My name is Matthew Bredel and as of March, 2007, I am a full-time, work-at-home internet marketer.
For close to 10 years, I worked for a defense company which was an OK job, but I was so uninspired in life and frankly, I needed some more money. That is when I first discovered internet marketing! Now I admit that I didn't start making thousands in my first couple of months (in fact, I lost my shirt!), but I finally saw the "internet light"...
Yes, I was banned by Google Adwords. Here is what happened (and why it may have been a good thing!)
I’m about to rant a little bit, but the article Google Fights to Protect Itself Against Ad Scammers is making me re-live the last few months (as well as make a bit more sense on what is going on!)
Just to fill you in, on September 1st I woke up in the morning to find my traffic to TheWebReviewer.com to be quite reduced. After a little bit of research, I quickly realized that Google Adwords dropped my Quality Scores to 1 (all of them…26 Adgroups across 8 campaigns).
Did I panic? You bet I did at first.
Did I try contacting Google? You bet I did!
Their first three responses were form letters sending me to a link on how to increase Quality Score. (Considering I have maintained Quality Scores from 7-10 for years and my CTR is usually always between 1-5%, this is was not going anywhere).
I tried calling. They don’t respond to ANY phone calls.
Then I tried continually writing and asking for at least an explanation or a way to remedy the situation. Here is my last email response from Google:
“Hello Matthew,
Thank you for your email. I can understand that you have done your best for your website www.TheWebReviewer.com. However, I am afraid we are unable to revoke your account suspension, and we will not accept advertisements from you in the future.
Please note that our support team is unable to help you with this issue,
and we ask that you do not contact them about this matter…As noted in our Terms Google reserves the right to terminate advertisements for any reason. To view our Terms and Conditions, please visit https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder.
WTF!?…You can probably guess that I was a bit ticked off about this. No explanation and a big “Don’t Contact Us Again”.
Since then, I’ve relaxed and I started to understand a little bit more about the situation.
I first heard of this back in the early summer when Perry Marshall wrote the post Google Slap for Product Review Sites.
Then my Slap came. Sh*&!
Next came the new FTC Guidelines. This really attacked “flogs”, but there was a definite undertone about affiliate marketing. But you could start to see the landscape and correlation between new federal regulations and online’s biggest advertising entity, Google.
This new press release from Google puts it together a bit more. In this case, I honestly think it was the nature of my site that got it banned from Google Adwords. It is a Product Review site, that has affiliate links in a home-based-business niche.
I guess this is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. My site itself is NOT like these other scammy sites (like flogs) and I do add a lot of value to my visitors with tutorials, demonstrations, coupons, discounts and bonuses. In fact, I have built this site into a bit of an authority site over the years.
There are a few positive notes about this whole situation.
- I created TheWebReviewer heavily based on SEO. I still receive plenty of traffic from the free, organic search listings. (Understand that Adwords and their organic search are not necessarily related).
- I discovered my Adwords ROI was not very good. Sure, I have lost a lot of traffic and sales, but my advertising expenses have been cut by 90%. Google may have just saved me $1000s of dollars per month.
- Even though they have banned TheWebReviewer, they have not banned my other stuff. I still use Google Adwords a lot on some of my smaller niches and I do rely on this traffic for testing niches and keywords. (Though, I may spend more time now measuring the ROI on future PPC campaigns!)
- This has given me the motivation to rework my content and TheWebReviewer, in general. One thing that the new press release does explain is that Adwords will be staffing up a dispute department for banned websites.
I have no problem working with Google to make my site compliant, but I just need them to listen.
Do I hate Google for this?
I do think I was screwed in this case, but no. I do hope to rectify this in the future and really, this slap has not affected my income as I thought it would. The internet offers many ways of building quality, sustainable traffic and luckily I have focused on these other avenues over many years.
But it is the support of my loyal visitors and clients that has made it so successful. As long as you guys stick around, there is nothing that Google or any other online entity can do to ban my presence on the world wide web forever.
cheers…matt
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Hey Matt
The same thing happened to me a few months ago. Same as you, I was ticked and fired off a few emails. When I cooled off, I realized that it was the best day of my life! My ROI was not very good and maintaining the campaigns was consuming my life.
Thanks Google for giving me my life back. CYA!
Chris
November 19th, 2009 at 8:43 am
There is that reality of feeling rather low for being punished while following the rules…but it sometimes takes something like a banning to re-evaluate and improve your business. cheers…matt
November 19th, 2009 at 9:29 am
[...] posted here: Google Banned Me For Life Share and [...]
November 19th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Hey Matt,
I can feel your pain partner. My Youtube channel was just shut down for a review of the Network Marketing lead generation and recruiting system that I use for my business. It was actually filled with value and very objective in it’s content.
The most irritating thing about it is that they shut you down and don’t even give you the respect of telling you why.
I am very relieved though since all of the videos I have on my website are self hosted so this doesn’t interrupt that flow at least.
You have a great blog here partner and I am looking forward to reading more on it.
To Our Massive Success,
John
November 20th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Hey John,
You bring up some really interesting points here (enough for a full blog post for Monday!). But the one thing I do want to point out (and something you do) is NOT to rely on “The Man” (you know…in this case it’s Google/YouTube). Google and YouTube are very powerful and can really help build and create businesses online, but don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Having the ability to host your own videos (either locally or on places like Amazon S3) only makes your business more robust. I used to use Blip.tv a lot for my videos, which like yours are mostly educational, yet you will never be able to beat a human review who simply does not understand you.
I have a few more points about networking marketing and home biz, but I’ll save that for a bigger and better post on Monday.
Like your blog (http://askjohnchatman.com/), by the way…I’ll start following your stuff, too!
cheers…matt
November 20th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Matthew,
I am looking forward to that post partner. Make sure to hit me on twitter and let me know when I can see it.
November 22nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Hey Matt,
We got the same letter from Google and like you we could not believe it. After lots of breading and perseverance we managed to talk to someone in Google and point out two campaigns that were in question. A bit harsh from our point of view but after hearing your blog on the FTC guidelines you can clearly see the correlation.
We made a mistake and we have paid for it. But, the way that Google is handling this issue is not acceptable. Image if we treated our customers like this - what would they say to us.
Since then we have been a lot wiser on our PPC campaigns and we got better results on Yahoo, Bing and Looksmart. Certainly, the staff at Bing/Microsoft have been capitalizing on the way Google has handle this situation and has been extremely helpful.
Good luck
Gerald
November 25th, 2009 at 3:35 am
Hey Gerald,
I think I was wondering the same thing — Is Google just “big enough” not to even care about their customers? This is what I think hurt the most. I admit (after the fact) that I did break a term in their agreement (and believe me, this was not intentional and it took me awhile to figure it out). I would have removed it immediately if I knew (or if someone from Google would even tell me). But this is all black and white to them, especially being an affiliate marketer in a home based niche.
I, too, have been revisiting other niche campaigns and have designed very conservative sites specifically catered towards Adwords. But like I say, this is focusing more on testing than a long-term traffic source.
I don’t know where business is going when a 6-figure paying client (like myself) can be treated as worthlessly as Google Adwords has treated me. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and it makes me sad, especially since I have supported, taught, and recommended this service for so long.
Thanks for the comments, Gerald!
cheers…matt
November 25th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Wow! So I am not the only one to be banned by Google. An ironic comfort.
Unfortunately, I have been banned for life from using Adwords and I do not have a clue why. They certainly have been true to their word and have refused to answer any of my contacts asking what this is all about.
Although this definitely affects by business, the big thing I am really having trouble with is them telling me that I have done something unethical with my customers. Now I have spent 25 years of my life helping people and pride myself on my ethics and would never intentionally take advantage of a customer.
Yet, I truly believe that Google is acting unethical to me their customer who has spent a lot of money with them to receive no service. Am I the only person to believe that Google is breaching business ethics regardless of the various rules they set out? Believe it or not, their rules are not the law.
Thankyou Matthew for your post which helps me feel that I am not alone. Not sure of the next steps forward but there will be steps forward. If people want to leave comments on my blog they can at http://www.diaryofanonlinebusiness.com
regards
Julie
January 4th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Hey Julie,
Amen! I think that is my biggest problem, too. If I did something wrong, please just tell me! I have combed through their terms and conditions and I can speculate what they may have banned me for, but then again, it would have been minor and a little bit of heads of and working WITH me would have gone far. If Google doesn’t want my 6-figure paycheck, I personally think it is just bad business on their part.
Frustrating still, yes! Do I need them? No.
I’ll check out your blog, Julie! cheers…matt
February 1st, 2010 at 7:58 am
Hi Matthew:
Somehow I just stumbled upon your site here. I was on vacation last November and was checking my email on my laptop. A few hours earlier I had received a few leads from my Google PPC campaign and then I got a message saying that I was banned for life. After a few e-mails, they informed me that even though I was now with a new Company, I was being banned because of the website I had before. I had cancelled my PPC around that prior company but apparently the mistake I made was to keep the same Google AdWords account for the next company I joined.
I did a little research and apparently if you jump through enough hoops you can get back on Google if you change your IP address, change your e-mail address and a host of other things.
I wasn’t about to do all that so I took my business to Yahoo.
I am still very ticked off about this. I was using the website that my prior company gave me and I personalized it with my own text and my own videos, but that wasn’t good enough I guess, and Google looked at it as a replicated website, which apparently they dislike.
I have not been in the business long enough to understand a great deal about internet marketing. I am treading very lighly right now.
One question I have…..I have just watched a video about Google TV ads. Do you think if I have been banned for life from AdWords that they will not allow me to do a Google TV ad?
I think the number of accounts that they suspended for life is just staggering. I still don’t understand their reasoning as to why they didn’t give folks an opportunity to rectify whatever was wrong with their ads or their websites.
Well, that’s enough venting for now.
Cheers!
Jan
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Hey Jan,
Vent all you like! I feel your pain and frustration. The thing I keep telling myself is “it is just not fair”. But that, of course is wasted energy. Yes, you can do things like change IPs, credit cards, emails, etc. And, depending on why you were banned, I may consider it. If it is something as stupid as the nature of your site (which is was in my case), the likelihood of them banning me again is a bit high. Not worth my time or effort.
I have been doing more with Yahoo lately, too. They have been nothing but awesome to me. I can talk to real people on the phone and they work with me not only with making sure I meet their specifications, but they help optimize my stuff in a more personal way (unlike Google and their automated…waste of time and money…optimizer).
About Google TV ads…personally, I have never done them. I would be surprised, though, if they banned your from that, too. The banner (which is a function of their quality score) usually affects only their paid search. (I can still do content search…even YouTube search). So if you think your business follows the model, you might try TV ads.
But no matter what we do, we still need Google to some extent and they can help bring us traffic. My point: don’t put all of your eggs in the Google basket…they are like a big fat hen who may accidentally sit and break them! (enough bad metaphors for the day!).
Good luck Jan!
cheers…matt
March 24th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Nice article. People relying too much on SEO should know where mark the line just to be on the safe side.
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:30 am