Google Adwords is obviously going through growing pains. This has been a hot topic in the forums. A person calling himself “Citypublife” wrote:
“This is my first post, however, I’m afraid it’s a bit of a moan about google adwords.
In January this year my partner and I decided to try adwords. My ad mentioned that our search facility was of a “click and find” design. (see below).
Everything had been going fine. We generated interest to our portal and paid our dues. 6 months, 5,209 clicks and 208.36p later, the Google adwords team decided to write me the following e-mail:
London Pub and Bar Guide
Unique “Click and Find” Web Portal
Much More than just a Pub Directory
www.citypublife.co.uk
Action taken: Suspended Pending Revision
Issue(s):
Unacceptable Phrases, Punctuation
Followed by:
Please review the ‘Content’ section of our Editorial
Guidelines. Your ad(s) contains the following unacceptable
phrase(s): “Click”. Please remove these phrases from your ads as the
limited text space should be used for concise, informative language
that will entice users to click on your ad.
Followed by:
Unacceptable Phrases: Your ad text cannot contain universal
call-to-action phrases such as ‘click here’ ‘link here’ ‘visit this
link’ ‘this site is’ or other similar phrases that could apply to any
ad, regardless of content.
Well, excuse me.
a) You have accepted it for the past 6 months.
b) Was it not checked when I first submitted it?
c) Did you change your guidlines without informing your clients?
d) My ad did not contain a “universal call to action phrase” It tried to explain, in the limited space provided, that there was no boulian search and that it was in an easy to use “click and find” design.
e) I did not use the phrase “click here”.
f) If my name was “click” or I had a business called “click your heels” are you saying that I couldn’t promote my enterprise through adwords?
g) Could you have least informed me, before removing the Adword as I was in the middle of a particular campaign.
I understand the need for “clean and truthful” promotion. However, I also believe that Google Adwords are being more than a little mechanical when they only look at the word and not the context of the whole phrase.
Further, by removing the ad without informing me of their decision first shows a complete lack of respect and understanding for the small business.
I suggest that the boys at Google are beginning to make the same mistakes that their predecessors made and, that if they are not careful, they will go the same way.
Luckily, I don’t rely on only them for my business.
Citypublife”
View his post and other responses at the WebProWorld Google Forum:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=7
Dan at SEO Research Labs had another take:
“Documentation and facts would both be good. I have not, nor has anyone I’ve worked with, experienced any problems that couldn’t be resolved by Adwords support team.
Sometimes we might write ads that ‘push the envelope’ a bit in terms of hyperbole, etc. It’s not unusual for them to get caught a few months down the road. They have editorial guidelines. Some of the guidelines are silly, some of the folks enforcing them are silly.
I’ve yet to encounter *targeted* search terms that didn’t draw enough clicks, as long as appropriate keyword matching options were used. Every time I’ve looked into an ad campaign that’s been shut off, or keywords that have been shut off, it’s been one of three things:
1. Search terms not relevant/targeted to the site. Example: advertising for “tooth decay” when you’re selling a super-duper electric toothbrush.
2. Very poor keyword matching options. Example: when I put in a bid for “search terms” – my ad was showing up on a bunch of searches for AOL because people hit the search button with the default text of “enter your search terms here” – solution was to do negative matching for the word “here.”
3. Ad that doesn’t fit the keywords, or the site. Example, writing one ad for the whole site, even though you offer 5 different services. Gotta have separate campaigns for that.”
Please tell us about your experiences with Google AdWords:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=7
Garrett French is the editor of webproworld’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.