[HN Gopher] Google just shut down our $1M business
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Google just shut down our $1M business
We have just received an email from Google that we still violate
their Google policies and they will not reinstate our account. This
is not a post to get sympathy but rather a story why it was closed
and how HN played a role in this. I've been browsing HN for a
decade now and somewhere I read on HN that people lose their online
account and everything associated with their account. This has
stuck with me and at one point I thought to create a second Google
ads account to make sure our main Google ads account was able to
keep running if the other account somehow received a violation.
Just a pure spread-your-risks decision. After we decided to move
into Germany with our eco-friendly brand, I used the second Google
ads account to create German ads on a new Shopify hosted .de
domain. The ads would target by geo location, consumers in Germany,
so that there would be no overlap with our main market. After a
couple hours our account and our Merchant Center account, which is
used for shopping ads, got suspended. I had no clue why so I wasted
an appeal. After further reading on the internet, I discovered that
creating more than one Google ads account is against Google policy.
This is how scammers work to dominate search and shopping results.
Never knew that. I was told that Google doesn't consider intention,
so you're either good or bad. In this case I was the biggest
criminal according to Google and my account was banned on a
personal level for life. Not allowed to advertise ever again on
Google. Lost some good nights sleep over that one. The first ad
account remained working which I find bizarre as the payment
information and addresses used on these 2 accounts were exactly the
same as I did not have bad intentions. About a month ago I was
invited to join the accelerated growth program of Google to help
businesses expand into other countries. I was working with 2 Google
account managers 4 weeks to prepare launching -again- in Germany. I
used our .com domain to target Germany. All was well until I
accidentally added .de for an ad instead of .com/de/, within an
hour our main account was suspended. After an appeal and having it
bumped to priority from my Google account manager, I received the
depressing email that our account remains suspended. And that we
should not create new Google ads accounts as those will be
suspended too. Great. We are all perplexed how a legit company,
selling eco friendly products that we design ourselves, have it all
trademarked, and have in stock in our own warehouse, are treated
like criminals. Luckily we massively increased our ad spend on
social media couple weeks ago and are well positioned in Amazon,
but I have really lost all faith in Google and their policy teams.
We will (barely) survive as search and shopping was a big chunk of
our revenue. That you get flagged by a bot, gets suspended, I can
get into that. But if you explain your story, have advertised for
over 3 years with $30k monthly ad spent (I know it's tiny for some,
but for us as a small business it's big), and all domains sell the
same products, just into another country, than get your account
banned for life, is just ridiculous. Just had to get this off my
shoulders and possibly warn anyone ever thinking doing the same to
spread your company's risks. A real butterfly effect, what an
impact a single post or comment eventually had on my business down
the line.
Author : jasonwen
Score : 66 points
Date : 2023-02-27 19:55 UTC (3 hours ago)
| logicalmonster wrote:
| OP seems like he'll hopefully be fine, but there's probably been
| many people like this who aren't fine.
|
| I'm sure many people lose their jobs when an advertiser is banned
| for some dumb and false reason.
|
| I'm sure some people fall into depression and commit suicide when
| their life's work is destroyed.
|
| Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some
| solution to help people in these extreme cases? Especially when
| it seems like an honest mistake with no bad intention?
|
| PS: The most aggravating part is that this doesn't even prevent
| bad actors from using various techniques (identity theft or mass-
| spawning lots of companies in some lax foreign jurisdiction) to
| continue operating. This just screws over normal people who fall
| into some kafkaesque trap based on some rule they didn't know
| about.
| nhchris wrote:
| > We will (barely) survive
|
| That a single company, in an unrelated market (ads), merely
| refusing to do business with you, can almost bankrupt you, means
| it's time for trust-busting. No single company should have such
| power.
| courgette wrote:
| In this particular case, it seems easier said than done?
|
| OP did put eggs in different basquet ( social medias ) but
| Google will be Google right? What would be the alternative.
| revskill wrote:
| Google is useless the day ChatGPT include the links to website.
| masukomi wrote:
| it already does tell people to go to sites, but it also lies
| about what's there.
|
| https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/dont-believe-chatgpt
|
| ChatGPT is a convincing fiction generator. Any facts it
| produces are purely coincidental.
|
| It's just really good at mansplaining and gaslighting people
| about things it knows nothing about.
| mobilio wrote:
| Only solution is to work with some of Google Ads Partners to run
| Ads on their behalf.
| oriettaxx wrote:
| I am unable to understand what happened: can you explain it from
| the very beginning?
| cheapliquor wrote:
| tl;dr he created 2 google adsense accounts for the same thing
| just in different regions and that violates google's policy so
| they shut'm down
| cinntaile wrote:
| It would be interesting to see a 2-line chatGPT summary of
| the same text.
| ezekg wrote:
| Per ChatGPT summarizing the OP: The
| author received an email from Google stating that their
| account had been permanently suspended due to violating
| Google policies. The author had created a second Google Ads
| account as a risk management strategy to ensure their main
| account could continue running if it received a violation.
| However, they were unaware that creating multiple Google
| Ads accounts is against policy and was subsequently banned
| from advertising on Google for life. The author had been
| working with Google account managers to prepare for
| launching in Germany but accidentally added the wrong
| domain to an ad, resulting in their main account being
| suspended again. The author expressed
| frustration with Google's policy enforcement and loss of
| faith in the company, despite being a legitimate eco-
| friendly product seller with trademarks and in-house
| inventory. The author shared their story as a cautionary
| tale to others who may consider creating multiple Google
| Ads accounts.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Thanks. It wasn't as concise as I'd hoped for (I wanted
| about the same number of words as the parent comment) but
| it's a good summary.
| emanuele-em wrote:
| If I understood they were banned from google ads (merchand
| center) because they used 2 accounts to promote the same
| activity, but if this is against the policy I don't understand
| what is the point, I don't think that the size of the market is
| a discriminant in the policy
| gus_massa wrote:
| Perhaps between "normal" and "insta-perma-death" they should
| have some intermediate state, like "suspended-for-a-week" or
| "under-parole".
| ezekg wrote:
| This is Google we're talking about, where you can only talk
| to robots.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| They're big enough to owe society better customer support
| than robots. Bust 'em up (antitrust), this ain't what a
| healthy market looks like.
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