Adwords Account Suspended: "Related to another account.."

[Ryan Butz]

Hey warriors I'm in need of some assistance with getting my adWords account unsuspended. I have tried researching this topic as much as possible, but it seems that this policy is a difficult one to get any information on - even Google says it themselves.

This is the portion of the email we received from Google:

It has come to our attention that your Google AdWords account Customer ID
472-051-8135 is related to another account which has repeatedly violated
our Pharma (Anabolic steroids policy) policy and/or Terms and Conditions.

As a result, we have suspended your account and will no longer allow your
ads to run on Google. Please refrain from opening any new AdWords
accounts. We will suspend any newly created accounts upon registration and
your account fee will not be refunded.

The problem is, we don't have any other accounts, or related accounts. Before I email them back saying we don't have any other accounts I started doing research on this issue and this is what Google says about it:

Just as with invalid click activity, we're unable to provide our publishers with any information about relations we find between publishers' accounts. Please understand that we take this precaution with all of our publishers for the sake of protecting our proprietary detection system.

Please also bear in mind that Google reserves the right to disable an account for any reason. If we determine that an AdSense account may pose a risk to our AdWords advertisers, we may disable that account in order to protect our advertisers' interests.

Are they saying they are banning us but can't even tell us what account is being 'linked' to our account?

Has anyone dealt with this and had it reversed? We heavily rely on adWords to drive our business and need as much help as we cant to rectify this situation. We try to comply with Google as much as possible but sometimes it seems like their is nothing you can do.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

- Ryan

[owenlee]

i think is hard to get it back...i got mine suspended before and it was real hard to even talk to them...good luck

[JamesGw]

They threatened to suspend my account once. I emailed them back a pretty condescending letter and they apologized.

They might've made a mistake. I'd just ask them to investigate further and insure them that you're not related to any accounts selling steroids.

You can also ask them to disclose whatever information they have so that your attorney can look it over, even if you're 100% that they'll refuse. Finding a way to mention attorneys is a good way to get people to give you what you want.

[derekwong28]

Unless they owe you money, I can't see how you can threaten to sue someone who refuses to do business with you.

I would write to them politely offering to co-operate in any way you can. You can also try to get hold of a Google staff on their own forums. I believe a staff is also active in the Adwords forum at Webmasterworld

[Ryan Butz]

Originally Posted by JamesGw

They threatened to suspend my account once. I emailed them back a pretty condescending letter and they apologized.

They might've made a mistake. I'd just ask them to investigate further and insure them that you're not related to any accounts selling steroids.

You can also ask them to disclose whatever information they have so that your attorney can look it over, even if you're 100% that they'll refuse. Finding a way to mention attorneys is a good way to get people to give you what you want.

I'm fairly sure they made a mistake as well. We have had ads that were disapproved that we did get rid of, even though our competitors were using them, just to abide by Googles request and not get them mad. It's almost as if they want you to suck up to them and they'll overlook some grey areas for you

[JamesGw]

Originally Posted by derekwong28

Unless they owe you money, I can't see how you can threaten to sue someone who refuses to do business with you.

I would write to them politely offering to co-operate in any way you can. You can also try to get hold of a Google staff on their own forums. I believe a staff is also active in the Adwords forum at Webmasterworld

No one's threatening to sue anyone. I think you underestimate how much of a headache an attorney can cause and why most businesses would rather expend a little extra energy solving a problem as opposed to dealing with one.

[Ryan Butz]

Thanks for everyones insight. Can anybody else weigh in and shed some light on the issue?

[jtotani]

You should check to see if by "related to another account" means that maybe you have inadvertently used the same snailmail address, email account or phone number that the previous offender used a while ago. What other information could they cross-reference? Previous domain registrant of your current domain?

[nicoledeal]

I found that Google was responsive when I replied to their email which announced my permanent ban. It took a few emails back and forth to get details from them as to what my "offense" was. In the end I was not willing to change all my sites to meet their needs (they did not like multiple sites), and have since moved on, unfortunately it sounds like you rely on them much more than I did.

Do not use any threatening verbiage when you reply. Word your email in a way that seeks to clarify and understand so that you can COMPLY with their wishes. Believe me, they will not be intimidated by anything you say, so I would avoid mentioning an attorney. They would just put that email up on a dartboard in their breakroom. Good luck.

[Ryan Butz]

I sent them an email yesterday. I'm being very stern about getting the account back as well as being very compliant. I've told them we're doing anything and everything to try to rectify our situation and are going to cooperate as long as they point out the problem to us. After doing even more research I'm wondering if one of our bigger competitors that pretty much dominates the space had any doing in this. My second thought is the one ingredient they said we're selling "ephedra" we're not. But we are selling products that have the name "ephedra free" in them. I'm wondering if their robots just scanned that word. I'm going to bring that to their attention in a follow up email as they haven't responded in 24-48 hours.

[GeorgR.]

as long as they point out the problem to us.

Here is your problem - because they expect YOU knowing the problem..because if you dont know the problem, how can you solve it? You are basically admitting you have no way to correct the problem.

BUT.if this is really in error, and you never bought an account and never had another account or shared account - it MIGHT be possible to convince them. That is, if their accusation is truly without any base.

Edit: I read all your posts now..good luck convincing them that your weight loss products are "kosher". Because this might be VERY hard...if you're in a niche which they simply dislike..tehy might can you..regardless whether ephedra is in the products or not...i dont think it matters for them...its the general niche.

[Ryan Butz]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Here is your problem - because they expect YOU knowing the problem..because if you dont know the problem, how can you solve it? You are basically admitting you have no way to correct the problem.

BUT.if this is really in error, and you never bought an account and never had another account or shared account - it MIGHT be possible to convince them. That is, if their accusation is truly without any base.

Edit: I read all your posts now..good luck convincing them that your weight loss products are "kosher". Because this might be VERY hard...if you're in a niche which they simply dislike..tehy might can you..regardless whether ephedra is in the products or not...i dont think it matters for them...its the general niche.

What im admitting to is not being able to correct the problem that hasn't been identified by Google. I agree with you 100% that I think that this is going to be very hard to convince them since this niche has so many gray areas. And even in their "Health care and medicines" policy there are a good amount of items they don't allow (which we don't have).

I'm going to continue and try to work with them and not against them. The problem is we made sure every product we are using adWords for one or more of our competitors is also using. I think that it's possible they crawled one of their illegal buzz words on our site and banned us on that. Will keep everyone updated on their reply back.

[muktiplaza]

google now often perform removal adwords account

[Ryan Butz]

I just received a new email from them. Here is what they are saying:

Unfortunately we would not be able to give you any further info on this. As a security measure we cannot share any account specific info about any other account. All I can let you know is that the other account was created in 9/16/04

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but unfortunately we cannot provide any further assistance in this matter. Google’s primary objective is to provide safe, relevant experiences for our users. The decision to suspend your account was made after careful review of your account and the low quality landing page experiences promoted through your ads.

As you may recall, the Terms and Conditions to which you agreed to when you signed up for AdWords state that Google reserves the right to disable any ads when deemed necessary. You can review these Terms and Conditions here:https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder

Again, we’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.

I bolded 9/16/04 because we have only been a company since 2007. We secured the domain in the middle of 2006. I tried to dig deeper into the previous owners site but I can't find any pictures of these low quality landing pages they are talking about. I used the waybackmachine to get old cached images of our site from 2007 and essentially it's been the same e-commerce storefront we've always had. I'm planning on writing Google back with these attached screenshots to show that there we're previous owners of the domain before us that we're getting screwed out of adWords for.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I should approach this follow up email before I write it?

Any help is very much appreciated

[Harlan]

Dude, contact Teran Dale who can get your account back. Google is doing this stuff every day.

[Ryan Butz]

Originally Posted by Harlan

Dude, contact Teran Dale who can get your account back. Google is doing this stuff every day.

I'm unaware who Teran Dale is. I found his website. Is he a Warrior and have a track record of doing this kind of thing?

We've had the same representative on our case this whole time and she doesn't seem to be even trying to dig into the case or our business at all.

[John Hocking]

Google does not really care about the small players anymore.

You may have run afoul of automated site validation and your landing page was not available when the bots try to get your quality score.

Check out this article
Collateral Damage in Google's War Against Affiliate Marketers on AdWords | AVL Marketing

[psycho180]

Mine Account also Got Banned i was not duing anything illigal.... :'( :'(

[wolfmmiii]

Originally Posted by psycho180

Mine Account also Got Banned i was not duing anything illigal.... :'( :'(

I'm certain you were breaking TOS.