Anyone else recieved this dreaded email from Adwords lately? I have just had my account suspended as several of the campaigns link to sites which they consider to be 'bridge' pages. Basically they issue is that they all have affiliate links woven throughout the content. It's not overdone, they are all fairly good review pages with unique and original content - the only problem is the affiliate links promoting the same merchant from what they have said. Anyway, I removed the campaigns from my account as I dont really want to use PPC for my affiliate sites anymore, I would rather use it to drive traffic to my product sites - much less hassle. I emailed them back to say that and they said: "Please note unless the existing violations are fixed suspension cannot be revoked. So you'll have to work on the websites if you wish to continue advertising with us." So basically, even though I have absolutely no intention of ever putting these sites on Adwords again, they want me to spend several hours improving those sites to meet their quality guidelines just so I can continue to advertise completely different sites which they dont have a problem with. Is it just me or is this completely unreasonable? What happens if I sell the sites, does that mean I can never advertise with them again as I can no longer edit the sites? Anyone any experience of this or know of a way around it (other than editing the sites in question obviously)? Also I have been told by a Google employee that once an account is suspended, if you dont touch it for 45 days then it becomes dormant - at which point you can safely open a new account without the risk of it being suspended for having multiple accounts. Anyone know if this is true? I am not sure if the guy just told me this to get me off the phone or not.
> Is it just me or is this completely unreasonable? No. It is their system, their rules. Right now, you're in their "dog house". They don't want to let you back in until you prove you can follow their rules. So if you want to advertise again, you will have to comply. If not, it's nice knowing you. You mention selling the sites. I suggest you fix the problems so you can get back into their good books. Once done, delete those campaigns. You can then do whatever you want with those sites. I don't know about this 45 days thing. Seems unlikely to me and even more so that an employee would tell you that.
With google changing their rules lately, many people are getting the dreaded email from google about suspension of their accounts. Bottom line..Follow google TOS and you will be just fine.
read the TOS provided by google adwords company ! stick on to the rules though they may not deal directly with your personal stuffs rules are given in a professional way !
Thanks for the replies. Everyone keeps saying follow the TOS and you will be fine but that is not strictly true because the issue is their TOS on landing page quality is very vague. They are also open massively to interpretation and personal likes/dislikes. Of the 4 sites of mine they have issues with, 3 are big sites with hundreds of pages of unique content including product comparisons, user reviews, and even product recommendation quizzes. All the kind of stuff they say they want to see.....yet they still say the sites are bridge sites with unoriginal content. Anyway, they reckon that if I just change the destination URL of my ads to go direct to the product site instead of through my affiliate site that would be enough. I have done this and resubmitted for review so we will await their response. It seems unlikely it will be as simple as that to me though so I am not expecting it to work, afterall how is that any better to just deleting the ads altogether? Ill update when I get a response.
I've not found the guidelines vague. And not open to interpretation. They seem pretty clear to me. > destination URL of my ads to go direct to the product site instead of through my affiliate site that would be enough Well, no. The vendor's site must adhere to the rules as well. If it over-hypes the product (most weight loss sites with "lose 20 pounds by next week" type of language), they you'll have a poor landing page quality score. Since you can't change the merchant's page yourself, you're SOL. Worse, your account could be banned if you have multiple violations and you won't get it back until the page changes to follow the rules. Good luck getting the vendor to do this. If you are going to use Adwords to do affiliate marketing, stick to what I call safe products and safe sites. That excludes all those weight loss and make money sites. Site language cannot say things along the line of "so easy anyone can do it". Probably best to stick with physical products. You still need to fix your current problem before you'll be able to advertise on Adwords.
So I guess you know that they do NOT allow affiliate sites full stop then? They have just confirmed this to me: "Ensure that users are receiving a comprehensive online experience by keeping users on the same domain throughout their entire session." So basically it has nothing to do with your site or how much original and unique content it has, if you are an affiliate linking to a product site (ANY type of product) then you have a bridge page and sooner or later you will also get suspended. Lucid - I know you mean well but you really come across as a 'know it all'. You may be a PPC specialist but you need to open your eyes to what Google are doing....if you dont and you advertise as an affiliate then you will be in for a rude awakening. Just found out a friend of mine who has been spending over $100k a month with Adwords for the last 5 years has also been suspended. He managed to get back live by working with his merchants to implement an order page on his site. His account manager said that was the ONLY way he could do it, its nothing to do with site quality. So my advice to any other affiliates who get this dreaded email, dont waste your time doing what they pretend is needed because for every hoop you jump through they will just put up another one. If you havent had this email yet then watch out, its more a case of WHEN rather than IF.
Nowhere does it say Adwords does not allow affiliates. It's the WAY you're doing it that may cause problems. For example, it very clearly states that your landing page cannot be a bridge page to a vendor page. Yes, many people read what they want by that line (at least those who bothered to read it). It means, you can't have just a bunch of links to merchant sites. That's poor user experience. You can review a product but you have to be careful on how you word your links. If you word it "buy it here" and I land on a sales page, that's not what I expect which was an order page. Same if you do a hard sell of a product. That "get it" link cannot take me to the vendor's sales page. Take them to the order page. Yeah, I know it's not the same domain but that's what they want. See it as a third-party processor. That's what many CB products do and is the same as using PayPal or any other similar processor. > you really come across as a 'know it all' Thank you. Just trying to educate people here. Yes, I'm a PPC specialist. Been helping many clients for five years and using Adwords and other PPC services for over eight years. I know what Google expects so there will be no rude awakening. Not sure why you're telling people not to waste their time when your friend did exactly what he was supposed to do and is back in, gladly I'm sure. From your original post, you are so close yourself. Don't give up now.
No. As I said in my previous post it is not the way I am doing it, they have clearly told me that a bridge page is any page that links to another website in order to complete the sale. It doesnt matter if you use buy now links or not (2 of my sites in question only use 'for more info' links). Basically I cannot link from my site to ANY product site. They have made it clear this not just about the landing page, the entire site must follow this policy. My point is exactly as you said "Nowhere does it say Adwords does not allow affiliates" - This is true......they do not make it publically known but I have had it confirmed to me that this is pretty much the case with the exception of affiliates who can arrange to implement the order process on their website (thus becoming more like drop-shippers than affiliates) My friend did it my working with all of his merchants to get the order process installed on his website. Tell me how many affiliate programs you know that will do that? Most wont do it at all, and the ones that will are only going to do it for really big affiliates. My friend is a super affiliate, he earns 6 figures a month with some of his merchants so of course they wanted to work with him to integrate order pages as it was very important to their business. For me, my income is spread over many more merchants in different niches, as a result I may be a big affiliate for some companies but Im certainly not a super affiliate. Therefore this option of integrating order processes on my website is not open to me so tell me where I go? My only option appears to be take all income away from the sites and never link out to the product sites which is obviously not an option. Google have put me in a position where it simply is not possible to comply with their policy AND still make any money. Therefore my advice to people about not wasting their time still stands, unless you can arrange with your networks and merchants to have an order process on your site there is very little, if anything you can do. Just want to add too that I have been doing this since 2006, I am a full-time affiliate and was also an affiliate manager for 3 years too. I have done my fair share of PPC management over the years so its not like I am a newbie who has been stung - like you Lucid, I also thought I knew what Google expected and that I would not get a rude awakening.
> implement the order process on their website (thus becoming more like drop-shippers than affiliates) Well, a drop-shipper is essentially what you are as an affiliate marketer. I've seen plenty of Clickbank products advertised on Adwords. The affiliate created their own page to sell the product and the links clearly go to a CB order page. That's how Google wants it. That's how you have to do it and that's how many other affiliates are doing it. You don't need the order page recreated on your site.
Well yes and no, the key difference is that a drop-shipper would process the order themselves and then pass the customer details to the merchant who would fulfil it. Affiliates on the other hand do not usually process payments themselves, the merchant site would do that. In my opinion Google is making a big mistake here because what it will do is force affiliates to start processing orders themselves or cleverly embedding merchant order pages in their own site. This means customers will not have a clue who they have actually bought a product from which goes against Googles whole ethos of protecting the customer and providing a good search experience. Yeah you can do it with Clickbank and that is fine if want to promote Clickbank products. But what about the rest of us who want to promote brand name products from well known stores? Unless those well known stores will work with you to implement an order process on your domain then you cannot advertise on Adwords. Which means more and more people will turn to Clickbank products which, lets be honest, many are absolute rubbish and quite a few are nothing short of scams. Again this all starts to go against Googles ethos. For me, my sites are not promoting Clickbank products they are promoting mostly well known brands mostly from well known stores. There is no chance I can get an order process for these products implemented on my sites so Google are not giving me ANY options for promoting through Adwords.
you are completely right. I can confirm all you say from already way back. I got my accounts banned in one of the previous ban waves, September 2009 - after being with AW for 3 years, spending around 600k only in 2009, being an AW advertising professional (that stupid test meaning nothing, by the way - as any serious AW advertiser, I passed it not even trying - but although I expected it to help a bit in looking more trustworthy to them, that was an illusion), etc. despite all attempts to communicate with their support and being ready to correct whatever they would have found necessary. at times I got the impression I was talking to trained monkeys, who recited canned passages out of a pamphlet without understanding the matter at hand at all, and with zero intent to actually assist you. I reopened several new accounts with different legal identities/credit cards/servers/domains/etc, but during the last year it has become such a hassle to get a new affiliate site to run safely on AW that I've completely refocused on other traffic sources. you remind me of crowds of other self-proclaimed AW specialists, who basically copy-paste things from Google's guidelines pages and pretend that this magically solves everything. what you forget to mention is that the guidelines are deliberately vague, constantly change, and leave you entirely open to any wanton damage from Google, at any time, out of the blue. I have had several cases of sites running fine for years which suddenly got slapped to QS 1. I have had a case where a site got slapped to QS 1, then again unslapped after lengthy talks with AW support monkeys to make them understand that the site is not a bridge page and has unique content A) B) C) D).. ranging from live support to video tutorials to you-name-it.. basically all the points from their list... and then slapped again half a year later. probably by a different support monkey. what can you say here? moreover, your very interpretation of bridge page is pretty much absurd. by your definition, nextag.com or something is a bridge page - they dont process orders themselves, but rather only redirect people to other sites. you say thats "poor user experience". well I daresay 30 million of Nextag users a month disagree with you. and Google, obviously, too. what they do is, once again, slippery lawyer terminology, "inferior quality comparison shopping sites". so, where does "inferior quality" end and "superior quality" begin? a very interesting question, but one that is probably not worth risking your whole income on, especially seeing that neither you - and not even your customers - decide this "quality". but rather some trained monkey from AW support. anyhow, you are dead wrong - dont know if you are intentionally lying to maintain some credibility as a "PPC specialist", or just making yourself illusions - and Investawise is right. and not just he - I've talked to quite a few very high-spending AW affiliates, and we all pretty much agree on this if we talk in backstage circles, not publicly of course - it wont do to say the truth about Google openly, it's kind of a "no-no" thing (yet? I feel that may change within the next 2-3 years). basically, it's essentially a futile idea to promote affiliate products on AW today. if you're doing it, you're sitting on a time bomb, although you may not realize it yet. but eh, you aren't doing it if I understand correctly. so when the time bomb goes off for your clients - it will be their fault, I guess.
Thanks for your comments Torafox. I can understand Lucid having the opinions he does because until you get slapped you believe that you are doing everything right and other people who are getting hit must be doing something wrong. I had a similar view up until this incident. Eventually he will probably get hit too and then realise that actually we were right - not that it matters who is wrong and who is right but it is very frustrating when all you have is people telling you you have done something wrong and still looking at Google through rose-tinted glasses.
Usually even CB does not like affiliates to link directly to the order page... though many do it & still do business, it is not appreciate by CB.. (But I have not yet heard of anyone being banned from CB due to this.)
So mate - were you able to get yourself a new account after all? If not - then feel free to ping me. I can get you back up on adwords with new accounts. Goodluck!
I havent tried yet.....leaving it a while for the dust to settle before I try for a new account under the business name and card details. Thanks for the offer I will be in touch if things dont work out.
let me add another almost comical AW anecdote from a friend's recent account: - new, entirely clean account, zero history of anything - directlinking test going to golfswingguru.com - 1 disapproval of golfswingguru adgroup - account gets banned immediately after - conversation ensues - reasoning of AW support: according to Google advertising guidelines, "no ads are allowed for websites which make unrealistic statements about their products". "in the case of your website, it concerns the statement that you can improve your golf handicap in just two weeks, which is scientifically not proven" (quote from AW support mail). "scientifically not proven" is a reason for a ban nowadays, as it seems. as a next step for Google, I suggest to ban the Catholic, Protestant, and all other churches, along with most of the pharmaceutical industry, pretty much all of the weight loss industry, the whole homeopathic industry (bad, really bad offenders!), and a whole bunch of others. not to forget some of Google's own products - I'd make a nice case out of proving that quite a few statements about, say, Chrome are "scientifically not proven". anyhow, they're a bunch of clowns. not to say that others are much better - how Yahoo editorial people function is still a mystery to me after years - but at least there you can do normal business with a confidence that you get hold of people who do understand their stuff, if it matters. personally, I'd be quite happy to see Google get served their own treatment. and I'm very much not alone with this position - among the people who do business with them, that is.
Thanks, Torafox, for the detailed posts. I've had almost the exact same experience, although I haven't done anything like try multiple accounts. What has been very frustrating is seeing websites like Gosale.com or other competitors of mine who copied my content, copied my ads, etc., still up on Adwords while I'm off in the wilderness.
Actually there have already been court rulings against Google for discriminatory and illegal AdWords account terminations, where they were found to abuse their near-monopoly on search advertising and ordered to restore the banned AW accounts: http://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/user/standard.php?id_rub=368&id_article=1420 http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/07/04/the-poison-of-arrogance/ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303362404575580282968250468.html Moreover, France's antimonopoly agency is now investigating some more general regulatory measures against Google: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE6BD16Q20101214 Too bad it's only in France so far. I just hope they get seriously slapped by official legislation and get dictated some real transparent criteria for offering and disallowing access to AW worldwide.