Abandoned property adjustment

If you see a line item in your "Transactions" page labelled “Abandoned property adjustment”, it means that Google has sent your account balance in your name to your state government for safekeeping (a process called escheatment). We did this because we had reason to believe that your Adsense account was abandoned.

We consider an account abandoned if there's been no activity on that account for 2-5 years (depending on your state of residence). Activity on your account means:

• You signed in to your account.
• You successfully received a payment from your account.

What is escheatment?

Companies in the U.S. are obliged to give assets that they believe are abandoned to U.S. state governments. For U.S. residents it's the state government of the state where you've told us you reside. If you reside outside the U.S., then it's our state of incorporation (Delaware).

What should I do?

If your balance has been escheated to the state government, you can apply to your state government unclaimed property office to have the money returned to you. You can find your unclaimed property office by typing the name of your state together with "unclaimed property" into Google Search.

How can I avoid having my account balance escheated?

To prevent your account balance from being escheated, we recommend that you regularly sign in to your Adsense account, so that we know that you're still interested in it. Or, if you have enough of an account balance, then make sure that you've met the conditions to get paid. The most common reasons for not getting a payment are:

• You haven't set up your form of payment
• You haven't submitted your tax information
• You have not reached the payment threshold.