Validating Ads.txt through a Third-Party Service

To ensure your ads.txt file is correctly formatted, use a validation service like https://adstxt.guru/validator/. This tool can confirm the validity of your file. However, you might encounter a situation where the file passes validation here but still results in an “ads.txt not found” error in AdSense.

The Importance of a New Line in ads.txt

The structure of your ads.txt file is crucial. A common mistake is not including a newline character at the end of the file. For example, if your ads.txt looks like this:

google.com, pub-0000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Modify it to include a newline character (\n) at the end, like this:

google.com, pub-0000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

This small change can fix the error on your ads.txt file.

Why the error occurs?

The “not found” error for an ads.txt file in Google AdSense is typically related to the way the file is formatted and accessed by web crawlers. If there isn’t a new line at the end of your ads.txt file, it may cause issues for several reasons:

  1. Standard Compliance: The ads.txt standard, defined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), suggests certain formatting rules. While it doesn’t explicitly state the need for a newline at the end of the file, many parsers and systems are designed to expect files to end with a newline character. This is a common standard in many areas of computing, not just for ads.txt files.

  2. File Parsing: Some systems and crawlers may expect a newline at the end of a file as a signal that the file has been completely read. Without this newline, the crawler might interpret the end of the file incorrectly, leading to errors or incomplete reading of the file content.

  3. Editing Tools: Many text editors automatically add a newline character at the end of the file. If this newline is missing, it might indicate that the file was not properly saved or was edited with a tool that doesn’t follow standard text file conventions.