What Happens if You Violate Google Advertising Policies?
Google has several remedies they use to let you know you have violated Google advertising policies and there are procedures an advertiser will need know in order to fix the issues cited.
Ad Disapproved
First, if you create a misleading ad or include copy which is not allowed in your ad text, the ad will be disapproved. This is easy to fix, as you can just rewrite the ad and resubmit it and if you have fixed the issue it will be approved.
Site Suspended
If your website or landing page is in violation of Google’s policies, then they will apply a “site suspended” status to your account which will halt all ads which send users to that website. This is harder to fix than a disapproved ad, and takes longer to get the campaign moving again. Google will not initially provide any specifics to you about what you have done wrong. You have to look through your website carefully and fix whatever is in violation of policy.
Then you have to submit the site for review, and when you hear back from their staff they will finally tell you what needs to be fixed, if you did not make the right changes already. Once you have satisfied the staff member in charge of your case, they submit the site to a review team which will approve and re-enable the campaign. This whole process takes between 48 hrs. and 1 week.
(Note: If you need help to fix a suspended site, contact our Adwords experts about getting your site back in compliance with Google)
Account Suspended (Serious violations of Googles Advertising Policies
If Google finds repeated or serious violations of its advertising policy they can suspend the entire account. This is usually something that will only happen if you keep having issues with complying with their advertising rules over and over again, or if a business which is not a good fit for Adwords is trying to use it anyway.What makes things more complicated is that although Adwords has very good support you can reach by phone, when an account is suspended the staff are not allowed to say anything about the reasoning and will not connect you to the review team so you can ask them. You are on your own.
If you get your account suspended, you need to seriously look at all aspects of your campaign, website, and business model before doing anything. Carefully read all of the policies and rules which may have any bearing on your account or your business. You many want to hire a PPC management company ASAP to help you understand the issue. You must be extremely thorough. The reason why you must be so thorough is that as soon as you resubmit the site, you can do nothing further and the decision is out of your hands. What is decided by the Adwords review team can have many repercussions for your campaign, and for you and your companies future.
Final Decision on Account Suspension: Approved, or Banned for Life
If you make major changes to the account, and provide Google with convincing evidence that you are no longer a “risk” to continue to violate the rules, they will approve your site, and you just have to be careful to never violate the rules again. On the other hand, if the review team finds that you are still in violation of the advertising policies, they will render a final decision that the account cannot be reinstated. The notice will tell you that the account is permanently suspended, and will also inform you not to make any other Adwords accounts as those accounts will also be suspended.
In other words, if Google ever connects the dots and determines you are involved with any Adwords campaign at any point in the future, those accounts will be suspended. I contribute to the Google Advertising forum and have seen the horror stories where people try to make new accounts and obfuscate the fact they had a previous account suspended only to get caught within a few weeks. Google is very good at connecting the dots. If you get banned then you will have to accept that you can never advertise on Google again. Life is long and Google is one of the best placements for online marketing, so a lifetime ban can seriously hurt someone for years to come.
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