How I got my Google AdWords account (un)suspended(decalmarketing.com)
decalmarketing.com
How I got my Google AdWords account (un)suspended
http://www.decalmarketing.com/page/How_I_got_my_Google_AdWords_account_unsuspended
8 comments
I say this as somebody who shot down the "We'll send ad clicks to a squeeze page!" option several times (including on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599162).
This is more in response to the content of the linked comment, but creating a landing page for a not-quite-finished product and/or idea before launch is okay and so long as your CTR is high (which you can achieve by targeting your spending in exact match keywords) your quality score is still good.
The Unbounce page I mentioned in the article which had reasonable QS (6 or 7/10 IIRC although there's no historical QS view in AdWords and I've since changed the landing page) AND which, despite initially violating their "Information Harvesting" policy has since been cleared, is this one:
http://unbouncepages.com/your-first-3-months-on-adwords/
I think that it's a very different landscape that what it was 5 - 7 years ago when you could get THOUSANDS of visitors for pennies per click to a page to test an idea, but you can certainly still get < $2/click traffic for very targeted search terms to test out an idea.
Sometimes I'm not only interested in testing the market (ie. testing conversions) but just seeing what traffic there is and how much it costs. The free data you receive via the KeywordPlanner is notoriously inaccurate, so while a "real" website is being developed I'll often put up a simple landing page so I can start running the AdWords campaign and be ready to "hit the ground running" after launch.
EDIT: just to reply to this bit, as well:
You know what I told my clients who were worried about Google enforcement? It was not "Don't worry, Google enforces policies in a consistent manner and, in the unlikely event you are caught up in a heuristic, you will be able to talk to someone and resolve the issue in a timely fashion."
I think this is changing and Google is wising up. In fact, the screenshot of Google's support documentation that I provide in the article isn't the same page I saw when I was suspended. The page I saw just said:
"If you have received an Advertising Policy violation we will no longer accept advertising from you".
I think that this is a function of 2 things:
1) Clicks are more expensive, and losing individual advertisers affects Google more now than it used to. You can see the strategy clearly: shut down fake SEO link building, drive people onto AdWords, increase CPC, improve support.
2) They're targeting a lot of non-tech-savvy type small businesses now who are far more likely to "bluster their way through" than to sit down and carefully analyse Google's terms of service, so they are being far more lenient.
The funny thing is, that since Google is becoming more lenient in reinstating suspended accounts now, a bunch of companies have sprung up saying "WE'LL HELP YOU GET BACK ON GOOGLE!!1" but that's only because it's so much easier to do than it used to be anyway :)
This is more in response to the content of the linked comment, but creating a landing page for a not-quite-finished product and/or idea before launch is okay and so long as your CTR is high (which you can achieve by targeting your spending in exact match keywords) your quality score is still good.
The Unbounce page I mentioned in the article which had reasonable QS (6 or 7/10 IIRC although there's no historical QS view in AdWords and I've since changed the landing page) AND which, despite initially violating their "Information Harvesting" policy has since been cleared, is this one:
http://unbouncepages.com/your-first-3-months-on-adwords/
I think that it's a very different landscape that what it was 5 - 7 years ago when you could get THOUSANDS of visitors for pennies per click to a page to test an idea, but you can certainly still get < $2/click traffic for very targeted search terms to test out an idea.
Sometimes I'm not only interested in testing the market (ie. testing conversions) but just seeing what traffic there is and how much it costs. The free data you receive via the KeywordPlanner is notoriously inaccurate, so while a "real" website is being developed I'll often put up a simple landing page so I can start running the AdWords campaign and be ready to "hit the ground running" after launch.
EDIT: just to reply to this bit, as well:
You know what I told my clients who were worried about Google enforcement? It was not "Don't worry, Google enforces policies in a consistent manner and, in the unlikely event you are caught up in a heuristic, you will be able to talk to someone and resolve the issue in a timely fashion."
I think this is changing and Google is wising up. In fact, the screenshot of Google's support documentation that I provide in the article isn't the same page I saw when I was suspended. The page I saw just said:
"If you have received an Advertising Policy violation we will no longer accept advertising from you".
I think that this is a function of 2 things:
1) Clicks are more expensive, and losing individual advertisers affects Google more now than it used to. You can see the strategy clearly: shut down fake SEO link building, drive people onto AdWords, increase CPC, improve support.
2) They're targeting a lot of non-tech-savvy type small businesses now who are far more likely to "bluster their way through" than to sit down and carefully analyse Google's terms of service, so they are being far more lenient.
The funny thing is, that since Google is becoming more lenient in reinstating suspended accounts now, a bunch of companies have sprung up saying "WE'LL HELP YOU GET BACK ON GOOGLE!!1" but that's only because it's so much easier to do than it used to be anyway :)
When you search for a phrase like "how can I get my account unsuspended?" and see thousands and thousands of results and horrible pitchmen selling you "the secret to getting reinstated" you know there's a massive disconnect between tons of desperate people and a company that is unwilling to provide any customer service to address problems. A faceless algorithm bans you and you're screwed.
Every account suspended isn't automatically a spammer - oftentimes they are legitimate businesses that have to let employees go and shut down because they cannot figure out a way, despite numerous desperate attempts at communication, to get back on the web. This has happened to me before, and I couldn't get anybody at Google to respond to me in a way that wasn't a complete form letter where they couldn't tell me what the issue supposedly was.
The worst part? Bad actors have an endless supply of fake identities and just sign up again and again and create new fake companies while legitimate people are completely screwed.
If any company other than Google provided this bad of a customer service experience, we'd view them as a flat out scam.
Any Google employees out there that give a damn for your customers? Provide some human customer service. If the volume is too high, charge money for it, whatever. But do something to help people who are completely screwed. You should be better than this.
Every account suspended isn't automatically a spammer - oftentimes they are legitimate businesses that have to let employees go and shut down because they cannot figure out a way, despite numerous desperate attempts at communication, to get back on the web. This has happened to me before, and I couldn't get anybody at Google to respond to me in a way that wasn't a complete form letter where they couldn't tell me what the issue supposedly was.
The worst part? Bad actors have an endless supply of fake identities and just sign up again and again and create new fake companies while legitimate people are completely screwed.
If any company other than Google provided this bad of a customer service experience, we'd view them as a flat out scam.
Any Google employees out there that give a damn for your customers? Provide some human customer service. If the volume is too high, charge money for it, whatever. But do something to help people who are completely screwed. You should be better than this.
>The worst part? Bad actors have an endless supply of fake identities and just sign up again and again and create new fake companies while legitimate people are completely screwed.
God the stories I could tell... One of my favorites is to watch the SERPs for a hyper competitive term like "fast payday loans" or something in that realm.
The sneakiest people in SEO have seemingly figured out that they could make good money by churning domains into the top ranking through spam, getting deindexed a few weeks later, then just starting over with a new domain.
One guy even sarcastically mocked Matt Cutts, Google's webspam team lead, by ranking Matt's name for the term "payday loans" a little bit ago:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-payday-loan-cutts-16940.h...
God the stories I could tell... One of my favorites is to watch the SERPs for a hyper competitive term like "fast payday loans" or something in that realm.
The sneakiest people in SEO have seemingly figured out that they could make good money by churning domains into the top ranking through spam, getting deindexed a few weeks later, then just starting over with a new domain.
One guy even sarcastically mocked Matt Cutts, Google's webspam team lead, by ranking Matt's name for the term "payday loans" a little bit ago:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-payday-loan-cutts-16940.h...
On a very personal note, I just find it very refreshing to finally see some critical analysis of Google lately. It appears to me as if people a getting past the "idolatry", and sarting to fully grasp Google's grip on today's IT realm, with all it's bad sides.
>lately
Ah yes, because everyone thought Google was sunshine and roses before "lately".
Ah yes, because everyone thought Google was sunshine and roses before "lately".
That's right, folks: in the policy it states that the page cannot have the "primary purpose" of collecting information, but the way that's judged is whether or not you can get to all areas of the site without putting in an email address or filling out any other personal information.
Even though there were no other areas of the site (because it was just a single page with a form on it that had a single field), the email address was a required field and this was enough to violate the policy.
That's some top-quality thinking and engineering from the people responsible for Google's AdWords policy enforcement.
That's some top-quality thinking and engineering from the people responsible for Google's AdWords policy enforcement.
How about this little solution: "The way I fixed my "Information Harvesting" policy violation was to make it so that the form on my lead capture page could be submitted without filling it in."
> It took me just over 5 months of regular phone calls, being patient, and being nice, to get my account reinstated
> It took me just over 5 months of regular phone calls
> just over 5 months
> 5 months
Lolwut
> It took me just over 5 months of regular phone calls
> just over 5 months
> 5 months
Lolwut
We desperately need real competition in search ads. At this point, I guess that means I'm rooting for Bing.
Yahoo might become competitive again:
http://readwrite.com/2014/01/31/yahoo-microsoft-search
If Yahoo gets serious about search, I think they could gain a lot more marketshare than Bing can. Bing has a lot of "Microsoft baggage". I think many people rule it out simply because they trust Google more than they trust Microsoft. Yahoo feels more like a clean slate.
If Yahoo gets serious about search, I think they could gain a lot more marketshare than Bing can. Bing has a lot of "Microsoft baggage". I think many people rule it out simply because they trust Google more than they trust Microsoft. Yahoo feels more like a clean slate.
Oh how the tables have turned. /putsonmicrosoftfoamhand go bing!
This is what a monopoly looks like.
Be patient and be nice? Uh, no.
Be glad you don't have to deal with a company like Amazon. Once you are suspended, they will refuse to talk to you on the phone and direct you to their "online support".
Online support consists of canned responses to questions and never any actual help.
I had my account suspended after 3 years of business with 100% feedback at almost all times. I always treated my customers really well and I was never able to get to the bottom of why my account was suspended.
I am now a buyer on Amazon for my business. Something I find funny is that as a seller, you are told that you are only representing Amazon (not representing yourself on Amazon). You can't contact your customers directly, any attempts to send a url or an email address will get you suspended.
As a buyer, I have customers constantly sending me wrong or damaged items. The seller should pay for return shipping. When I contact Amazon about it, they act as if they are completely hands-off and can't do anything about it because I bought my item from a 3rd-party seller.
They really need to make up their minds...because it seems they like to change their tune on situations when it benefits them..which is shady.
Unlike Ebay, they also sell products that compete with their 3rd-party sellers. They have used the marketing and order data (which they get from all 3rd-party sellers), to undercut anyone selling a hot-selling product and essentially put them out of business.
As soon as I had a decent selling product, a "shipped by Amazon" listing would soon appear within a few weeks (undercutting me by a large percentage) and I would lose most, if not all, of my sales.
This is why it is important to not rely on any 3rd party platform for a long-term business. It's really only a good idea when you first start out.
Online support consists of canned responses to questions and never any actual help.
I had my account suspended after 3 years of business with 100% feedback at almost all times. I always treated my customers really well and I was never able to get to the bottom of why my account was suspended.
I am now a buyer on Amazon for my business. Something I find funny is that as a seller, you are told that you are only representing Amazon (not representing yourself on Amazon). You can't contact your customers directly, any attempts to send a url or an email address will get you suspended.
As a buyer, I have customers constantly sending me wrong or damaged items. The seller should pay for return shipping. When I contact Amazon about it, they act as if they are completely hands-off and can't do anything about it because I bought my item from a 3rd-party seller.
They really need to make up their minds...because it seems they like to change their tune on situations when it benefits them..which is shady.
Unlike Ebay, they also sell products that compete with their 3rd-party sellers. They have used the marketing and order data (which they get from all 3rd-party sellers), to undercut anyone selling a hot-selling product and essentially put them out of business.
As soon as I had a decent selling product, a "shipped by Amazon" listing would soon appear within a few weeks (undercutting me by a large percentage) and I would lose most, if not all, of my sales.
This is why it is important to not rely on any 3rd party platform for a long-term business. It's really only a good idea when you first start out.
I say this as somebody who shot down the "We'll send ad clicks to a squeeze page!" option several times (including on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599162). I was able to wave a few companies away from that, and in some cases get compliant AdWords campaigns up and running, but CEOs/marketing officers often felt that they could just wake up one day and find their AdWords account permabanned for specious reasons. As a result, many of them intentionally limited the size of their AdWords accounts and/or the amount of strategic importance they allowed AdWords to get internally.
You know what I told my clients who were worried about Google enforcement? It was not "Don't worry, Google enforces policies in a consistent manner and, in the unlikely event you are caught up in a heuristic, you will be able to talk to someone and resolve the issue in a timely fashion."
Net revenue impact to Google across my consulting client base caused specifically by worries about Google's enforcement/CS would be, probably, somewhere in the 6 figures a month region. (B2B/enterprise software companies can afford to spend an awful lot of money on ad clicks.)