It took me a day or so to write the email and a couple days for them to restore my account. No problems since.
I think the main "trick" (if one would call it one) is to be polite, professional and straightforward. If it's just a misunderstanding, they will restore your account. :)
In talking with them i have gotten nowhere. All they say is that i can't advertise with google anymore and there is nothing i can do. I still am not sure what exactly i did and they claim there is no way to appeal the process. When you sent an appeal did you send it to adwords support? I obviously messed up but don't feel what i did deserves a ban.
Im sorry. but... I still see some ads for this KW?
Are u sure the ban was because of that ad?
So far, I've called AdWords support and spoken with a different representative from the one I originally spoke to and offered explanations, and been told it will be taken to the policy committee (but the policy group doesn't offer phone support, and so I can't talk to them). I'm still waiting to hear back from them, in the mean time I am also going to write up a detailed explanation (as whoisgregg suggests above) and send it to the last person I had contact with. I'm hoping it will make its way to the right people.
A related question: when you cleaned up your account, did you delete offending ads/keywords, or simply pause the ad/campaign? I think by and large we deleted the offending ads/keywords, but some may have simply been paused. I wonder if this makes a difference, or if only active ads are considered?
content_adj: there are plenty of ads for the keywords that we were suspended for, some in explicit violation of the same terms we were suspended for. We did not use this as a justification, as we were overly cautious in what we removed to avoid a ban, but it makes it frustrating in understanding how the process works.
This kind of stuff makes me nervous about working with Google Adwords and putting alot of effort into it, even though I really like using it. I think Google really needs to become much less trigger-happy with its paying customers.
[Disclaimer: I'm not seeing what Google's seeing. Maybe some folks here did something really messed up - I can't know.]
A few weeks later I was using Adwords Editor to separate my content and search clicks. I have quite a few campaigns with many AdGroups so i was making copies of each campaign. I did not think this out carefully and never realized by doing this my ads that had been rejected but not deleted would be submitted again.
I was quite shocked when I got another email the next day saying those ads had been rejected as I never realized i submitted them again.
About 5 days later my ads stopped working and i discovered i had been suspended. Of course they will not tell me why i was suspended but i am guessing it is because what i described above. Now I obviously screwed up and did some things against their TOS. What kills me is that since their warning I was trying to do everything right and made an honest mistake. Of course i can't really prove this.
I understand Google totally has a right to do what they want if someone breaks their TOS. However i felt my suspension was a little harsh. For someone who is trying to make it on his own as a SEM it is pretty devastating. I have sent a few apologetic emails to google but have only gotten canned reponses saying that i am suspended and their is nothing they can do.
I think I will try calling today.
Mmm, is it legal in your country to sell license plate spray?
Take a look at some of the sites selling software running AdWords and let me know if think they are all selling legitimate copies..hehe
