I always read posts of people that plead their innocence of being banned from Adsense, Adwords, eBay, etc and think they are leaving out a piece of the story. Now, I'm dealing with a banned Adwords account and know just how crazy these large companies can be. I have a site that sells a wholesale list. I've sent traffic to this site using Adwords for the last 6 years. I've made no changes to the landing pages or the site in years. It's been running on autopilot for a while now. A few months ago, I get an email from Google telling me my ads were disabled for violation their landing page guidelines. After emailing a rep, I found out they now felt the pages were in violation of the "Get Rich Quick" policy. I realized I would never meet their policy for this site and never even attempted to change the site or landing pages. I just promptly deleted every campaign and let the rep know this was the plan of action I was taking. I just logged into the site for the first time in a few months and realized it was suspended even though all the campaigns were deleted! Now, I don't care for the sake of this site. I know I'm never sending Google Adwords traffic to it again. My concern is that I'll never be able to open another Google Adwords account for a physical product site I'm working on! This is just crazy!
Normally Google warn beforehand by sending a mail and they give a chance. If the rules are not complied with, then a second mail is sent and the account is deactivated. There are people whose account had been reinstated after rectifying the error. But, as you are saying that you have not violated any rules and have not even modified any pages, I think this argument can never reach a point.
Just use facebook for your campaign. Cheap and better than adword if you know how to use it properly.
Google continues to consider paused and deleted campaign content when evaluating your account. Non-intuitive, perhaps, but they do mention this in their help pages. It's likely that somewhere along the line there was a miscommunication and after you essentially did nothing about the violations, someone who hadn't spoken to your rep decided to suspend the account. If you have records of your original conversation with the rep then you should forward them to Google as part of a ban appeal.
Paused campaigns can be un-paused so that's why they are considered for evaluation as they should. Deleted campaigns however, I agree, should not. Whether it's a bug in the system or miscommunication, this is a problem that Google should fix. I concur with Eschatonic, I would contact them. You may get your account un-banned. Good luck. Seems strange that a wholesale list as you say would run afoul of their policies, particularly the one you mention. Maybe it's the wording you used on your landing page. If so, a simple matter of toning it down.
Part of the issue is I've already tweaked that page for maximum conversion. I have no interest in changing it at all. The point I was trying to make to the account rep was I had no interest in tweaking the pages, I'd rather just delete the campaigns. But as Eschatonic mentioned, the email they sent with the warning said deleting the campaigns wouldn't solve the problem, which I don't get at all. If I don't want to change the landing pages, shouldn't deleting the campaigns be an acceptable solution? Here is the funniest part of the entire deal. I've been paying 2K - 3K a month to send traffic to this site for years now. Now for some reason, Google decided they don't like my site anymore so I can't pay them to send traffic there. Yet, I already rank on the first page in organic search for many of my Adwords terms and get tons of traffic from Google for free. It makes no sense at all!
I just got another reply from Adwords support. These guys just don't get it! > Hello Shruti, > > > > Thank you for your prompt reply! > > > > I have no plans of making any changes to this account or the landing > > pages. Due to the nature of the product being sold, there is no way I > > can change the landing pages to be in compliance with the "Get Rich > > Quick Policy" that you mentioned. That is why I simply deleted all the > > campaigns when I was notified by Google about the landing page > > guidelines I was in violation of. > > > > My concern is I am in the process of creating a new site that is going > > to sell leather goods and would like to create a new Adwords account to > > send traffic to that site. Will the suspension of this account keep me > > from opening a new account? > > > > If you will review the account history on the suspended account, you > > will see I ran ads to this site for many years and was just recently > > told by Google I was in violation of the "Get Rich Quick" policy. Upon > > hearing that news, I knew I could not meet Googles standard for this > > site and promptly deleted every campaign in the account. I was > > surprised to learn my account was suspended when it had no active campaigns. > > > > I hope you will note how quickly I took action to delete these campaigns > > after being notified and allow me to open a new account for my new site > > that is in compliance.. > > > > Thank you for your time! > > > > Brent Crouch Hello Brent, Thank you for your understanding & willingness to comply with our policies but like I mentioned in my previous mail, the only way to get your account enabled is by making changes to the violating site to bring them into compliance. This is because paused ads will still be reviewed based on our guidelines. Pausing or deleting ads related to the disabled sites will not automatically re-enable the ads nor remove the violation history. Please remember that Google Adwords is largely a self managed program. The responsibility what you promote & advertising using your Adwords account is solely you responsibility. To avoid violations, we always suggest advertisers to regularly check our guidelines & policies. Sincerely, Shruti The Google AdWords Team
The problem is that right now Google can do whatever they want. They're huge and people will get their wallets out for their traffic regardless of how unfair many are being treated. Solution: Move to Yahoo/Bing
It looks like you're in a bind. Unless you can convince them that their evaluation of your deleted campaigns as in violation was unfair, or that a previous rep had given you the okay to just delete the campaigns, you don't really have any options (I guess it's too late to create new landing pages!). I can't think of anything else to suggest, it looks like you've been shafted here. It's probably also worth asking them whether there was any way they could have removed your campaigns from the system, or any other way you could have avoided the slap. If you can get them to admit that you had no way of avoiding it, then maybe they'll see why it was unfair.
I am a sort to find new PPC campaign instead of arguing with Google. I have a few issues with Google last year and I have closed all my accounts with Google and I never want to communicate them for anything. We have many new methods and campaign available online now. It wise to save our time and effort with new PPC.
I had another Adwords account that I used for a physical product site in the past. I spent over 500K over the course of 6 - 7 years without any problems. From my experience, it seems Google favors these sites anyway. I'm really considering using a new card, address, and my wife's name to open a new account for my new site. Since it is a physical product site, I don't think it will get the amount of scrutiny a digital product site gets. My only concern is IP tracking and if that will cause a problem. Other than that, I can easily change all the other info. Anyone else have experience with this?
Yes, I understand the point and I do agree. However, Google doesn't see it this way, at least at this moment. Now if an advertiser is unwilling to change a page to comply, well, that's their decision. I myself would want to advertise so I would comply. Google doesn't care about how much you spend. They only care about better serving the users with the best product they can. Adwords is simply part of the equation. It's a business decision.
The problem is Internet wide. Customer service has gone to crap! They don't care because they are making money. I'm glad Google is looking at where ads link to but a person should be considered in compliance when they stop doing whatever Google wants them to stop doing. It isn't just Google, it is nearly everyone. Not just IM but all over the net and the world. I'm surprised to get good customer service these days and that's the issue here. Google is big and they don't have the resources to put effort into what they are doing. To put the effort in, raises their cost. That raises our cost and sends us to other places where the cost is lower. So it is a catch 22. But what it boils down to is they don't care if we get shafted. Because it is cheaper for them not to care. It stinks! It boils my blood. I'm sure Google takes the approach if you break or bend the rules once, you are likely to do it again. The element of human judgement seems to have been removed from customer service. It is so obvious that if someone is purposely breaking the rules by promoting clearly banned illegal items or porn they can't be trusted to do as Google wants. But this Get Rich Quick could be VERY grey. One could run afoul of that quite innocently. Google, everyone, where is your common sense? I already know where it is. Partly it is employees afraid to use it. If they do, it can come back on them when their actions are reviewed. Joe Google wants to keep their job. I wish I had an answer to this problem, I hope someone comes up with it. People need to be allowed to be people but Corporations are being run like governments. No room for judgement and if you make the wrong judgement according to someone else, then you're butt is on the line.
Wow - this is nuts! I recently signed up for Adwords for the first time and started a campaign - was immediately told the landing page violated the policies, so I removed my ads, etc but could not figure out how to even delete the campaign. My account has not yet been shut down completely but now I'm afraid that the same thing will happen to me.
You wont be able to add same keywords in that account now even for a different domain. If you do it will show poor quality score.