31 ms·
Google Ads suspended me and turned a deaf ear
- stevespang 5y ago
- tragictrash 5y agoGoogle is not your friend and must be treated as an adversary.
- J5892 5y agoThis applies to literally any public corporation.
- alistairSH 5y agoPerhaps, but in a normal business partnernship, you have contracts that spell out the terms and means of recourse. With Google ad services, you have vague ToS spelled out by one party and no real recourse.
- tragictrash 5y agoI don't think every corp really warrants this kind of response. Google has a monopoly, and does an exceptionally poor job of assisting their customers. It is not the norm.
- gumby 5y ago> > Google is not your friend and must be treated as an adversary. > This applies to literally any public corporation. I can clearly see the "not your friend" part. Are all public corporations the adversaries of citizens though? I'm not sure. I'm not asking for edge cases: companies tend to be friends and not adversaries for their CEOs, for example, and I can imagine that Red Hat (when independent) was not any individual's adversary). But it a good heuristic that any given public company will be your adversary? Certainly none really care about you.
- grog454 5y ago>Are all public corporations the adversaries of citizens though? In a way, yes. Public corporations generally seek profit maximization. Rational consumers seek value maximization. More profit for seller = less value for consumer. Less profit for seller = more value for consumer. This is an adversarial situation by definition.
- coffeefirst 5y agoMaybe but having no mechanism for recourse is pretty unusual. Even Heath insurance companies, which are one step above bloodsucking parasites, have phone support that can actually do stuff.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoHealth insurance companies are subject to tons of regulations per the Affordable Care Act. One which does not allow them to refuse customers and another which gives customers the right to appeal to a third party. https://www.healthcare.gov/appeal-insurance-company-decision/appeals/ https://www.healthcare.gov/appeal-insurance-company-decision...
- george0812 5y agoI have never worked with a company as evil as Google. What adds insult to injury is the fact their mantra used to be: Don't be evil!
- jessaustin 5y agoI stopped working with a particular firm immediately after they dropped their "we never eat children" motto.
- grog454 5y agoI feel like when you choose a motto/mantra like "Don't be evil" you're locked in to it because of the obvious implication of removing it.
- ilamont 5y agoGood luck getting a straight, specific answer from anyone at Google regarding supposed problems that violate one of their vaguely worded policies. Some of the stuff flagged by their automated systems are laughable - one that comes to mind is an ad promoting genealogy research that was blocked for promoting birth control. Not that the other platforms are much better. A nonfiction book publisher once told me her Amazon detail page on a book about surviving breast cancer was rejected for promoting sexual content. Besides the description containing the word "breast", the word "therapist" in the description was interpreted by Amazon's "AI" as being about rape.
- Induane 5y agoMakes me think of SNL's celebrity Jeopardy.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agohttps://i.imgflip.com/4600cy.jpg https://i.imgflip.com/4600cy.jpg
- glaucon 5y ago> that was blocked for promoting birth control I can't let this pass without commenting on it. When did promoting birth control become a problem ? Is Google run by some religious cabal who believe that we shouldn't contradict God's will ? I assume the intention is to keep various groups in the USA happy ? Would be interested to know if you can "promote birth control" outside of the USA.
- dangrossman 5y ago> Google doesn't allow ads related to birth control or fertility products in the following countries: Bahrain, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Territory, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Yemen https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/176031?hl=en https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/176031?hl=en
- 5y ago
- mtgx 5y agoThere needs to be some kind of law that mandates that a company MUST reply to customers and/or users within a given time and offer a proper redress process. I remember years ago FB would block your site and they would give you NO OPTION to contact them - like AT ALL (they used to hide the support chat button, and I think they still do from some people). I also knew a company that got its own IG account indefinitely suspended because malicious competitors accused it of cloning their names, even though they were the ones doing that. There are even some articles on Google about being able to pay people to do this for you for like $50. And they could never get that account back after months of trying to talk to FB about it or send documentation to the recommended appeal links (all apparently useless). This is unacceptable from any company where you are a customer/user, let alone multi-billion dollar companies that definitely have all the money they need for proper support. If your support is this poor/non-existent, you shouldn't get to talk about your "record-breaking multi-billion dollar profits" quarter after quarter. This is something we as a society can decide upon, whether or not these companies like that (of course they wouldn't).
- spaetzleesser 5y ago“If your support is this poor/non-existent, you shouldn't get to talk about your "record-breaking multi-billion dollar profits" quarter after quarter.” I am wondering more and more whether these companies are so profitable because they are more efficient or if a lot of their profits come from cutting customer support most companies used to do.
- justinbaker84 5y agoI hear you, but it isn't going to happen. Somebody needs to create a viable competitor to Google. A lot of people have tried, but it is extremely difficult.
- kajic 5y agoFriends who use DuckDuckGo tell me that the quality of their search results has become quite good in the last year. I’m a new user so it’s hard for me to say. Does it seem like a viable competitor to you?
- dsl 5y agoWelcome to the world of blackhat SEO. If someone starts driving up the price of ads for a targeted keyword, you generate a massive amount of abuse and pay people to write complaints to Google. From Google's perspective, they look at your account and see activity that indicates you are doing terrible things. Coupons are an extremely competitive and hostile market to be in. Not saying what happened to OP is fair or acceptable, but things aren't always as obvious looking at them from the other side.
- kurthr 5y agoExactly, competitors may well be the source of your problems. It's cheaper (and safer) to trash your competitors than raising your own rankings (with SEO).
- dsl 5y agoWith something like coupons where you are making affiliate revenue, advertisers have it pretty well dialed in how much they can bid and still make a profit. Since they aren't selling a product directly, there is zero advantage to continue bidding if the price goes up. They are left with two options: find a new market, or push out bidders to low the competitiveness of the market.
- saalweachter 5y agoWhen I was in e-commerce, I was told a story that implied that one merchant in a niche market paid a botnet to DDoS his competitors in the tiny niche during the Christmas rush. I have no first hand knowledge if it is true, or who the merchant was, or the botnet, it's all hearsay and rumor ... but it's the sort of rumor you have no trouble believing after working in e-commerce for a few years.
- kingcharles 5y agoWhen I ran a torrent tracker for TV shows I was pushing $1m+ a year through PayPal. I had my own personal account rep, etc. They didn't give a fuck about the pirated material. My competitor though, they would email PayPal every week telling them we were selling child porn. It would take PayPal no time to lock our account while they logged into the tracker and looked around to check it was still only TV shows. We'd be out of revenue for a few days each time. That trick is absolutely the quickest way to destroy any online business.
- george0812 5y agoIf your business relies heavily on Google to get customers (Adwords) or for generating revenue (Adsense, youtube, extensions, search, …) You are doomed. Google will/has terminated accounts on a whim with no recourse: one day you wake up and your business is destroyed, all you have is a vague, automated email and no way to contact a human being. "Oh you spent 4 years working on this extension and have thousands of paying customers? We removed it because, well… we can't tell you! And, no we won't bring it back." "Oh sorry we have to suspend your Adsense account AND keep all the money because… well, we can't tell you!" "Oh you composed an original song for your youtube video? we're going to suspend your channel with 3 million subscribers because our system wrongly flagged your song as copyright infringement. And, no, we won't bring your channel back! ever!" "Oh you use our PAID email service for your company paying us thousands every month? Oops, you're locked out because we falsely flagged you. We might give you access again in 2 months, we'll see… In the meantime use pigeons to send messages" To Google you are just a number, a statistic. They absolutely don't care about you or your business because they have market power. This company is the worst partner you can ask for, a true monopoly abusing customers and users alike. STAY AWAY from Alphabet!
- 3np 5y agoI’m kind of surprised we haven’t read about this kind of thing happen to something like a public school or hospital (surely they exist?) relying on Google services.
- dsr_ 5y agoNot too far into the pandemic, Google had a US-wide whoopsie that killed Google Classroom for a couple of hours. Any school (including the one my kids were attending) that depended on Google Classroom was down for the morning. External SPOF.
- justinbaker84 5y agoYou are correct but staying away from Alphabet is a lot easier said then done. They are still the best way for a small to medium business to reach customers. Ever since the iOS changes that crushed Facebook's targeting capability Google has only become more dominant in the advertising space. To me it seems like avoiding Alphabet basically means avoiding advertising and it is really hard to grow a business without it.
- dangrossman 5y agoThis has been my experience with Google too. I have a suspended Google Merchant Center account for an ecommerce site. That's Google's service to list products for their "shopping" search tab, which you also need to run shopping ads. I sell some home decor items I hand make in my home workshop with a laser cutter and paint. Nothing weird, just like "welcome to our home" type signs. It's a standard Shopify-hosted store with flat rate shipping, a posted shipping policy, return policy, privacy policy, and contact page with a contact form, my address and my phone number on it. That should check off all of Google's requirements for a merchant center account. But, it was immediately suspended and multiple requests to reconsider the suspension just get me a form letter back saying my site violates their policies. No human at Google will ever give me any specific reason why. Every month or so, one of my Google Ads for another site gets suspended for violating the policy "Certificate required: free desktop software". This policy is about ads that link to downloadable .exe/.zip desktop software. My ads, which have been largely running without change for 9-10 years, are for a SaaS analytics service for marketers. There is no desktop software or downloadable files on the website. Just your typical pricing/signup/login pages like any web app. There is no rhyme or reason as to what ad in my account they will suspend each month. I can create the same ad again and it'll be approved since there is no actual policy violation. Like OP, I can easily reach a human to sell me more ads. No matter how many times I click the unsubscribe links in their emails or ask to opt out, they actually hound me, at every email of mine they can find, and all my personal and business phone numbers, to take "account review" calls where they can try to talk me into spending more on Google Ads. But when it comes to getting support for policy issues, nobody will talk to you.
- austinpena 5y agoI’ve found that if you: 1. Go through email support 2. Get them to approve the ads 3. Reference your case number any other time you get disapprovals That helps
- justinbaker84 5y agoUnfortunately that has been my experience as well.
- boplicity 5y ago
- goldcd 5y agoWas just pondering if you could unionize (in a very loose way). Come up with your own set of rules that come within google's, peer review each other to ensure that you meet your own rules - then if google pulls one of you, the rest of you walk. Don't have to shift how google works, just present to google as a large enough mass of money that you get promoted to a service rep, rather than templated rules and emails. There's also a benefit on the google side - that if you're a self-moderating group, what gets escalated to them is likely to be a valid issue.
- pzm3292 5y agoI think you are violated Google's Circumventing systems rule. I noticed your affiliate site is using woltcode.de as domain name but "wolt" is maybe registered trademark of wolt.com. Google cannot allow this kind of similar domain name in generall.
- mission_failed 5y agoIf only google would bother to explain why their AI banned someone, and gave reasonable methods to appeal
- TruthWillHurt 5y agoIt could also be due to a DNS redirect. I hosted a page on AWS S3 bucket exposed to the web, and had my domain CNAME record point to the bucket public-facing DNS name. Triggered the same Circumventing ban.
- todayisfriday 5y agoStories like this seem to pop up semi-frequently on HN. So I'm wondering -- has anyone tried to sue Google, perhaps in small claims court (for U.S. residents)? Surely that would at least compel an actual human to address the account closure, ban, etc. I am assuming there are legal or financial reasons this approach is unwise?
- voakbasda 5y agoThe Google lawyers will show up and grind your soul into a fine powder.
- redmen 5y ago
- dollar 5y agoThe biggest indicator of a monopoly is when they can treat customers like garbage and keep doing business anyway. Google suspended the Ads account of our largest agency client ($20,000 per day) with no explanation other than a vague “policy violation”. They steadfastly refused to explain how the policy was violated or what we could do to come into compliance. We contacted attorneys, wrote letters to Google executives, begged, pleaded. In the end our client fired us and they went back to their old agency. Later we learned their old agency paid off a Google insider to flag our client’s account resulting in suspension. Of course, we could never speak to a human being at Google and explain this. One day, the truth about Google Ads (and Facebook) will come out, which is that it is all 85% fraud anyway. Save your money. Today, we no longer do business with Google Ads or Facebook. Given these companies make up 95% of digital ad spending, it’s fair to say we are no longer a digital ad agency. We’ve adapted to market around big tech, whether they like it or not. With “partners” like Google and Facebook, who needs enemies?
- justinbaker84 5y agoHow do you market around big tech? The vast majority of time spent consuming media is through tech and traditional media just continues to decline every year.
- Crash0v3rid3 5y agoThese are quite the accusations being made here. Is there any evidence you can provide?
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y agoWait what? I can bribe a human at google to flip a switch and there are no checks and balances in place to discover a change made to a 20K a day account? How many google insiders can take bribes like this? Have they gotten rich from it? What’s the minimum spend to get official help then?
- new_stranger 5y agoConsidering there are over 150,000 people working at Google, I would assume the odds one of them would take a bribe to be pretty good. That said, it certainly doesn't prove this has ever happened.
- erehweb 5y agoHmm. If I understand correctly, the website is a play to get money from Wolt by getting other people to sign up via OPs referral code. Seems kind of arbitragey - OP is not actually selling something, and Google would probably rather get the advertising $ from Wolt directly. So I see where Google's coming from, and think it can reasonably be classified as "Engaging in practices that circumvent or interfere with Google's advertising systems and processes, or attempts to do so" - the examples given are non-exhaustive. Why OPs and not other promo / coupon sites? Who knows - maybe the others add some more value, or maybe G will come for them eventually. (Edit - corrected assumption of OPs gender)
- NmAmDa 5y agoI think the main problem here is that Google don't let you know what went wrong or let you have any actual human you can talk to. This is what makes their decisions seems arbitrary is you have to guess at best why this happened.
- fennecs 5y agoCome on, in this case it’s pretty obvious, your website was not doing anything of value. Just a random middle man expecting to be paid for existing. Put your promo code on your website fine, but then wanting to advertise on it? That just seems like a dodgy thing to do.
- kajic 5y agoWhy should Google have a monopoly on linking to information that others find useful?
- kajic 5y agoOP here. I think some people downvoted this question of mine, so I’ll try to clarify my thinking. Google is paid by advertisers to refer people to their content. I was paid Wolt credits by Wolt to refer people to their service. It seems to me that providing people with a promo code that they find valuable, and that Wolt finds valuable is providing a similar kind of value as Google’s own advertisements, even if mine is minuscule, and even if I use Google to advertise it.
- pteraspidomorph 5y agoGood to know they haven't changed a bit since I was banned, 17 years ago. This seems to be the norm with many american tech companies. They abruptly cast you out with a vaguely worded template explanation, no one will talk to you or explain to you what happened. Appeals are rejected.
- fswd 5y agoIt's the original cancel culture. Once google got customers to accept it, it became the new norm.
- bgroat 5y agoI had a similar, but opposite experience recently. I created a Google My Business profile for my business. The business is about 5 years old, but the profile is new. About one week after creation it was suspended for a "policy violation", but I could appeal. I sent a single email saying, "I don't know what this was suspended". 4 days later I got an email informing me the suspension had been recinded
- justinbaker84 5y agoYou are very lucky then. Google almost never does that. Doesn't matter how rediculous their suspension reason is. Source - I have managed google search ads full time for 12 years.
- bgroat 5y agoI believe it. I shit a brick when I saw it because I figured, "I guess I just won't be on Google Maps"
- Havoc 5y agoThe whole can't talk to a human and no meaningful way of appealing (a charge they won't tell you) seems to be a recurring theme with google. Untrustworthy
- Matsta 5y agoOur company Adwords got banned a year ago, hours after our creatives got approved. The reason was our site was "phishing" and trying to steal people's data. After appealing the ban multiple times with no luck, we weren't getting anywhere. I talked to a couple of people I know who work at Google (one works in Adwords) and basically said there's nothing you can do. What we did find out is that the ban was completely automatic, and the most likely reason was that it couldn't render the content on the Angular (wonder what company created that) site we were pushing the ads to. Since we have all our emails on GSuite, we've tried getting a few different people in the office to signup, and they get instantly banned after they signup. We try every few months to appeal but get the same old "policy violation". Looking on the bright side, I now don't get random calls from angry people in India demanding I need to "optimise" my ad campaigns.
- pabs3 5y agoThere has to be a more consumer friendly way for businesses to get their products known by potential customers than advertising.
- openthc 5y agoI'm in the cannabis space; but don't touch green-product. Google doesn't like cannabis business. Some of my competitors (somehow) are able to advertise on the Google platform. And I almost got my whole company kicked out of our Google eco-system (Workplace, Cloud) for even trying to put an ad for our business in there. But we have a contact there, cause we're paying clients on Workspace (Email, Drive, etc). So, didn't get kicked off hooray -- but then asked about how/why can others advertise their cannabis-related businesses but we cannot. "We'll get back to you..." And I know, from at least one competitor (cause we're friendly, small industry), their ad-spend was not very much (ie: USD $2500/mo). Another friendly competior got their account banned (but it was a throw-away gmail account). It's frustrating when the algo picks/chooses winners/losers and it still seems pretty ad-hoc/random. What permits one cannabis-related business but blocks another? Shouldn't an algo be consistent?
- perryizgr8 5y ago> Shouldn't an algo be consistent? If they're using deep learning then no. It's basically random because nobody understands how such contraptions make their decisions.
- zalebz 5y agoThere are only a handful of companies that have crossed the $1 Trillion USD market cap threshold. Tgese are some of the richest entities in all of human history and their direct customers cannot even get a reply to an inquiry that has destroyed their livelihood - and there is no law or regulatory body that requires them to. This is embarrassing as an American citizen but moreover as a human in our current society - what exactly do we value/reward that this gets barely any attention?
- MisterMower 5y agoWe’ve come a long way from “don’t be evil.”
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- TruthWillHurt 5y agoWe should organise a global protest in front of Google offices. Let them try ignore that!
- Razengan 5y agoThe advertising industry is a cancer upon human civilization and should be abolished. Literally no one is going to speak out in favor of this plague except the people whose livelihoods depend upon perpetuating it. Not even hyperbole: Ask anyone if ads are annoying or not. Unless they’re making money from ads, the answer will be Yes.
- gdulli 5y agoUsually I mute TV commercials, but one time I had them on and I found out from a commercial that Nightmares on Wax was coming to my town soon. I had no idea, I don't follow music news. But I bought tickets immediately. I love them and I'd never seen them live before. It was one of the best concerts I've ever been to. And I'd have missed it without advertising. This is an outlier experience, but it shows that advertising can be a positive when it's not perverted by all of the things that currently make it terrible. Sometimes there's a gap in our knowledge of what products, services, events are available. I can remain skeptical of the specific claims made in ads while benefitting from finding out, oh, there's a new pizza place near me, I should try it. Ads are more annoying than useful, and tracking me needs to stop. But as usual, the most extremist view (positive or negative) is not the most useful one.
- vachina 5y agoOn Safari this site is blocked by AdGuard. I wonder what you did to end up getting on blocklists. Ok I figured out why. AdGuard saw “Google” and “Ad” in the URI and blocked navigation to it.
- kajic 5y agoOP here. I seem to have a talent for upsetting computer programs.
- TrianguloY 5y agoAnother story here for the list. I have a blog where I post about my android app development. My apps have a link to a page in that blog explaining some details of the app. A few months after creating it the "show ads" button was enabled and available to be pressed (and even encouraged you to do it). I pressed it to see if it was worth it, a few days later the account was suspended. As usual, I never got any confirmation about the reason, but years later I think the issue is that one of my apps is very popular (1M users) and basically the 99% of the blog visits are from that app, directly to the app page. I suspect some visits are from bots too, so the most probable cause is that the traffic was flagged as invalid.
- throwaway0305 5y agoYou are not allowed to promote websites with someone else's brand name. The site you were promoting was a trademark violation and Google Ads took it down correctly. The trigger may also be the food delivery company complaining legally about your ads to Google. Create your own site eg my-free-food-coupons.de and then run the ads.
- kajic 5y agoOP here. That makes sense. I’ll try moving the site to a different domain and submitting my seventh appeal. If this is indeed the problem, it’s hard to understand why their support agents couldn’t have divulged this information in one of my six previous appeals.
- josourcing 5y agoFWIW... I experienced the same outcome due to an outsourced foreigner being unable to access my U.S.-only website. So Google's 150,000 foreigners are in charge of determining everyone's website visibility.