Heads up - Google thought I was an affiliate, disabled campaign.

Incorrect assumptions.

[dmorison]

Not impressed with Google.

Totally out of the blue, I got an email saying my campaign had been selected for review and subsequently disapproved.

The remedial action required was to acknowledge my affiliate status.

I can only assume the the following two factors:

i) I use the same redirection URL that my affiliates use (I just treat myself as an affiliate and use the same reporting tool)

and

ii) The site has a brand name URL, whereas my Google Adwords account is at my company domain.

led them to put 2 and 2 together and get 5.

I'm not saying that's totally unreasonable - they would have to come to the site and view the Company Information page to link my email address to the campaign URL.

But even so, the amount i'm spending with them I would have expected a little more investigation before pulling the campaign.

:(

[jeremy goodrich]

This has happened to me as well. They said something to the effect of (after 2 or 3 conversations) that they would "add a note to the account" so that it didn't happen again.

It didn't, after that. But I did have some campaigns disabled at least twice by their editors saying I needed to identify affiliate status.

After all, if you are a merchant, and have the affiliate technology for tracking, etc - why would you not use it on your own marketing?

However, they were rather nice about the whole affair - just took some time is all.

[dmorison]

I should add the the redirection URL doesn't even include the word "affiliate". It is just:

http://gateway.mydomain.com/?123456789ABCDEF

Thousands of Adwords customers must use tracking URLs looking like that.

So I can only guess that is simply because my email address is not at the same domain as the promoted URL.

[hannamyluv]

I use to get that too, and we don't even have an affiliate program yet. I just have tracking URLs that could be used for affiliate stuff. I think in my case, it has to do with the products we sell. It is a heavy affiliate market, so they assume that everyone is affiliate.

On the positive side, I haven't been shut down in a long while. I think they finally got the picture about us.

[redlion]

They got me too like this - for an executive recruitment site that is B2B and would never want affiliates.

It even had my name on the homepage and About page.

They still turned it off, and then backed down via email when I sent them the links with my name on, and a whois showing I own the domain.

I have a feeling somebody panicked about filling results with un-declared affiliates and annoying (potential Google) advertisers who own the schemes.

All fixed now.

[theanswer]

I've come across this as well. One of the things Google does look for is whether your site and your e-mail domain match but that simply isn't enough evidence.

Your URL is obviously another factor. What distinguishes a good Google AdWords reviewer is whether they can distinguish a tracking URL from an affiliate one. Unfortunately it seems they hire some people who can't make that distinction.

[dmorison]

What distinguishes a good Google AdWords reviewer is whether they can distinguish a tracking URL from an affiliate one.

You can't. A tracking URL is a tracking URL. With the exception of "famous" affiliate domains, there is no way you can tell weather a tracking URL is for affiliate or normal marketing intelligence purposes (unless of course the URL contains the word "affiliate", but even that is circumstantial evidence only).

Why do they have a problem with affiliates not identifying themselves anyway?

I think i'm going to offer my affiliates a forwarding email address @mydomain.com!

[theanswer]

Indeed Google does have a problem with affiliates not identifying themselves. It really goes back to the intense effort Google markets its brand name via AdWords. They seem to interpret affiliates that don't indentify themselves as "cheaters" that deliberately try misleading their users about the nature of their business. With that mentality, Google feels like these "cheaters mustn't win" and therefore maintain the integrity of their service.