Google policy: "Advertising is not permitted for the promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products, including cigarettes, cigars, tobacco pipes, and rolling papers."
You can find similar examples for escort (prostitution), software cracking services which are also against Google policies.
Those sponsors maintain their paid ads at Google for weeks.
How come Google accepts those advertisers?
[edited by: buckworks at 6:16 pm (utc) on June 26, 2009]
[edit reason] removed a link [/edit]
But when I noticed top placed paid advertisement for discount cigarettes etc. I realized they really do not care about their own policies. It is not about pattern matching. The search requests are exactly for cigarettes. No typo. Besides it is top placed advertisement. It had to be approved by Google employee. They must know it is against their own policies. They cannot play the "sorry, we have not noticed" role.
I have noticed Google several days ago. They thanked me for my email and that's it. Those ads are still there. Yes, the point a) is valid. They pay and Google makes money. What will be next? Child abuse DVD ads because those pay well?
Why it fell through the cracks I have no idea, and neither does anyone outside of Google.
You can report it, and it sounds like you did. Google thanked you. That's the *end* of your involvement. Google's under no obligation to tell you the result of their investigation before taking action (and in fact, for privacy reasons, most decidedly should NOT tell you anything at all about another user's account, even if it's in breach) And you would expect Google to do a thorough investigation, and that doesn't necessarily happen immediately.
Sometimes I think people forget that AdWords is quite a bit bigger than their own little niches, with a gi-normous number of accounts, advertisers, keywords and ads that are actually in the system.
The wheels turn slowly, but they do turn.
It is not about 1 niche. I mentioned more examples from different fields.
It is more obvious for the term discount cigarettes in example. There is a top placed paid advertisement of cigarettes online shop. There are 5 other online shop ads in the side ads block. How can all 6 ads escape their radar? They are there for weeks.
Is it really a question of manpower? Cannot they have some watchlist for the key words that are against their policy? It is impossible to write a program that will warn them about policy conflict? And if there is a conflict, how many seconds does it take the employee to decide whether the site is or isn't against the policy?
I do not expect personal answer from Google. I expect them to remove those ads and come with some better and permanent solution. As of now, those trouble companies can create those ads, enjoy them for weeks and if banned, they can create new account and repeat the process.
But is not it just more profitable to play the "we have not noticed" role?
The last time I reported an ad, it was because it led to a malware infected "freeware download"-site. It took them about a week, but it got removed.
Also: while most things might be against TOS, they're not that harmful. They might just filter reportings by users for keywords and prioritize the attention of their staff.
With billions of searches each day and probably hundreds of millions of ads for keywords with a lot of fluctuation, manpower is the primary problem.
The same company has now 2 ads placed above the search results because they see Google does not care.
If they were able to remove the ad with malware you reported within 1 week then they probably already checked the content of the sites I reported but they did not take any action because they make good money out of those cigarettes, escort and software cracking ads.
There are not that many items that are against Google adwords policy. The issue is much narrower and those billions of searches has nothing to do with it. It is misleading. It may be broad issue for those websites with malware advertising on keywords that are not against Google policy.
If they can employ top engineers to create algorithms to provide the best search results why they are not able to create algorithm to notify them that this company advertising for discount cigarettes has website full of Marlboro, Camel... shoping cart key words and its content is most probably not about quiting smoking.
Again, how many seconds does it take 1 part time working student to decide whether the site is or is not against the policy? Is it that difficult to check the advertisers that are directly advertising for alcohol, tobacco, drugs, stereoids, guns and few others mentioned in Google adwords policy. There are not that many advertisers for these keywords but there are and it must not be that difficult to review them. Check yourself.
If they were able to remove the ad with malware you reported within 1 week then they probably already checked the content of the sites I reported but they did not take any action because they make good money out of those cigarettes, escort and software cracking ads.
It might also be noted that it was a german ad and I got an email in german, maybe they have fewer complaints over here so they can check the sites faster, I really don't know.
If they can employ top engineers to create algorithms to provide the best search results why they are not able to create algorithm to notify them that this company advertising for discount cigarettes has website full of Marlboro, Camel... shoping cart key words and its content is most probably not about quiting smoking.
that's a good question. I've often asked myself that very question, not so much for the ads, but for the regular webspam. It's so easy to discover and they surely could filter it automatically, but they don't.
The problem is: reviewing a single site is not that hard. If it pays for the advertisers, they'll have plenty of sites. and they will cloak at a massive scale to trick the reviewers into thinking it's within TOS. It's really not that simple, sadly, allthough I agree with you, they should act quicker if they're notified.
