Oh Lol, my Adwords Account *is* suspended, but read this!

[GeorgR.]

Today i wrote an inquiry on my adwords account why none of my ads are running. I got a standard email back within a few seconds that my Adwords account is suspended without any clarification as to why.

The funny thing is that i had my campaigns paused since June 2009 (the account was still active at this date).

So how can the account be suspended if i didn't run any ads for over a year? I obviously couldn't have done anything in that time causing my adwords account suspension.

[Groovystar]

Google must have goofed, or they are taking other things besides activity on Adwords accounts as reasons for suspensions, which is kind of scary if you think about it.

[Mega B]

Could it be that Google has deemed the account as be in-active as it has not been used for a years so that is why it has been suspended.

[GeorgR.]

I have an idea what the reason is:


I had a campaign in there where i had many thousands ads advertising amazon product names. HOWEVER - the campaign was OFF for over two years now since i don't do amazon on adwords anymore.

But i got emails occasionally saying "this or that ad (with phrases like "asus" or "LG") is a trademark" and your ad has been disapproved. I never cared about this since the whole campaign was not running anyway, all the ads were inactive.

Maybe this is the reason.

Anyway, the chances that i am getting the account back are zero anyway.

[Groovystar]

That is weird because I see adwords ads advertising trademarked items all the time. That is how those companies make a lot of their money.

[timpears]

Who the hell can figure Google out. They do the weirdest things. They cancel accounts and then when you ask them they respond with a long drawn out response that never does answer the question, and you are just as confused as you were before you asked.

I would at least try to get your account reactivated. If it was banned I would say that your chances were slim and none, but you said that your account was suspended. That is a big difference. And more than likely just a temporary thing. You have nothing to lose by trying.

[GeorgR.]

i got about 15 emails saying ads are disapproved, names like "WMF", "LG", "ASUS"...how the heck should someone know "WMF 16782717" is a trademark?

And i had those ads in there for years...some of those emails took a year or longer to tell me ads are disapproved. Anyway...who cares if that campaign wasn't running anyway for two years and the rest of my account otherwise was paused since June 2009? (And in June 2009 whatever other ads i had were still running and there was no suspension)

I wrote their "CSR" how on earth can my account be suspended if none of my ads were running since June 2009. I am waiting for their explanation, it sure cannot be a logical one... And furthermore....why didnt i simply get an email telling me the acc is suspended?

[tryinhere]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Today i wrote an inquiry on my adwords account why none of my ads are running. I got a standard email back within a few seconds that my Adwords account is suspended without any clarification as to why.

The funny thing is that i had my campaigns paused since June 2009 (the account was still active at this date).

So how can the account be suspended if i didn't run any ads for over a year? I obviously couldn't have done anything in that time causing my adwords account suspension.

GeorgR, when looking at this a long while ago (during the blitz) I called back then that there was a pattern with canceled accounts and those that had paused campaigns.

This lead me to believe the trigger or part there of to suspend an account is based on a % of time / poor ratings in an account

By this and only a guess if you hook up to a bad G link and delete that link your pretty well OK, but if you hook up and leave it, then the timer or % of quality score is triggered with how ever it works will suspend your account.

The reason this happens on pause is because in G's eyes pause and run are exactly the same in that a paused account can be flicked back on.

This is why if you have poor ratings those nasty little q scores need to be deleted, not paused.

[GeorgR.]

I am engaging in a little email conversation right now, and it's gets really, really interesting:

I just got a lenghty email back where they talk about landing page quality,
and then later on she gets specific and mentions that the reason for
the account being disabled is that i used "Squidoo" as a landing page for "Arbitrage".

There is only one problem:

I NEVER used Squidoo.com as an adwords landing page, nor did i ever engage in Adwords -> AdSense arbitrage.

The point is: They have the right to disable/suspend account whether we like it or not. If someone does something "wrong"...no problem.

BUT THEN FOR GODS SAKE be able to show the reason why. Obviously, this is not the case here. This is like slapping someone in the face, the other guy asks "What on earth did i wrong?" - and then i stand there mumbling and cant give a reason why i just slapped him?

Cheezus Google...

[ahefner33]

Yeah. End of the day its basically your word vs whomever is reviewing or dealing with your account. Im surprised they actually gave you a reason to why they suspended your account. Every other person, including myself, get the response that they can not reveal reasons as to why they cancel accounts due to revealing "too much". Annoying part for me is I can't get off there emailing list for Adwords even though I have unselected receiving news in my account. O_o

[ordinary]

I suspect it is a Google bot that answering your email...

Anyway, Hi to Mega B from YE

[GeorgR.]

Well just got an email back telling me they are looking into it and it could take longer.

[jayuk76]

GR

The issue relates to who views your query. When a query is raised against a domain or a ad rejection the "support guy" is able to view lots of information in their Support Platform - if things are flagged based on their criteria then they may just suspend your account. Now they do NOT do this automatically - this is why you have got away with it to date

J

[GeorgR.]

This may be...but i think we can at least expect a reasonable explanation which makes sense. If they dont like me promoting dog traning or six pack abs - so be it. But simply dont reply with weird suspension reasons like "Squidoo Arbitrage" <--

This one actually made me laugh since i certainly wont spend AdWords money to make Seth Godin money with his ads on Squidoo

[isaiasrosario]

I have seen and read all over the internet about how many people got their adwords account suspended. I was one of those adword users that got my account suspended. I wasn't doing anything wrong I was just promoting other peoples products as an affiliate. I guess google is cracking down on all these affiliates out there.

-Izzy

[GeorgR.]

well got several emails forth and back, in the earlier ones they referred to Squidoo, then they claimed it has to do "with another" account and evil things i did on Squidoo...and then in the last emails they got a little angry, aka "dont contact us again" ..and mentioned "multiple landing page quality violations". <--- no matter what, tired of this nonsense. Glad i don't use AW for over a year anyway.

Fact is i didnt use AW for over a year, i dont use another AW account and i had a Squidoo account which was closed in 2009. All those replies don't make any sense. Tried to tell them but they are stubborn.

[FiverrGuru]

yeah mine got suspended just like that too

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

well got several emails forth and back, in the earlier ones they referred to Squidoo, then they claimed it has to do "with another" account and evil things i did on Squidoo...and then in the last emails they got a little angry, aka "dont contact us again" ..and mentioned "multiple landing page quality violations". <--- no matter what, tired of this nonsense. Glad i don't use AW for over a year anyway.

Fact is i didnt use AW for over a year, i dont use another AW account and i had a Squidoo account which was closed in 2009. All those replies don't make any sense. Tried to tell them but they are stubborn.

What kind of evil things can you do with Squidoo? Now I'm curious. I can't believe that kind of treatment from Google. Instead of wasting their time back and forth with you they could have just given you a straight forward answer.

Tell me how to do evil things with Squidoo.

[numba8]

oh the great mystery that is Google...they scrub campaigns, ban accounts and do all sorts of stuff without any good explanation.

[kenthn]

My Adwords account was suspended as well about 2 weeks ago.

I had not been running any active campaigns for almost 6 months when it was suspsended. After several emails the adwords rep sent my request to "not" suspend the account up the ladder to the special "bad behaviour" department for evaluation but with the same result.

The reasons were like mist in the morning. Nothing one could really point to and say, this is the reason,but reading between the lines the strongest reason was sending traffic to low quality pages.

I've been fighting Google about this several times before. I can't tell before running my ad/campaign and tweaking it if the quality score will be low or high. There are cases when it is a no brainer but not always. So when I start a campaigns and get a 7-9 in quality score for the first 5-7 days I assume things are going good. And then suddenly a quality score of 1.

I have alos been judged on campaigns I ran several years ago (as deleting doesn't delete, the stuff is still there) and I was penalized several times for having (deleted) campaigns to domains that had poor landing page quality scores. These domains wasn't even mine as I had let the domain go and stopped selling the products but according to the info I got from Adwords, I should make sure the domain (and landing page) had higher quality and followed all rules. Telling them I no longer owned the domain didn't matter.

I'm sure that I have messed up or not succeeded in following the rules 100% during all the years I've had my adwords account but it's hard to make it work when there's never any straight answers.

Kenth

[John Hocking]

I have been reading lots of stories about inactive accounts being banned without reason or warning.

It does not seem like good customer service to slam the door in your face and never get a chance to set things right.

My guess is they make so much of the big accounts that they do not want to be bothered with the little guys anymore.

[Aki Fagno]

This is another horror story which involves Google...

[JGrosz]

Just logged into my adwords account after 18 months w/o an active ad and see this in the alert window.. your adwords account has been permanently suspended! Yikes.

sent an email to the followed links about contacting them. had a 4 paragraph response in about 15 seconds...

[JosephVi]

This proved that not only does googlebot crawl our sites,they also randomly banned accounts and send out wacky replies.LOL.

[Mark Wilson]

Originally Posted by kenthn

These domains wasn't even mine as I had let the domain go and stopped selling the products but according to the info I got from Adwords, I should make sure the domain (and landing page) had higher quality and followed all rules. Telling them I no longer owned the domain didn't matter.

Hi Kenth,

Same thing here. They had the unmitigated gall to suggest that I...

"reach out to the owner of the site and request them to make the changes on your behalf"

Yeah, right! Like that's going to happen.

So even though the site conformed to the guidelines and got top quality scores 3 YEARS AGO (the last time I had an ad pointing to it) doesn't matter. The fact that it now belongs to someone how has turned it into a Spammy Piece of Affiliate C**P (my words, not Google's) means that my account takes the blame. It's beyond stupid.

Eventually after 18 email and a refusal to treat "the matter" as a "complaint", they just stop responding.

Way to go Google!

[kenthn]

I do understand that they want people to click on ads and feel that they haven't been missled somehow. Otherwise the whole concept will fall apart.

But I see no reason (other than enough new Adwords customer entering the system all the time) for Google to just kicking customers out into the cold.

I do answer emails and I do take "suggestions" seriously. I have complied with any and all messages I have received in a timely manner but that wasn't enough.

Kenth