Oh man, I was banging my head off of the desk for a good long while trying to figure out why Google AdSense ads were not being displayed using Google SiteKit (Version 1.92.0) on a WordPress installation (Version 6.1.1). I scoured forums for countless hours on end blindly following rabbit trails of various troubleshooting steps, install guides on Google AdSense and Tag Manager manual installation, and reading other people’s articles that were having similar error messages, none of which were overly helpful, but was not having any luck. It’s only in retrospect, that I realized if I were paying closer attention to some really obvious details, I could have spared myself some grief and several more wasted ticks off the old life clock.
These are the two primary (redacted) error messages I was getting:
GET https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&host=ca-host-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Blocked By Extension
TLDR – “Blocked By Extension” was the dead giveaway I kept overlooking.
Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&host=ca-host-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed). Status code: (null).
First things first, I tried disabling all WP plugins one by one, and the problem still persisted. I even tried switching themes, and no dice. Wth?
At some point, I stumbled on the WordPress “Tools > Site Health > Info > Site Kit by Google” section, which provided some really useful information.
Later along the way, after reading a forum post, I did find a dope ass WordPress plugin worthy of honorable mention, and that would be the “Health Check & Troubleshooting” tool. “Troubleshooting mode” let’s you easily enable or disable any plugin or even WordPress theme to test without affecting your external site to visitors, which is pure fucking gold IMHO. Although it still didn’t really help me with my problem in this particular case, it still could have saved me some time earlier when I had to do everything manually and it affected the live site.
I even went insofar as to researching .htaccess rules for allowing CORS requests, which likely could have caused security issues had I implemented it and left it in place, and it still probably wouldn’t have fixed the issue.
After much consternation, on a whim, I eventually decided to test the site with a different web browser, and much to my chagrin, I found that it was working fine in Microsoft Edge browser, just not Firefox. Ok, one step forward, getting closer now at least. So, I followed that rabbit trail of Google searches for yet another while, until I finally somehow made the “Blocked By Extension” connection in my head.
ARGHHHHH, SON OF A BITCHHHHH!!!!!!
As it turns out, the “Startpage Privacy Protection” extension I have installed in Firefox to block Google trackers and somewhat have a bastion of free web searching, was in fact doing exactly what it was designed to do; blocking trackers. Long story short of it all, nothing was broke, and I’m pretty much just a fucking idiot who likes to wast his time. I simply turned privacy protection off for that one website in the plugin, and boom, everything works, The End. Fuck me.