Justin Dupre beat me to posting about this but heck, that won’t stop me. Around 11pm last night I got an email stating that my Google Adwords account has been disabled. I twittered about it and a sleuth of other affiliates had their Adwords accounts disabled as well. Google really hates affiliates with a passion. Here’s the email:
Dear advertiser,
We are writing to let you know that your Google AdWords account has been disabled due to one or more serious violations of our advertising policies related to Landing Page and Site Quality. As a result, your ads will no longer run through the Google AdWords system and we are unable to accept advertising from you in the future. Please note that future accounts you open will also be disabled.
As part of our commitment to making the AdWords experience safe and effective for our users and our advertisers, we routinely review the landing pages that our advertisers promote through our search and content networks. If we find that an advertiser has submitted a landing page that egregiously violates our policies, we reserve the right to take immediate account-level action.
Landing pages advertised via AdWords must have relevant, original content, and must be transparent about the nature of the business being promoted. Further, advertising certain types of sites will lead to immediate account disabling. These types of sites include, but are not limited to:
* Sites that charge users or collect personal information in exchange for a product that is never delivered
* Sites that charge for “free” software
* Sites that trick users into paying for fake or poor-quality content
* Sites that charge users for information that makes unrealistic promises of financial or personal gain
* Sites that install malware software on a visitor’s computerPlease note that this action is related to sites that have recently been advertised through your account. In a review of your account history, we found that your account had submitted a least one site that egregiously violated our advertising policies. Although you may have removed these sites since our latest review, advertisers that have a history of promoting these types of sites are still subject to account-level disabling.
You can review our Advertising Policies, including our Landing Page and Site Quality guidelines, by visiting: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guidelines.cs
You may also review the complete AdWords Terms & Conditions here: https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder
In addition, our FAQ about Account Disablings can be found here: https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164786If you have additional questions or concerns not addressed by our policies or help center, you can contact support by replying to this email.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords team
Here are some interesting things to know. I’ve never ran a rebill, ringtone offer or any other prohibited niches on Google Adwords. I had a few ads disapproved a while back for running polls on the Google Content Network. I also have not ran anything in this account for probably a year.
Whatever algorithm Google is using to suspend these accounts is way over the top. All they are doing is pissing off customers who could potentially spend a lot of money with them. Most affiliates are smart enough to have diversified at this point. Those affiliates who still want to run Adwords campaigns are going to do it anyway. About a year ago I wrote the post “It’s Time To Get Shady Baby.” If an affiliate wants something bad enough, you aren’t going to be able to stop them.
Go get your hustle on!
At one point (like 1-2 years ago) it was somewhat understandable how they wanted to weed out the scammiest advertisers and sites. Affiliates at first freaked out a little over having to comply to quality scores, and having to build out more than one page on their site.
But that was manageable and an understandable move from Google’s side.
Now however, it’s way past ridicilous. They’re just banning left and right with little rhyme or reason. And by doing so – wiping away a large number of advertisers and affiliates. Like you said, wiser affiliates have long since moved on to greener and friendlier pastures. 🙂
what the fuck is a slueth of other affiliates?
@ppc.bz – A bunch. However, I may have just made that word/definition up. It’s what bloggers do.
I’m still up. I am going hail mary setting up a bunch of teeth and bizzop campaigns for one last push.
Also what are these greener pastures every platform has restrictions from astericks to no fake news to no pop ups etc
Yeah, he meant “slew”, not “sleuth” which would be like Sherlock Holmes. 😀
Adwords banned me in June for some BS. It’s lame how much they are cutting out customers – because now I actually want to get into local advertising and from what I remember Google had an excellent platform for distance restrictions.
Google’s big mistake is using a fucking algorithm for everything. Sergey and Larry probably wrote an algorithm to pleasure themselves if pre-existing conditions were met and they had a poor quality life(score). ha ha heh
B!tches! I’ve never had my accounted disabled or banned, thankfully. I’ll tell you what, moves like this, will contribute to their downfall. Mark my words.
i hate to tell you guys but i don’t think this is going to contribute to googles downfall at all. it’s just weeding out the “bad” advertisers and trying to lure in bigger fish. google’s responsibility is not to the affiliates, or really even to the advertisers, but to it’s shareholders. all they want to do is make sure people have a high quality experience while using their search engine – they could care less about how you’re making a living as an affiliate.
David, you are an a$$hat.
I hate Google and their monopoly over the search market. Their rules, regulations and restrictions are way over the top. I don’t understand why they do not want our money, it makes no sense to me. Facebook is heading down the same path…
@kiley – i’m just telling it like it is.
We need to get a group together, find Google’s offices, and burn it straight to the ground. SCREW them.
Kiley, I’m guessing you’re one of those guys that relies solely on selling something like weight loss tea. I understand, you’re frustrated because google wants to do whats right for the consumer and not let you get people looped into a black hole of endless rebills on their credit card for something they don’t want. How dare they? Seriously, the nerve! Can you believe that?
You guys are being kind of harsh on Kiley. As I stated above, there were NO REBILLS involved here. Don’t just assume his account or anyone elses account was canceled because of unscrupulous offers. It’s not necessarily the case.
I didn’t mean to make it seem I was only referring to rebill offers. It’s all about user experience, the less that is taken into consideration the less people are going to trust paid search results. I used to be the typical “angry affiliate” because google wouldn’t let me run certain things but if you follow their rules there is still PLENTY of ways to make money with them. If you were unjustly banned contacting them will resolve the problem, the precautions may seem irritating but it’s for the best all around.
Google can go F*CK them self and thats from a lady. I had my google accounts banned and I have never done a re-bill, acai or ringtones. You want to know what my sites were ? Content sites that promoted tellman products from 3yrs ago that I shut down traffic to 2 yrs ago. No I cant run ANYTHING. WTF is wrong with them. Even murderes and pedophiles get a 2nd chance once they server their time. Who wants to lobby this ? I will sign a petition !!!
I dunno what’s going on with the big G right now… whatever algorithm they’re using is seriously flawed.
I’m trying to see how it’s in their self interest in ban indiscriminately… no warning/no explanation and little chance of being reinstated (the legit way).
I’m still drawing a blank.
Oh, and for those that think that it’s only those shady advertisers that are getting booted from Google, read this:
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/dan-macsai/popwise/why-did-neutral-google-de-list-webs-oldest-entertainment-publication
I got the ban yesterday for no reason.
No reason because I haven’t ran for 3-4 months and maybe used it for a month.
crap – should i stop linking to you and your sites???
j/k.
that sucks. were you spending a lot with them?
a good post would be on diversification maybe – not putting all your eggs in one basket.
keep up the good work.
-kpaul
Everyone should worry about the big boy on the block telling them what is or isn’t good for the greater good of the people. People seem to not like government doing it, but have no problem with mega corps doing it.
Yo Hustler, i got the same message last night, mother f’ers are out of control…F*ck Google….
At the time I posted my original comment I thought all was well, checked my email about an hour ago ( I chose not to install Thunderbird at my office for productivity reasons), POW!, my account was been disabled @ 11PM last night.
I ran one rebill (Kardashian Teeth Whitener) as a test, and this was before they went crazy on rebills earlier this year.
Other than that, I barely touch my account, when I do, I use it to test keyword volume for potential organic sites. I’m completely “legit” — whatever that means anymore. Cause you know, it so tough for consumers these days to do their do diligence.
@Dave – Yeah. And you are still an a$$hat.
@Tom – Cause you know, it so tough for consumers these days to do their do diligence.
My reliance on Google is maybe 20%. I’m not angry. I’m not the typical “angry affiliate”. I’m not a PPC affiliate. I earn my income online way different than most. I do just fine.
BTW – Mr. Hoffman, I have two words for you — Threaded Comments.
kiley, I’m sure you did yours by reading adwords entire ToS and every piece of literature they threw at you, right? Maybe that’s why you got banned, because you didn’t do your “do diligence”. The door swings both ways.
I don’t know what you’re taking so much offense to, it’s not like I was attacking you. But if you want to take it personal, go ahead. “due diligence” get real dude. you know it’s bullshit so stop pretending.
Just use Yahoo and MSN instead. To tell you the truth, they convert much better than Google on the majority of my campaigns.
Google banned me over a year ago. No big loss though.
hustle on babies!
@Kiley – Your right, threaded comments are becoming necessary. I’ll see what I can do 🙂
@Tom – They didn’t start hating on rebills until the whole Google Money Tree/Kit fiasco around summertime. As I ran what I ran prior to that, the TOS that I read 4 years ago did not apply.
Yup, banned yesterday as well. Never ran a rebill. Only 2 campaigns I was running were for my gf’s personal training biz and my dad’s window tinting biz.
F U Google !!
Tom is spot on IMO. It is all about user experience. People will stop trusting paid search links if they get bombared with crap, and they in turn will stop using Google.
C-ya in the funny papers dinosaur affiliates.
Yup, I got a termination email for one of my accounts at exactly the same time too. And that was for an account that had only deleted campaigns (and the last one was deleted 8 months ago already)!
I guess that means all the other accounts in my MCC will soon be toast too, even though some have never run rebills…
Allen Says must be on the Google board.
From another list I’m on, it was reported this morning that one of the members in his membership site who spends $1 million annually selling COFFEE got banned, and another who spends $300,00 also got the chop.
The answer must be that Google has figured out how to make more money without than with these people. The same admonition that someonementioned above came in that newsletter: don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
I don’t do Adwords, but I’m sorry for you who do and got whacked.
[…] Dupre wrote about his situation and AdHustler did too. His comment section is kind of surprising though. People are defending Google’s […]
I heard this ban happening with many people suddenly. What are you going to do to get the ban lifted from your account?
[…] Google Hates Affiliates “I’ve never ran a rebill, ringtone offer or any other prohibited niches on Google Adwords. I had a few ads disapproved a while back for running polls on the Google Content Network. I also have not ran anything in this account for probably a year. Whatever algorithm Google is using to suspend these accounts is way over the top.” […]
I had my account shut down in January, I pleaded and begged with them to activate it, no luck at all. Moving on from Google now…
[…] I read on adhustler just the same, and he mentions a number of other affiliates reporting the […]
Thanks for the great post… a lot of Affiliates on our Network are getting Google Slapped for silly things 😛
There are many other paid advertising methods out there. Media buying is one. Also, you have MSN and Yahoo PPC engines too.
Like Ad Hustler said, DIVERSIFY! 🙂
diversify or die….
First of all I want to preface this by saying I hate Google. I think they are a bunch of f’ing aholes and that people need to hold THEM accountable. STOP using them. And I mean RIGHT NOW!!! They can change anything anytime they want without any explanation.
They should have warned EVERYONE and told the people that if they were caught breaking TOS that they would
THEN be permanently banned. But to just ban people without even a warning is ridiculous.
Now onto the controversial part of my comments. Google had to do something…they just did it with a nuclear bomb instead of a firecracker. The B.S. that advertisers were doing on Google just got out of control. Totally out of control.
You could NOT get a decent review on any product in the last two years because of all the fake blogs. Searches to find products was becoming a joke. There were so many junk and outright scam sites it became ridiculous.
In fact I belong to a PPC coaching site where they still teach tactics that they KNOW is against Googles TOS. And these “coaches” have the nerve to bitch and moan and groan.
While I think Google needs to be bitch slapped themselves there are a lot of gurus (most of them phony)and coaching sites that have nothing but themselves to blame.
Todd
[…] 8. AdHustler: Google Hates Affiliates […]
I’m growing to hate Google beyond words. I recently built a 30 page site loaded with relevant, unique content.
The reviews I posted were as white hat and legit as it could get. I used the products in depth, gave my honest feedback, and posted the results in highly informative articles.
The site is perfectly SEO optimized, transparent, and contains all of the necessary things like the About Us and Contact pages. Fuck, I even put an XML sitemap.
In fact, when I made this site, the main goal was to provide EXCELLENT information for the visitors (wow, people still do that?)
I submitted my URL for crawling, then started an AdWords campaign following the advice gained from 3 adwords books and the plethora of link spam on the Adwords help forums.
The next day I noticed Google sent me 96 uniques organically, and several clicks. I was in business, or so I thought.
That afternoon, I was slapped to 1/10 on 60 keywords. All keywords were in 9 tightly knit ad groups sent to excellent content pages. I was sitting at 1/10 with Landing Page: no problems, Keyword Relevance: no problems, Loading Time: no problems. Nice job!
Since the slap, I haven’t received a single organic click through and cannot for the life of me revive my QS.
First off let me say that I completely agree with the need to implement a system to weed out dishonest players.
Next, let me say that I think it’s absolutely fucking appalling that people are losing their asses because an algorithm says they should.
I think in Google’s venture to make the internet a more welcoming, relevant place, they’ve also managed to give momentum to problems that will come back to haunt them in days to come.
Antitrust issues are barking at their door, not only here in the states, but also in Europe.
Bottom line is that you cannot own 90% of the internet search market share and behave this recklessly toward a portion of the minority who help pay your bills. The anti-Google sentiment will snowball, trust me.
The action they took to “clean up the internet” will only make them look good for so long. Eventually, people will see them as the vultures they are.
[…] their vertical search sites using Google AdWords: complaints about these mass bannings can be found all across the […]