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Aha! So I am not the only one. While that isn’t a relief, it is good to know of another instance. Pretty much the exact same scenario; however, my ad was from a few YEARS ago, ran for a few days, spent less than $10, and had sat paused since then (we’re talking yrs). Like you, it was a test to get a feel for Adwords. I don’t know if deleting it would have made a difference. I just paused it and forgot about it.
All of this while spending on average $65/month running adwords for my real-life brick and mortar business with “good” quality.
My interaction was equally as frustrating, with the canned responses; however, Pooja did move away from the script on occasion. He was polite and the final email he did come across as truly sorry. I have no hard feelings towards him.
From the sound of it, my experience played out around the same time as yours. Fortunately, I do well in organic search and will focus my efforts there.
Take care!
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Thanks Andrew for posting your experience. After I wrote, I visited some forums where others had posted similar experiences. Some deserved to get banned, but others, including a CPA that just wanted to advertise his business, were rather baffled by Google’s shutting down their account.
I understand that Google wants to weed out the “spammy” sites and keep the shysters out of the system. But the pendulum seems to have swung too far and taken many innocent or naive prisoners. Yep, it’s back to organic …
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Agreed. Because Google will refuse to re-enable your account until you “fix” the website in question. So that makes promoting websites you don’t own a risky via AdWords.
I mentioned in my post that my account was suspended due to an exit popup on the site I was “intending” to promote (I never ran the ads because the quality scores were too low). After some follow up with Google, turns out they also classified the site as a “get rich quick” site which is a bit of stretch. The sales page is a little hypey but it’s a wordpress plugin not a “make money” site. So they do take quite a bit of liberty in how they apply their policies which makes their behavior rather unpredictable.
Sorry you got banned/suspended Fero, but you have plenty of company.
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Mine was for linking to a FB Page (I think):
I used them for other stuff…Im guttered, cos I dont know what ive done wrong.
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I had a very similar experience to you, I read the conditions for advertisers including the part on egregious violations and started by testing some keywords with low click bids and a small daily maximum spend (although no that small if it had reached max every day for a year – not for the size of business I have). I wrote one ad which was disapproved but corrected the information that was incorrect and the second ad got approved. less than 2 days later my account was suspended for serious violations. I finally after several tortuous emails got one of the adwords (people, maybe?) to acknowledge that yes it was an egregious violation and that the violation was phishing. My webmaster and host did several checks on the site and it had a completely clean bill of health. My requests for an exact URL where they found suspicious content have so far been ignored. I run a small photographic business and we specialise in analogue Silver gelatin and alternative processes. I have a community darkroom which I support through the business and provide a host of alt process and and darkroom courses as well as my own lab services. There are a lot of much bigger players and I wanted to look for specific searches that other competitors hadn’t picked up. I’ve had success with google for awareness and business before but this was my first and also brief foray into the realm of adwords. According to the forums this happens regularly and consistently with small business owners who are not fraudsters or traffickers of pornography in any sense. Personally I think Google are committing egregious violations of our right to compete with bigger players.
ReplySorry to hear that this happened to you. Try using Bing Ads, you won’t get as much traffic but they are much more willing to help you.
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yeah adwords sucks. was charging me for clicks way out of my area on a campaign that they built and refused to make good on issue-then business page suspended-and i purchased a domain from the just days before–well needless to say,im going anti google and screw the domain,not going to use it-will purchase another from a different provider and not renew…
ReplyThanks for sharing your experience Ken. Even though it’s been a few years since I wrote this, I never went back to Adwords, I do help clients now and then with their Adwords but otherwise most of the advertising I do is with Facebook Ads.
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Oh! I’m not the only one I see. I’m working on a AdWords account who was create before I should optimize it. Ads were running fine until yesterday where 1) some display ads were rejected and I removed them and 2) Google suspended the account based on violation af circumventing systems. Still doesn’t know why…. I will look into it and appeal it – but it really doesn’t matter I guess? And what are my other options if they don’t reopen it again?
ReplySome people have opened up a new account to get around the ban. The recommendation is to use a credit card with a different name and address. Keep in mind that Google does not look favorably on this.
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