The email mentions that I have submitted several ads for landing pages that are considered to be of a poor quality and that the landingpage does not comply with the 'landing page and site quality guidelines'. I most remove the ads. Well, no problem.
The email also mentions that it is a final warning. It tells me if they find any ad in the future that is in violation with the site quality guidelines (the product itself is not the problem) they will immediately disqualify me from participating in the AdWords program. Now, that is a problem.
A bit strange? Also because I’m using Adwords more then 4 years and then I receive an automated email in English while I have a Dutch account.
Anyway, how can Adwords ban you for submitting sites that that seems to be in violation with the Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines while there is not a tool where can check if an URL is ok to submit?
How can you be for 100% sure if a site is in violation with the Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines before you submit the site? That is impossible right?
As mentioned, I’m using Adwords for myself and for other companies for over four years so I know how it works. The site I submitted yesterday is nothing different from many other sites I promote.
If Google would like to ban clients for this than they should offer a tool where you can check your website for Page and Site Quality Guidelines before you submit the site. If Google does not offer a tool like this then they should not ban clients.
[edited by: engine at 1:05 pm (utc) on Sep. 25, 2009]
[edit reason] user requested edit [/edit]
How ironic!
I just got a PHONE CALL from an AdSense partner development rep.
They were wondering what happened to all their revenue!-!-!
We're are talking a publisher that was giving them a quarter mil of QUALITY ad space annually for their advertisers. And I count Google themselves as one of my best and highest paying advertisers.
It told him if I had just a few months of the double revenue from Adwords campaigns after the recession, I would have been fine with just the organic. As it was I was faced with selling my established, 13 year old, Alexa 20,000 site or my house.
When I told him the story he was literally down on his knees apologizing.
I have half a dozen baby sites that he has committed to helping me to develop from an optimization standpoint.
The whole thing is just so preposterous.
[edited by: Khensu at 7:00 pm (utc) on Oct. 12, 2009]
AdSense partner development rep
A Google employee? Wow!
Propping you up with one hand, slapping you down with the other.
-T
-T
Look what is in my page one spot on search for a site that supplied content for ms office business users.
Free Tattoo Library
This thread seems to be mostly about bashing G and its policies or hoping to get a message to it. I believe that all our efforts are better spent if we tried to find ways to benefit from these changes (change always provides opportunities) or finding solutions. We have had such things done to us before and somehow most of us managed to survive and thrive. Let us concentrate on how to solve our problems rather than griping about them.
Please let me know how you appealed, and who you contacted.
Got the lovely note too.. quite ironic, seeing that half my campaings have been hit by 1/10 QS. My motivation to create more ads is zero currently.. I am in limbo.. Thinking on how to proceed and where to go..
That is about where I am with Adwords.
Hoping that the landscape changes and I can do without them totally.
I am sure there will be a reckoning, there always is.
[Don't do evil]
Before the advent of the internet, Yellow Pages had the monopoly of market share (talking from the perspective of Australia) for offline advertising. Imagine Yellow Pages banning an individual or company from placing an ad with them. It would not have been tolerated and an uproar would have ensued, with wide media coverage.
Sure, there were Yellow Pages competitors out there, but due to the huge market share enjoyed by YP, if you were not listed in YP you were at a great disadvantage to your competitors. Same thing now with Google.
What needs to be legislated IMO:
a) Google cannot restrict anyone from using their PPC service.
b) Where ads/product/lander fall outside their guidelines, clear and precise details must be given for why it was denied and what is required to bring it into line with Google's PPC policies.
c) And ad or product cannot be denied if it can be shown that there are other ads for same or similar product being shown on Google's networks. i.e One in all in. Or vice versa.
d) There needs to be a site or such setup to put in motion steps to reign in Google. At the moment the complaints are spread across many forums. I've no idea what format, whether a petition or just to raise public awareness of the issues involved. It might seem futile at first, but a difference can be made once energies are focused. As the saying goes "from an acorn does a mighty oak grow".
...my 2 cents
They have driven hundreds of millions of dollars to competing traffic networks that don't treat their customers like pieces of garbage.
Additionally, advertisers are reaching out to publishers directly in record numbers, striking agreements that are typically better for both parties.
People will only spend so much time and energy trying to fit the Google mold before they seek out alternative sources of traffic.
That being said, our ad spend with Google has shrunk by 90% this year compared to the prior 2 years. This, while our overall adspend and profit are up over 200%.
Google, we don't need you. When it comes to the point when SEMs are scratching their heads because they can't get any of their clients sites to stay active for more than 90 days - you are making a serious blunder.
Google has shown their hand - and the middle finger up to us all. It's quite clear that their intent is to eliminate advertising professionals from AdWords so that product owners will be forced to work with them directly. They are intimidated by the amount of money affiliate networks are making. Just look at the INC 500... Google's days as the internet advertising powerhouse are numbered. It will be interesting to watch them balance that massive girth on such a thin wobbly leg over the next 5 years.
I thought they did do that. They have a right to refuse an ad. TV and radio stations I'm sure refuse ads sometimes. I know ads on buses have been refused, it's happened recently in my home town.
> What needs to be legislated IMO
You cannot legislate how a company wants to run its business, who they can accept as clients or tell them they can't refuse anyone.
You cannot legislate how a company wants to run its business, who they can accept as clients or tell them they can't refuse anyone.
You can if they are a utility. Maybe Google is trying to stop their market share from getting too high, before they become a utility?
Looks like AWA isn't going to respond after all - perhaps a new, clean thread could be opened up, one without the Google bashing?
I thought they did do that. They have a right to refuse an ad. TV and radio stations I'm sure refuse ads sometimes. I know ads on buses have been refused, it's happened recently in my home town.There is a difference between refusing an ad in advance and allowing an ad for a couple of years with an average quality score of 8/10 and then say to your client:
"Hey stupid! You can't advertise that website. We now give you 1/10 and if we decide in the future that we don't like any of your currently aproved ads you are running at this moment then we will ban you for the rest of your life!"
True. But sometimes, ads are accepted and generate controversy in which case, they are pulled. I know, it's not quite the same thing.
> Looks like AWA isn't going to respond after all
Well, he has earlier in this thread. I thought he had made it clear what is happening. It's just that people are so pissed, they refuse to accept it and understand Google's point of view and correct the problem. I expected this on other forums but not here on WebmasterWorld where I thought people were smarter. He probably figures there's no point in continuing repeating the same thing.
> Maybe Google is trying to stop their market share from getting too high, before they become a utility?
Has there been any indication anywhere to classify a search engine as a utility? Not to my knowledge and I don't expect that to happen.
In my opinion, I doubt any company would do anything to reduce their market share. In fact, I think this will increase their share in the long run. At least until the other search engines realize they must do the same thing, but by then it may be too late.
There is hope though. Google isn't everything. I've bounced back and I'm sure you all can too.
Congrats on bouncing back, I'd be very interested in hearing this...so far I've only heard from people right after they get banned and a re freaking out, but then I never really hear from them again
- I'm going to provide a script that can be run locally. All it will do is capture input, call my server for the results, and redisplay. If Google looks at the sites, they won't be able to tell that it's not really being run locally. Hopefully that will avoid any potential ban.
- I'm going to dramatically increase my prices for this feature and a few others I'm adding.
- I'm actually going to be adding like a mini-dayparting kind of thing. I've had an affilate manager in my industry bugging me for a while to allow me access to the output from this calculator. I'm going to allow my clients to decide when they want to run the calculations clean, and when they want to display the affiliates results :). They'll be able to turn it on at night say, or when they go on vacation.
In the end I believe I'll make more money, my clients will make more money - probably enough to pay my fees - and the affiliate company is going to be happy to have access to all these hundreds of websites all at once :). Kinda funny to have to do all this because we're actually none of the things Google's trying to stop, but we exhibit signals from many of them.
Makin' lemonade!
you might be right there, everyone they knocked out of my niche was MS related
<snip>
Sadly, Facebook is only gunna take the web in the same direction and maybe with even more communistic fervor. I hate to say it, but go BING - GO MS!.
Hopefully, google will cease from being EVIL in terms of serving the same 200 or so NAME BRAND WEBSITES and turning a mammoth long term profit.
Maybe its may be time for google to change their motto to "don't be too evil." Go ahead, turn a short term profit, (AND!) turn a long term profit as well.
And OH google, in your (great mercy and power) oh mighty g, would you let us non-union little guys with our millions of startup companies and small internet business dreams make a couple bucks!
May be time to create a new internet (a private network or pc's without BIG GOV and BIG MONOPLOLY) - just a thought...
[edited by: buckworks at 6:19 am (utc) on Oct. 23, 2009]
[edit reason] Inappropriate language [/edit]
more like a private advertiser/publisher network and get a lot of players to defect
more like "don't be too evil"
I wrote an entire statement (which was tame) about how I believed AWA wasn't really a person, but a standard 'ol g-bot like the people at g who try to communicate with us out here in the real world.
I guess I should apologize - I thought I was on #*$!..my bad.
Personally I find rants like yours juvenile and I believe they only detract from the serious discussion going on. In this thread there have been many calls to keep the "google is an evil conspiracy"-posts in a separate thread and try to focus on what can be done to make the best of the situation, given what it is. If you go through AWA's post and still claim he's a bot, then either you're trolling or you do not have a clue how bots really work. Either way, bringing stuff like communism etc in to the discussion is just ridiculous, and I wish you'd start your own G-bashing thread instead of wasting space here.
I am continuing to really push other areas but it's very hard to make up the revenue lost from an area like Google Adwords.
Well Stu, your opposition to my attempt at hyperbole is fine.
Ranting, sure. Bashing NO! Humorously (attempt) calling out a rogue TRILLION dollar business, which is left unchecked in 2009 in exaggerated terms, YES!
Google is a type. Google provides us marketers with a HORRID customer experience, yet goes to great lengths to preach excellence in user experience. When the BIGGEST companies online like ebay have the green light to bid on the entire dictionary (including dead cats at one point) holding a QS of 10/10. This frustrates as I may have an entire site about selling dead cats, yet my QS is 1/10 and my LP Q is BAD.
In 2009, they are an example of how a young, naive business, which deals with highly highly, coveted accounts with the utmost disdain.
To whom much is given, much is required - and we marketers get VERY little from the g monster in terms of answers as to better a users google experience. I understand they want to protect their business and its overall model. That's fine. I simply can not stomach the thought of a single business literally making and or breaking entire companies based on a simple mistake or missed email.
Google, in a true sense controls the heartbeat of the Internet, and I do not accept such a large entities lack of responsibility to its great reach.
1) Google actually ignoring (or worse telling the client to FOAD) for accounts that are worth seven digits.
2) A client that is doing seven digits in advertising, can't figure out (once they correct their behavior), getting another Adwords accounts, to save their staff from dismissal.
If I ever got banned from Adwords, and I have done no wrong, I would give Google approximately 48 hours to correct the problem, before the gloves come off.
What else can you do, when you can't negotiate or mediate or compromise, or even find out what you did wrong, but switch that white hat for black.
It interesting, most companies fight to keep clients; with Google, you have to fight to remain a client.
UPDATE::
Now after saying all this, I came across an old thread from 2007, where adwordadvisor basically said (paraphrasing) that you always got warnings before you get banned, and the decission to ban an account is taken with careful consideration, since clients are the source of their revenue, and the decision to ban accounts are not taken likely.
So has Google suddenly got evil, or are people crying in their beer after getting caught.
1. Google is going after affiliates on Adwords
2. They're doing this to improve user-experience, which is far more important to them than advertiser experience - IMO these changes are a bit overdue
3. Admittedly they could have gone about it in a better way - the tone of their emails to customers who have been with them a long time and until now had been doing nothing wrong is a bit shocking.
This will improve user experience, which means more users on Google and therefore more business for any of us who stop moaning and just get on with creating sites that meet the guidelines.
I'm thinking that if Google have done this to improve user experience on Adwords they may be using it as a test to improve their targeting before they move onto the naturals - if they get it right and learn from this then they may well use that data to kick affiliates off the naturals?
