Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Search / PPC (Adwords, Bing, etc.)

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Adwords account suspended after about a year (16)

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Hey guys,

I've been promoting using the same adwords account for about a year.

Over the past few months, I've been running ads on pretty high daily budgets.

About a week and a half ago, I began scaling my campaigns and increased the budgets significantly. Then, all of the sudden they drop a bomb on me.
I wake up to find an email notification saying that my account has been suspended on account of "untrustworthy behavior".

Pretty much nothing has changed on my end, except for the increase in budgets. Other than that, I've been running the same sites for the past few months without any issues.

I have contacted their support team to find out if there has been some kind of mistake. They answered pretty quickly saying "our specialists will re-review your account within 3 business days". A few hours later I received another notification email saying the same thing "your account has been suspended for untrustworthy behavior" this time mentioning specifically "missing or misleading content".

So I wanted to ask if this has ever happened to anyone, when after a pretty long period of time running you suddenly get banned without any warning, and if there is any point to continue chasing adwords to re-activate the account? Or are these decisions generally final?

Thanks in advance!

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Haha, this happens very frequently.

You should have backup accounts so that in case these things happen, you are not completely stuck.

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Hey there!

Check again their policy and what they say about misleading content: https://support.google.com/adwordspo.../6020955?hl=en

We advise you to edit your ads as much as possible, adding detailed information and clearly showing that if you are not going to mislead the users or harm user experience. You could try to request another review, just to make sure you've done all possible -https://support.google.com/adwords/contact/site_policy

What we know is that sometimes the text ads are more easily disapproved than the display ones (for whatever reason). Display ads like static banners have been approved automatically
And it's easier to advertise with this formats when it comes to affiliate marketing as Google is just, let's say, not really excited about affiliate marketing

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Yeah, i hear about it all the time.

I'm still a bit surprised however.. I've been running for about a year, with daily budgets of 4 (sometimes 5 digits)

So it's not exactly a small account, that we ran for a few weeks. I think I deserve at least a warning, or a less vague explanation on why all of the sudden my account got suspended. Again, same ads, same destinations for months without issues...

It's like they changed some policy, which caused the account to be flagged and suspended overnight without warning...

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Hey Mobidea,

Thanks

But the issue is not about a disapproved ad. It's the suspension of the account itself.

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They don't really care about your ad-spend, I learned it the hard way ... I thought I was a large spender at that time too ... I also thought I'd deserve at least a warning ... go figure

However, I was able to get my account back after a few emails (10+), repeating my case over and over, staying polite, mentioning how it was running for a LONG time without ever running into problems ... repeating how it wasn't possible for it to get unnoticed for such a long period ... eventually they gave in, and reinstated my account.

Definitely try to find out whether there was some new rule that you might have been breaking now ... this happens pretty often.

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Certainly looks like they don't care much about how much you spend with them...

Thanks for sharing the experience, that's exactly what i was looking for - to find out if persistence can get me my account back (I've read on some sites that once it's suspended it's pretty much it...)
I will try to come up with some changes i can make on my sites, and send an appeal.

Thanks

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Of course they care ... but big spend is a relative term.

Google makes $3 billion (yes billion not million) a month from advertising, so someone who spends $1 million a year will be pretty much insignificant. This would be like you losing a 25 cent coin in your sofa somewhere.

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What was the niche that you were promoting?

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Sorry to hear about your plight!

I would follow Matuloo's advice of doing your best to communicate with Adwords first.

It's not impossible to get a new account - I've done it before - but if you leave ANY footprint that would allow them to associate your new account with the banned account, then your new account will get banned as well - plus it would most probably eliminate any chances of convincing them to give you your original account back.



Amy

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Yeah, that's pretty much the plan at the moment. Just going over their policies, modifying pages and making an appeal...
Waiting for their reply, if negative modifying some more, and appealing again. Rinse and repeat until they hopefully get me back and running again.

Opening a new account is not something i am considering at the moment. This would be a last resort for me, if at all...

Thankfully i have many other sources running, so it's not completely drying out my revenues

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Of course, didn't mean it doesn't matter at all. More like with smaller budgets (which may seem high to some)

I've once worked for a company which dealt with much higher budgets (over half a million per month)

Every time they would receive some sort of rejection, someone from adwords would call them and walk them step by step on how to modify the pages/ads in order to get the running again... Unfortunately, I'm not quite there yet to have someone give a solid reason on why the account is suspended

Great 25 cent analogy btw

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If you play clean, you can appeal to customer support (best if you have an account manager). They'll usually help you address the policy and restore your account. Unlike before, Google engages more with the advertiser (again, assuming no funny business). FB is what Google used to be - just ban you without notice and without any response whatsoever.

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Hey guys,

First of all, thanks for all of the replies. It helped a lot with getting a better perspective on how adwords works.

For the update- After sending multiple appeals without any direct answers, I have sent another one explaining the same thing over again but this time labeling myself as a "business" instead of "affiliate"

After reading your comments, it hasn't surprised me that adwords replied with a prompt response.

Basically they changed the policy violation from "untrustworthy behavior" to "site missing original content"

It's still very vague, but I have a better understanding of what I need to change.

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Making an adwords account is easy, no need to cry over losing one. I've ran blackhat stuff on google and went over hundreds of accounts. Just go ahead and make a new one. You just need another email and a new card. Just to be safe, don't run the same url. No need to even change your ip for a 2nd account.

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This has happened to me 3 times, I have the scars to prove it. Each time was all of a sudden, without warning, and very vague. I even got a hold of a Google account manager who was extremely unhelpful. The best I could gather was they didn't like the offer landing page , because of its likeness to offers that were "untrustworthy". It seemed I was guilty by association. But there was never any clear indication.

Sorry to hear about what happened, but in the long run it may be best, as it may force diversification in your business.

I even got one account reinstated, but I decided to move on to other traffic sources.

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