My Google AdWords Account Got Banned

I promised to talk about how Google banned my AdWords account and almost forgot about it. Just to get the record straight and remind myself never to depend on Google, I decided to write it finally.

So the word “ban” usually implies that I did something terribly wrong, right? Well actually, I really don’t understand exactly what I did, even till today. Let’s go back to that stupid anonymous email I got from Google AdWords:

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:

1. Sites that charge users or collect personal information in exchange for a product that is never delivered
2. Sites that charge for “free” software
3. Sites that trick users into paying for fake or poor-quality content
4. Sites that charge users for information that makes unrealistic promises of financial or personal gain
5. Sites that install malware software on a visitor’s computer

Please 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.

So that was it. After six bloody years using AdWords and trying to keep up with all their ever changing Terms and Conditions, and never getting ANY campaigned banned or slapped, I was just cut loose.

Banned for life. Email didn’t even contain my name.

The thing is, I wasn’t even promoting any affiliate stuff, just three of my own sites: Death of a Blogger, Host Commando and PLR WP Videos.

The “Death of a Blogger” site was getting a good 28% optin conversion from AdWords traffic. The PLR Videos site was getting a good overall sales conversion of 3%++ and it was very profitable too.

My ads were all getting good CTR, my landing page scores was between 7 to 10. I never got any ads disabled or any warning from Google previously, for six years.

So basically even though I wrote good ads and promoted stuff people wanted, with results to prove it, Google thinks otherwise.

Did I go against some of their terms and conditions? Well I don’t know because they are so vague and subjective.

And the worst part, they selectively applied their bans. Any product I was promoting when I got banned, you’ll still see a lot of people promoting similar ones via AdWords.

After trying to get in touch with a human being (with a name) and failing, I finally decided I’m done with AdWords. In fact I’m done with any Google product that required me to be in business with them. That’s why although I got approved for the Google Affiliate Network, I completely ignored it.

Won’t they just do the same thing to me later? Ban me for life, treat me like a rabid unwanted dog? All three responses I got from them were the same vague, canned answers that never really told me exactly what they found so offensive with my ads that they had to slap a lifetime ban.

Actually I’m not alone. Apparently more than 15,000 direct marketers got similar emails, all of them banned for life. If you’re not banned by AdWords yet, it’s probably just a matter of time.

Well, if Google prefers to treat human beings like machines with no human touch at all, sooner or later they will only be doing business with machines. Right now, I hate them.

Ok, rant is over. Life moves on. Screw Google.