Google canceled our Ads account, need help

[waldo22]

Google has canceled our 10+-years-old Ads account, claiming that we have violated the "Circumventing systems policy".

Before this happened, they placed a link on our account dashboard that we needed to verify our account and upload some business documents, which I did, and now they claim they found a violation of this policy while trying to verify our account, and would not grant additional attempts to verify us.

I have read through the Circumventing systems policy, and we have not violated ANY of the things listed.

Here is their description of this policy:

Engaging in practices that circumvent or interfere with Google's advertising systems and processes, or attempts to do so.

Examples (non-exhaustive):

• Cloaking (showing different content to certain users, including Google, than to other users) that aims at or results in interference with Google’s review systems, or hides or attempts to hide non-compliance with Google Ads policies, such as:
  

  • Redirection to non-compliant content
  • Using dynamic DNS to switch page or ad content
  • Manipulating site content or restricting access to so many of your landing pages that it makes it difficult to meaningfully review your ad, site, or account
  • Using click trackers to redirect users to malicious sites

  Note:Cloaking does not include providing content personalization that adds genuine value for certain users, such as different language versions of the same content or different versions of the same content depending on the user’s internet service provider, as long as the offering is still substantially the same, the variation in content is still compliant with Google Ads policies, and Google is able to review a version of the content

• Whether repeated or simultaneous, policy violations across any of your accounts, including using 2 or more accounts to post ads that violate this or any other Google Ads policy. For example, creating new domains or accounts to post ads that are similar to ads that have been disapproved for this or any other Google Ads policy.
• Bypassing enforcement mechanisms and detection by creating variations of ads, domains or content that have been disapproved (for this or any Google Ads policy) or using techniques in text, images, or videos to obfuscate sexually explicit content
• After a previous suspension decision, attempting to use the Google Ads system again by creating new accounts in order to re enter the system
• Abusing Google Ads product features in order to show policy non-compliant content to users and/or gain additional traffic
• Submitting false information as part of our verification programs

Google refuses to specify what they think violated this policy, won't let us request an appeal because our account is unverified, won't verify our account because it is suspended, and won't let us talk to a person on the Ads team who can tell us what they think we've done wrong.

They just keep copy-pasting the same boilerplate answer that they found a violation. We have never posted any misleading ad. Never.

Here is a summary of our "conversations" so far, starting with the response to my support ticket:

Hi Wes,
Thank you for contacting Google Ads support team.
Information:
We are writing to inform you about the recent verification attempted for your Google Ads account. Unfortunately, the identity verification process was unsuccessful due to a violation of our Google Ads policies and we may not grant any additional attempts.
While reviewing your account, we found violations of our Google Ads policies in this or a related account. As a result, your account has unfortunately been suspended, and your ads will no longer run on Google.

My response:

[name redacted]
We have never violated any of Google's Ads policies, and it's impossible to defend ourselves when Google can't even be bothered to allege a specific violation.

I submitted true and correct documents to verify our account, and your team has suspended our account for no discernable reason.

I have read through the "Circumventing systems" policy, and we have not done any of the things that are listed in the policy as possible violations.

Please disclose the exact violation that you are accusing us of.

Thank you,

-Wes

Google's response:

Hi Wes,

Thank you for your response.

While reviewing your account, we found violations of our Google Ads policies in this or a related account. As a result, your account has unfortunately been suspended, and your ads will no longer run on Google.

^ Isn't that helpful!

My business is a restaurant delivery service (like DoorDash, but local and ethical) that has operated for more than 25 years. Google has been Evil to us since they started allowing DoorDash, UberEats, GrubHub et al to place themselves on the Google My Business listings of any restaurant in America, even without a relationship with the restaurant, while we couldn't get there at all for several years, and still can't get there unless a restaurant explicitly logs into their GMB profile and ads us. Guess how hard it is to get a restaurant to do that?

Then Google started selling ads to those services on restaurants' GMB listings, while not allowing us and other independent services across the country to advertise there, calling it a "closed beta".

My VCs don't play golf with Google's VCs, so we don't get access to these things. (I don't have VCs)

We used to be the number 1 organic search result for food delivery. Now we rarely make the front "page".

We have only ever advertised for ourselves and our restaurant partners, and link either to our homepage where you can enter your delivery address, or directly to the restaurant's menu page on our site.

Now they have blocked our ads, and what little exposure we were able to get is gone.

Can anyone here help with this? Anyone at Ars? @Aurich

 

[invertedpanda]

Not going to be any help, but I can commiserate here. Had a number clients either get rejected or get their ads turned off later for whatever random reasons Google can come up with.. Except they never actually provide the direct information about WHAT is wrong, and only give a vague reason, with a link to a generic help page about the violation.

What drives me nuts about this is they can have specific reasons for rejection, such as a specific page or something, but they won't actually SHARE that with you, so you have to spend time guessing what it is they are complaining about.

One client recently got his ads turned off on his very large long-running blog, forum & wiki for supposedly serving malware.. Except I couldn't find any ANYWHERE. Of course, Google didn't provide even a hint of where they saw something, but with UGC on a large online community it's just absurd for them to not give you specifics. Thinking it may have been caught via moderation some time after Google noticed it, but Google already turned off the revenue stream pending review, so now the client has to request a review and hope it comes back with good news.

 

[waldo22]

What drives me nuts about this is they can have specific reasons for rejection, such as a specific page or something, but they won't actually SHARE that with you, so you have to spend time guessing what it is they are complaining about.

EXACTLY. Why is it so hard for them to say what the specific ad or page is? They have absolutely no accountability.

 

[The Aloof Alot]

Isn't this illegal depending on the jurisdiction? I'm quite sure that at least in some jurisdictions you can't go around as a company cancelling contracts for completely undisclosed reasons (not even disclosing it to the other parties involved), so maybe check with a local lawyer.

Also, if this favourises particular companies, it might be seen as abuse of monopoly, so also check with regulators.

 

[invertedpanda]

Isn't this illegal depending on the jurisdiction? I'm quite sure that at least in some jurisdictions you can't go around as a company cancelling contracts for completely undisclosed reasons (not even disclosing it to the other parties involved), so maybe check with a local lawyer.

Also, if this favourises particular companies, it might be seen as abuse of monopoly, so also check with regulators.

In this case, a reason is disclosed, but not without the necessary details to actually pinpoint specifics.

 

[w00key]

Maybe spend some money and advertise via a partner? They have access to channels and escalation paths you don't have.

Sometimes yelling at them on social media helps if press picks it up or someone with pull sees it. 100% luck based though.

 

[waldo22]

Maybe spend some money and advertise via a partner? They have access to channels and escalation paths you don't have.

Yeah, I'm reaching out to a few advertising partners I have a good relationship with to see if they can get something done about it.

Sometimes yelling at them on social media helps if press picks it up or someone with pull sees it. 100% luck based though.

I was hoping Ars would pick it up, when a subscriber is getting screwed. I know they can't help everyone with everything, but this seems like it's right up their alley.

 

[Xenocrates]

Yeah, I'm reaching out to a few advertising partners I have a good relationship with to see if they can get something done about it.


I was hoping Ars would pick it up, when a subscriber is getting screwed. I know they can't help everyone with everything, but this seems like it's right up their alley.

You may want to use the contact form, rather than the forum, if that's the goal, and include as much detail as possible.

 

[waldo22]

You may want to use the contact form, rather than the forum, if that's the goal, and include as much detail as possible.

Thanks, did that!

Does anyone else have a live human contact on the Ads team that they'd be willing to share with me?

 

[ZPrime]

From everyone I've ever heard of having to deal with Google on this sort of thing, the best / fastest way to resolve it is to get your lawyer to draft something on letterhead.

I wish you the best of luck, as it seems like Google has its head so far up its ass it can see daylight, sometimes.

My employer has repeatedly had multiple subdomains/hosts get "blacklisted" (causing Chrome to mark it as "unsafe" and block you from accessing it without jumping through hoops). The reason? "Phishing." The page? a damn login prompt for a network monitoring system. It's not phishing anything, it's legitimately our own login page.

Like, what the hell goes on over there behind the scenes? It's either a bunch of idiots, or a bunch of "AI" nonsense coming up short.

 

[waldo22]

Here's an update. It's as brain dead as I thought.

In your Ads account, if you go to Tools->Troubleshooting->Policy manager it will show you any ads that have been disapproved and the purported reason.

The Policy manager shows that we have disapproved ads across 7 campaigns, the most recent of which ran in 2016. Some are as old as 2013.

• 29 ads were disapproved for "Destination mismatch", because the 4 domains advertised/linked now redirect to our new domain. At the time the ads ran back in 2016, they all went to the original domains and nothing redirected.
• 17 disapproved for "Destination not working". These went to https://www.ourdomain.com/cgi-bin/index.pl which worked just fine when the ads ran IN 2013
• 11 disapproved for "Past Violation". Only God Herself knows what this means. These ads last ran in 2016.
• 4 disapproved for "Destination Not Accessible". This is because these ads ran in 2016, and in 2017 we shut this location down.
• 3 disapproved for "One website per ad group". When these ads ran in 2013, we were advertising our new brand name but still linking to our old separate websites for each city, so each ad had keywords for the city it was in, and linked to a separate domain. As far as I know, this wasn't even against policy at the time the ads ran.

This information was very hard to find. I only found the "Policy manager" by accident. I still am not 100% sure what problems they have with individual ads, because clicking "View Ads" from the Policy violations screen takes me to a chart that is supposed to show the disapproved ads, but it shows nothing. It will say "17/17", but the chart is completely blank.

I sent in this information with another service request to verify our account so that we could appeal the suspension based on it being inaccurate, and receive the same bullshit response again.

Thank you for your response.

While reviewing your account, we found violations of our Google Ads policies in this or a related account. As a result, your account has unfortunately been suspended, and your ads will no longer run on Google.

In summary, Fuck Google. Fuck them sideways.

 

[The Aloof Alot]

"Computer says No" is its fullest glory, from a mega-corp that should know better in order to not look like they violating anti-trust laws (since they own most of the ad market).

 

[AndrewZ]

Create a new account and hope they don't recognize you? Works on social media...

 

[Mark086]

Let me know when the article comes out outlining how Google employees are taking bribes to block advertising from competition (of those they take bribes from).

This wouldn't be the first time.
It's exactly why positively and directly identifying issues should be a legal requirement.

 

[Saifer]

Not an ad account but I had an awful experience with them a few months back where they just locked out my Google account saying they found “suspicious activity”. I had a number of things tied to that account (and the gmail address) so was fuming.

Worse still I successfully appealed it (got email confirmation), but when I tried to reactivate my account it kept saying I couldn’t use the number I originally used to verify the account as that was still blocked, but I couldn’t use any other number as they didn’t match the original number! This could have been easily resolved if I could speak or email directly with a customer service rep, but of course Google being Google, they don’t have any (at least for low level nobodies like me apparently).

Long story short, I had to just create a new account and start over. But the moral here is to avoid Google whenever you can! Not always possible given how big they are unfortunately, but best try.

 

[Saifer]

"Computer says No" is its fullest glory, from a mega-corp that should know better in order to not look like they violating anti-trust laws (since they own most of the ad market).

“Computer says no” is a much quicker way to sum up my story haha