along the line, their algorythm seems to filter MFAs out better than Google and you can actually get a meaningful search result.

However, Google is King as far as SERPs (search engine results pages) are concerned, and that's what matters to webmasters, since two thirds more people search through Google than Yahoo.

This will make the price of old domain names being resold more costly. Especially if one can hold on to the age of a site (Google is checking these and catches quite a few, resetting the age of the site back to zero.)