[HN Gopher] Google Ads suspended me and turned a deaf ear
___________________________________________________________________
Google Ads suspended me and turned a deaf ear
Author : kajic
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-03-04 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kajic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kajic.com)
| tragictrash wrote:
| Google is not your friend and must be treated as an adversary.
| J5892 wrote:
| This applies to literally any public corporation.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Perhaps, 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.
| dsl wrote:
| Welcome 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 wrote:
| Exactly, 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).
| george0812 wrote:
| If 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. 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!
| stevespang wrote:
| dangrossman wrote:
| This 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.
| ilamont wrote:
| Good 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.
| glaucon wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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
| Induane wrote:
| Makes me think of SNL's celebrity Jeopardy.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| https://i.imgflip.com/4600cy.jpg
| mtgx wrote:
| There 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).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-04 23:00 UTC)