Taboola
Playbook · 2 min read

How to block publishers (sites) in Taboola

Taboola’s quality lives at the publisher-site level: a few sites drive most of the invalid traffic. Here’s how to find them and block them yourself in Taboola — using each click’s site_id as the unit you act on.

01 /

Find the invalid-traffic sites

Every Taboola click carries a site_id — a 1:1 map to the publisher site that served your ad. ValidVisit reads that token, scores the visit 0–100, and rolls the invalid-traffic rate up by site_id, so sorting by bot rate hands you a short list of the specific sites — not campaigns, not creatives — concentrating the waste.

02 /

Block them in Taboola

In Taboola Ads, open the campaign and go to Campaign → Site Blocking (also reachable as the Block Sites / Blocked Publishers list). Paste the site IDs ValidVisit flagged into the block list and save. Taboola stops serving your ad on those sites going forward. For repeat offenders across campaigns, maintain a shared block list.

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What ValidVisit does and doesn’t do

When you flag a site to your Taboola rep and ask for a credit, "these clicks felt off" doesn’t move the conversation — a site_id with a 0–100 score and a click count does. That’s the shape of what ValidVisit hands you: a scored record per site, not a verdict Taboola has to take on faith. It doesn’t file the block or the credit request for you — you paste the site IDs into Site Blocking yourself, and you’re the one who decides whether a flagged site is worth a dispute or just a quiet exclusion. The record is yours to use either way.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Where is Site Blocking in Taboola?+
Inside a campaign, under Campaign → Site Blocking (sometimes labelled Block Sites / Blocked Publishers). You add the publisher site IDs you want excluded; Taboola stops serving there.
How do I know which Taboola sites to block?+
Score your Taboola visits with ValidVisit, which attributes each to its site_id and rates the invalid-traffic level per site. The sites with the worst bot rate and volume are your block candidates — backed by a 0–100 score on every visit, not guesswork.
Will blocking sites hurt my reach?+
You’re removing the sites that send invalid traffic, not your audience. Reach on genuine, converting publishers is unaffected; you stop paying for the sites that were never delivering real humans.
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