Are Google Adwords Policies fair with small and medium advertisers?

Lately, I've been feeling more and more disappointed in Google, especially in a case that happened with a customer I manage whose account was suspended.

This article is a bit long, but I think it's worth taking a couple of minutes to read it in its entirety as it deals with a topic that is of interest to those of us who work with Google on a daily basis. When Google is awarded the possibility of closing accounts without notice and without being able to clarify the reason, we began to face a case of abuse of power.

If something similar has happened to you or you think that this type of problem should be better served by Google, I would appreciate if you share this article on Facebook or Twitter.

The case

For more than a year I have as a client an aesthetic medicine center in Buenos Aires that offers different treatments for permanent hair removal, radiofrequency, liposculpture, etc.

The client advertises in Adwords before working with me and after applying various strategies to attract qualified traffic managed to make it one of its main channels for obtaining new customers For your company.

Almost 2 months ago your Adwords account was suspended because according to the analysis of “Google policy specialists”, their site contained content that violated Google's policies regarding the sale of prescription drugs.

We contacted through the corresponding channels to find out what the specific problem was that caused the deactivation of the account.

After a days' round-trip of emails, the AdWords team representative told us that the problem was due to the customer mentioning the brand name of botulinum toxin that he uses for his treatments.

They basically told me that you could mention the benefits of Botulinum Toxin treatment within the client's website, but that you couldn't mention Dysport, the brand of botulinum toxin used.

We proceeded to remove all brand mentions from content on both the website and the customer blog and we again requested the review of the website by the “Specialists”.

After another round-trip of emails and after several days, the representative of the "Google Adwords Team" tells us that the website review was positive and we should have an active Adwords account shortly.

A couple of days passed and the account was not activated, so we got back in touch with the folks at Google.

The representative of the "Google Adwords Team" tells us that she will contact the team of specialists again to find out what the problem was, since the case was supposedly solved.

After waiting several days again, your answer is that The website must be withdrawn ALL the content referring to the treatment Botulinum toxin, and the term is related to the Botox brand.

Removing all this content from the website would have a very negative effect on my client, since their main sales channel is online, so we began to actively investigate the competition.

We discovered that several of its main competitors publish content regarding treatment without any problem. on their sites and even mention the names of the toxin brands used for the treatment.

Inclusive many advertise for keywords related DIRECTLY to the treatment, as can be seen in the following print screen:

I prepared an email with all the evidence for the representative of the Adwords Team, featuring competitor URLs, print screens, etc. and explaining well the nature of the treatment that my client performs, as well as attaching all the corresponding documentation that validates it to offer that treatment in the city.

I also asked if the competitors performed any special procedures to be admitted to advertise for those keywords, as this is very important to the customer ... we never got an answer about it.

The only response we got was an invitation to make complaints to competitors through the "corresponding channel", I made all the complaints with the corresponding form and to date no single action has been taken against the other advertisers who offer the same treatment as my client without problems. My objective is not to harm my client's competition, but to obtain a level playing field in the face of policies that are arbitrary.

After another long and tedious string of emails where it seems that we talk to a wall (To add insult to injury, they change our representative in the middle of the conversation), We decided together with the client to remove all content referring to Botulinum Toxin from the website to at least be able to promote your other treatments.

We inform that all the content related to the treatment was removed from the website and that we wanted to be able to have our campaigns active again urgently since my client's business was seriously affected for having stopped advertising for so long.

On this occasion, ANOTHER representative of the Adwords Team responds again, saying that the team of specialists would revisit the website.

After several days his answer is not positive at all, since they inform us that we will not be able to recover the client's Adwords account PERMANENTLY as policies regarding treatment were “repeatedly violated”.

I asked for a reconsideration, resubmitting ALL the evidence that the competition publishes that type of content and guidelines for the keywords referring to the treatment without any problem And if they don't approve of us, at least give a concrete reason why the competition can be advertised and we can't.

Google's response: "We are unable to provide further assistance regarding this matter."

This is a very low blow for my client, who advertised without problems for more than a year and then his account is deactivated for offering content about a treatment that is also offered by the majority of his competition without any consequence.

Problems

In my opinion, many things could be better with the Adwords Team, without going any further about the expectations that any client of any company has.

1) Representatives without last name

The representatives of the Adwords Team only appear with a name and no surname, the people in charge of following my case were simply called "Aída", "Camila" and "Paula".

Far from generating a pleasant feeling, this anonymity at a certain point creates a feeling of actually talking to a wall, causing one to lose confidence that there really is a person on the other side of the machine with a solution to the problem.

2) Contradictions

The first representative contradicted herself by first saying that the treatment could be mentioned without mentioning the brand name of the drug and then saying that the treatment could not be mentioned in any way.

At no time was this contradiction recognized.

3) Lack of concrete answers

There were no concrete answers to direct questions about unquestionable situations such as competitors who publish without drama the type of content for which my client's account was suspended.

All kinds of evidence was offered to support our arguments and we did not get any response that responded at least minimally to the question.

4) I do not listen to you, I am wooden, I have fish ears.

Many of the questions asked were totally ignored and instead we got generic answers from totally parallel things.

I can understand that his workload must be very high to make personalized responses to everyone and my client is not one of the largest advertisers in the country, but with what he invests monthly in Adwords he must be paying the salary of at least 2 or 3 employees of the customer service team.

For which I would think it deserves better attention, I suppose it is an internal structural problem of Google (I wouldn't want to believe that they directly give a damn and underestimate everyone who comes in contact with them.)

This type of clearly unfair situations, where an abuse of power is made to arbitrarily decide who can advertise a certain service without problems and who cannot, generate problems both for the advertiser who feels an injustice and disadvantage in front of the competition and for the professional who is responsible for recommending the service provided by Google.

My job is to recommend Adwords and then work to make it really useful for the customer, thus increasing their monthly investment and using the service in the long term.

But when these situations arise, where various shortcomings of the system are exposed. Where the responses obtained do not give a minimum reason for the reasons for these differences (between what is allowed for certain advertisers and not for others), it becomes much more difficult to offer the service with the assurance that the client will later He won't try to chase me with a shotgun.

This is a shame as I personally like to create and optimize Adwords campaigns, as well as over time I managed to get several of my clients to turn Adwords into their main sales channel and use practically their entire advertising budget on this tool.

I still consider Adwords the best online advertising tool, but the problem comes from the human side.

The solution?

The ideal solution would be to have better customer service, however for now it only occurs to me that one must be prepared for these types of unpredictable situations.

Try as far as possible "not to put all your eggs in the same basket" and diversify the sources of traffic generation according to the product / service to be promoted.