My client sells adult dvds through google adwords. However, the past few months we've had lots of ads/keywords dissapproved because they go to pages which contain the words 'girl' or 'teen' (despite clearly stating all models are 18+ on every page) - apparently this is a 'teen porn concept'.

They have now given my client their final warning, despite us checking all of our landing pages being used and abiding by this rule. However, numerous times we have reported others who blatantly ignore this policy and no action is taken against them.

Now, having checked some competitors one of them is even advertising 'rape' dvds, yet the Google policy team does not take any action.

Does anyone else think Google are sending out a mixed message? So, its wrong to use the word 'teen' as its a 'teen porn concept', yet incest/rape concepts are perfectly fine?!?

Right or wrong it is really up to them on who to remove, pick on or bother. It does suck in your situation. Just continue to work with them as much as you can or just remove the "offending" content so you dont get banned.

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Having worked behind the scenes at one of the big three paid search platforms (I wont say which one, but they are 3rd of 3, haha), I can say that ad editorial guidelines are not always clearly defined, and then not understood by everyone in the same exact way.

Initially, your ads are submitted through an automated system which is there to detect simple ad violations like ad title length and certain keywords. In this case, it hit your keywords and sent the ad into manual review.

When editing manually, we would have arguments all the time over what ads are in violation of editorial guidelines and which are OK to put through because our own definitions were unclear or hit a gray area. In my opinion, many times it comes down to the individual reviewing your ads.

Finally, I saw ads in clear violation of guidelines live on the search engine.

There is a lot more to it with many more caveats, but that is all I will say on this issue.

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Gennady Lager
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SendTraffic.com

So very, very, very true.

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I just recently noticed that google adword no longer block all adult or porn related ads. Guess the $ involved changed their mind but they are still trying to hang on their image of do no evil. They´ve figured porn is no longer evil but "teen porn concept" is.
If they keep maintaining an internal editorial policy of at least faking political correctness will Google adwords evolve towards taking a stance on pro choice/pro life issues, gun control etc?

Start another search enginge - Porngle

Considering what pr0n did for the web, those of us who sell it in some form or another just get no respect. ebay is a pain in the rear too, and we've been unfairly targeted in the past for selling legitimate, licensed PC dating-sim games (interactive anime-type games) in the proper (mature) area while pirates steal our games and sell them in the general products section. We point this out but they're only interested in giving us grief, no one else.

I gave up on adwords since it's a) really about as complex in the learning department as teaching myself Unix or MySQL, which would be more useful and b) they have a bias against adult keywords and never seemed to want to show my ads reliably. I also got, over 4 months, a big fat 0 sales. Considering that i have yet to go "oh look, I'll click on that!" and click on an Adword link, I'm just not convinced that it's worth it for J-List.

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Japanese Dating-Sim Games in English

ppayne, on side note I glanced at your website. You would be well served by the SE's if you placed each product on its own page. For instance the magazine page has all the magazines on one page. Each should have its own custom page from the browsing tree.

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They might as well drop the whole 'do no evil' thing since its pretty evident that providing they are raking in the millions then policy can go out the window.

Google reported 2005 earnings of over $6 Billion.

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Gennady Lager
SEO Specialist
SendTraffic.com

Google Adwords very picky, also hard to protect trademark especially in adult arena as well. ...I wonder if posting the statement 'All models are over 18' on the website it's self is enough to affect rankings... Good, Bad, or Does it count at all????

signed,
newbie

I've argued the fact that it states 'all models are over 18' on every page before over the phone to google. They just ignore the fact and say it doesn't matter.

So, despite the site being completely legal, my client must be perceived as 'evil' as we are advertising 'teen porn concepts' all over the place (although what adult site isn't?!?!)

We all know Google do no evil - Unless of course the money is right.

"many times it comes down to the individual reviewing your ads.."

Yeah, there's a big grey area and no all reviewers think alike. Some probably hate any kind of porn and have the tendency to want to reject any kind of hardcore ad, while some will allow a porn ad as long as its not blatantly marketing underage models. I've also gotten warning for "forced porn concept" or something along that line, while submitting an ad for run-of-the-mill gangbang porn. Did the reviewer just make that one up on the spot?

What one representative told me is terms like "18+ legal teen" is fine, while "young teen" etc are not allowed. What I do now is email a representative before submitting an ad and get the ok before I submit it for review, so if an ad does get rejected and I get some email telling me my account is suspended, I can fish out the approval email and say I checked with a Google rep beforehand.

Its actually interesting since I just recently blogged about how Google was actually helping a porn site that lost search rankings. Matt Cutts actually helped these guys when they went from #1 to nowhere. Frustrating since I've seen hundreds of posts from people in the same situation with no response or help from Google. I guess with such a large company it must be hard to maintain a clear policy on such issues, and many people have entirely different views on such things as porn. But it certainly seems to me that Google would want to have an interest in their main revenue stream and their customers. Ah well.

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