Given this substantial level of forum activity, and by way of being more clear as to why the disabling of accounts is occurring, I have been asked by my colleagues at Google to post the message below:
In keeping with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, we spend a tremendous amount of time and effort monitoring the quality of our search and ad results. As we've stated many times before, Google's primary focus is on delivering the best possible search experience to our end users. To help further this goal, we work with our advertisers in a number of different ways to help them design and run the best ads possible.
Unfortunately, some online advertisers continue to promote services and websites that do not help, and in some cases could harm, our users. For instance, these advertisers may offer free services that bait users into accepting hidden fees. Or these advertisers may attempt to deliver malware to unsuspecting web citizens. Regardless of the practice, these types of campaigns do not benefit our users and we therefore take steps to enforce our policies [adwords.google.com] and prevent such advertisers from running ads through our systems.
Over the last decade Google has implemented a number of systems and processes to identify and disable ads that direct users to these offending websites. However, the ad disabling procedures have resulted in ongoingback and forth between us and these questionable advertisers as they try to outsmart our systems and processes. Therefore, we're being stricter with advertisers who deliver a bad user experience by permanently disabling AdWords accounts that engage in prohibited behavior.
Recently we began implementing this new account disabling. As a result, many advertisers who provide a poor user experience and have previously had their ads disabled will now have their accounts disabled.
We take our user, advertiser and publisher experiences very seriously, and remain dedicated to delivering only the highest quality advertising results to our users. We believe this new process of permanently disabling accounts will markedly improve the overall experience of our users, advertisers and publishers.
AWA
The ones that have been banned and have appealed with no response in a week (just a guess)are most likely done and will get nothing but a canned response.
There's a contradiction in there somewhere...
How do you appeal anyway?
I am not so sure "free trial offer" will get you banned. From doing a search related very much to this thread I can see an advertiser post with "free trial offer" in the text ad.If this were a trip I am sure this account would have been long gone.
This is a common mistake. I think if you looked long enough you could find existing ads breaking every rule and guideline Google has. It just means they got temporarily lucky. Please don't take this to mean it is OK for you to do the same.
Make the ad and delete it 2 minutes later - that could be sufficient for your entire account to be in jeopardy.
SuperF agree but I'm not so sure. I don't plan on bidding for it just my observations.
I never indicated Google was innocent but with so many speculating the reasons for a ban I just suggested one might look hard at their history as a possible culprit.
bryson
[adwords.google.com...]
This can be used to appeal as you will get a human review.
I think that's just one of the general customer support forms, not something specific to appealing banned accounts (like the specific form there is for banned Adsense accounts, for example).
[pcworld.com...]
I think that everyone that runs advertising on AdWords wants Google to boot anyone who’s ‘rogue and malicious’ from their system. It’s the valid businesses, and legitimate affiliate marketing businesses that seem to be the problem…
GR
"Among the banned advertisers are those who charge for supposedly free software, offer get-rich-quick scams or try to lure visitors into disclosing private information in exchange for free products."
"We're committed to ensuring that the end user experience is a positive one, and we want users to have a HIGH QUALITY, relevant and safe experience when getting information from our ads,"
There are many affilates who are still out there advertising away, but there are many affiliates who fall into those statements are gone.
I would bet every last dollar that people who have been posting here were advertising one or both
I won't bet, but it could easily be. Few of affiliates that posted here mentioned Clickbank of which I believe most of stuff is a "no, no" for Google.
Some bizs had trouble with third-party this or that, free stuff, and so on.
When you sign up to Adwords, you implicitly agree to their terms of service. You are expected to read and follow their guidelines. To say you don't know why is a cop out. Google is basically telling you that if you didn't read our guidelines, that's your problem. I'm sure they have better things to do than telling advertisers "you've been banned because..."
Now, I'm not saying that all bannings were legitimate. I'm sure a certain small percentage was in error. But those who did get banned legitimately only have themselves to blame. The guidelines can be found at adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guidelines.cs
Google also experienced "unusually high" click-through rates, meaning end users clicked on ads more often than usual, AdGooroo said.
This is the recession in action.
The problem is small networks of people who are quite content on milking the Adwords system of anywhere from 200-500 dollars a month. If you use your reports effectively you’ll see it everywhere from hundreds of clicks from a small town over a few months to multiple clicks on the same keyword in a particular city in the same day. Others have learned to paw at the ads then check their Adsense accounts a few hours later to see the cash return on the ad. People are beating the Adword system everywhere. Not to mention the E-Mail groups that see Adwords as a shortcut for spam harvesting. IMO worthless clicks are running at 50-70% in Adwords dependant on category. Bottom line is Adwords is faltering badly as a sales tool because scammers are preying gigantically on the advertisers.
Adwords has become Google's Craiglist. The scammers have already overrun it.
Now, I'm not saying that all bannings were legitimate. I'm sure a certain small percentage was in error.
Indeed.
This is precisely why a clear, swift, and effective appeals process to get accounts reinstated (when a ban was not merited) is important...
I would bet every last dollar that people who have been posting here were advertising one or both of the following two statments stated in the article:"Among the banned advertisers are those who charge for supposedly free software, offer get-rich-quick scams or try to lure visitors into disclosing private information in exchange for free products."
"We're committed to ensuring that the end user experience is a positive one, and we want users to have a HIGH QUALITY, relevant and safe experience when getting information from our ads,"
There are many affilates who are still out there advertising away, but there are many affiliates who fall into those statements are gone.
That's a very simplistic view...
Try this:
1. We have promoted thousands of merchants, spending millions of dollars with Adwords
2. Years ago, we got a slap for a couple of ad groups, promoting merchants doing things like "free for the first 30 days, automatically bill you if you don't cancel", as many big merchants have done for a long time - but not against any Google guidelines at that time
3. We immediately pause the ads, $10 clicks are unsustainable
4. Subsequently the guidelines change, without Google informing us. The guidelines are buried away in their help system, I still find it hard to navigate to them
5. We get banned, without a chance of appeal
10 staff, who (knowing their livelihood depends on it) and stringently followed Google's rules to the best of their ability, are now without work. Our crime: affiliate marketing on a large enough scale for a few inadvertent mistakes to bring us down.
I cannot think of any court, regime or business anywhere that could treat a well-meaning, high-paying customer with such contempt and inhumanity.
Inhumanity is the key word, for Google has automated it. They'll be calling themselves SkyNet soon...
Our crime: affiliate marketing on a large enough scale for a few inadvertent mistakes to bring us down.
This is the other problem with the current banning system besides the lack of an obvious and clear appeals process...
...size can bring you down. The more merchants you advertise for, the bigger the chances one of them does something wrong without your knowledge and your entire account for all merchants will be banned.
As far as being unfairly banned, if you really feel that way, well there is not much you can really do but move on to other advertising models. After all, I do not see a whole lot of Google users going to message boards and posting that they miss all the banned advertisers, correct?
Yawn, if you read through all of Google's statements, Google did multiple manual reviews (From Teams of people) of the banned accounts before they banned the accounts.
Yawn, nobody here is qualified to comment on Google's internal operations, I think, seeing that nobody here works there (except for AWA).
Also, come on guys, do you really think it takes 30-90 days to review an account once you send them an email of appeal? If you really do think that then you are living in another world....
Boh... the point being made was the opposite actually - that right now there's no obvious process to initiate an appeal in the first place.
As far as being unfairly banned, if you really feel that way, well there is not much you can really do but move on to other advertising models.
If you are ever unfairly banned, you are welcome to do that... maybe not everybody is as skeptical as you are about Google eventually listening to legitimate complaints.
Umm, there is a process to appeal, its called emailing adwords supportThen you assume that Google is actually looking at each appeal. I think Google will send a standard reply to each appeal: "Ban was correct, don't contact us again. If you do, we will not respond...".
Check my post (4:15 pm on Nov 20) on the second page of this topic where I write about a guy that managed to get his account unbanned. After the first email Google did not actually look at his case. He got the same standard reply everyone is receiving when they appeal. Second email same story. But after the third email they finally had a look at his case and his account was reinstated
Google tells in the first copy/paste email not to contact them anymore and that if you do they will not reply. How many people will send a second email or even a third email after that message from Google?
Face it, no one has had any luck in getting their accounts turned back on. Google is not going to reverse their decision.
Here is an article on what Google said during their corporate earning call and realize that these statements are from the top of Google's management team to investors:
Face it, no one has had any luck in getting their accounts turned back on. Google is not going to reverse their decision.Oh yes there is. Read my post you are replying to again...
Like I said, Google already had teams of people look at the accounts they banned and the decision was already made and their employee's are told to answer appeals that way. All they do is check to see if you are on the list of intentionally banned accounts or not. If you are not on that list, they may reverse it, but since this was not an automated process and a manual process through teams of people
And like I said, you don't know squat about Google's internal operations, so this is all conjecture. Conjecture not supported by the facts on the ground, I might add. Ever heard of Occam's Razor?
I am sure Google made no mistakes in accidentally shutting off accounts
Right, Google is perfect. Never made any mistakes, never will. Indeed, why bother playing with AdWords? - I think I'll just go mortgage the house to buy their stock and wait for it to climb to $100,000/share...
Like I said, no one from SEPT-DEC ban has been reinstated!
Oh...and this client was not an affiliate or some spammy malicious site, just a multi-million dollar company with 5 retail stores in Chicago...but it doesn't matter in Google's eyes.
GR
