Since October 2011, there has been a continuous attack on affiliates and BlackHat PPC campaigners. Even last year in 2010 - Adwords did a clean sweep of all the shady accounts an everything was on a standstill. Being a campaign management firm ourselves, we have also experienced abrupt account reviews for campaigns running smoothly for over 6 months now.

Whats different this time is that, there has been a tad bit change in cloaking and account approval process too depending on the niche you are working in. Some niche where the approvals are toughest to achieve are :-

1. Online Gaming (Casino, Poker, Scratchcards etc)
2. Trademark bidding

Since most of our PPC work revolves around Online Gaming and E-stores the approvals are hard to come by, but we all know Christmas is the time when prospects convert the most.

If you are suffering with similar issues, lets work on diagnosing them together!

They are suspending also accounts with zero campaigns so i guess that they are not looking just into the created campaigns but they somehow read the footprint of any PC even if you are erasing cookies, flash cookies, user agents, reinstal windows. They are just playing dirty by reading some hardware serials - i can bet on this .

Google seems to be cracking down hard on everyone these days... the PPC folks, the SEO folks, EVERYONE... It's like your best friend who's not gettin' any who takes it out on you for no reason... XD

I think it comes down to the 80/20 Rule. Most of G's income from companies who spend $10k+ on Adwords per month. If you're not a big spender, then they'll find a reason to zap your account.

Remember that if you're running PPC campaigns, Adwords isn't the only choice. Something like online gaming may well lend itself to facebook or media buys.

I think is sleeping with me in my bad lately . Hopefully i will find his ass soon and fuck it!

success rate is dropped but still working sometimes

Just got our adsense account banned last week for no reason we know of. Pretty pissed off about that and no response from the big G. We ran it on our site (zoogom) and the search engine attached. Any advice anyone?
(oh yes, we actually built up quite a bit of bucks, all gone now!)

Sorry to hear about that. So what did their email say?

I am constantly having to contact Google to un-suspend LEGIT, long-standing accounts. I can't imagine having not so legit accounts setup. Google is a bitch right now... I truly hate working with them at this point. But what can you do?

I received this email 3 times in the last 30 days, and had to contact them back to get it unspended. Each time they apologized and said it was automated. It's a fully legit adwords account for one of my businesses....

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

It has come to our attention that your Google AdWords account does not
comply with our Terms of Service and Advertising Policies. As a result,
your account and any related accounts have been suspended, and your ads
will no longer run on Google. Please be aware that you are prohibited from
possessing or creating any other AdWords accounts, both now and in the
future.

Which then a few days later we would receive:

I'm happy to let you know that your account is no longer under review and
your ads are now eligible to run. As ad serving also depends on various
other factors, we recommend that you run a keyword diagnosis to confirm if
your keywords are actually triggering your ads. Find steps to do so at
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw...&answer=177620.

These reviews are normal. We periodically review accounts to ensure that
all ads meet our quality standards, to verify billing information, and to
maintain account security. Per our Terms and Conditions
(https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder), ads can undergo review
at any time.

Opps... I was wrong.. 6 suspensions in 2 months. Amazing...

Not surprising they're cracking down on poker in particular, seeing as largest poker sites (PokerStars, FullTilt and UB) had their US sites shut down.

I gave up on ad_words a while ago (3 months or so) and my traffic hasn't changed a bit. I've used it mostly to get new customers, but it simply wasn't cost effective and I chucked it. The less g the better, but...

I've had a few of my aff health sites slapped in October - November. I've had 2-3 aff links per page with some rss feeds and a unique article of about 500 words, 3-6 pages per site. I use some web2's and blast daily with SB and do some bookmarking. After 3 sites went down to not-in-the-first-500-land - all I changed is put n0f0ll0w on all aff and rss links. Today one of my sites is back on page one (after about 2 weeks of absence) for the main keyword, so there is hope they may come back after a while.

experienced the same.

speficially for adwords, moved on to other niches. its easier then trying to get around google policies all the time.

for products that used to work on adwords no longer able to sell, just move on to other traffic sources.

for adwords, shift to products that fewer people promote.

What a nightmare! I have had one of my accounts frozen "Under Review" for 8 day and my business took a beating. Then one of my other accounts anytime I put up a new ad it went under review for a day. What B.S I learned a good lesson from the experience. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. I now have adapted to the changes and I am now working on several more ways of bringing in the cash so that I am not 100% reliant on google.

Cmon people lets talk about more specific issues. Sometimes a good advice is all you need and if you find it on BHW, what better?

Originally Posted by WebOracle

What a nightmare! I have had one of my accounts frozen "Under Review" for 8 day and my business took a beating. Then one of my other accounts anytime I put up a new ad it went under review for a day. What B.S I learned a good lesson from the experience. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. I now have adapted to the changes and I am now working on several more ways of bringing in the cash so that I am not 100% reliant on google.

Well the best part is you did start looking for better traffic resources. But that doesnt mean that its impossible to get accounts running.

How where you funding your account?

Originally Posted by SEOWhizz

I think it comes down to the 80/20 Rule. Most of G's income from companies who spend $10k+ on Adwords per month. If you're not a big spender, then they'll find a reason to zap your account.

Remember that if you're running PPC campaigns, Adwords isn't the only choice. Something like online gaming may well lend itself to facebook or media buys.

why would they?

more advertisers is more money and more advertisers means more competition = higher bids

Originally Posted by rxxpertz

But that doesnt mean that its impossible to get accounts running.

How where you funding your account?

Yes you are right it's not impossible to get accounts running and that is why I have more than one. Where there is a will there is a way.

I am 100% legitimate with my funding on the accounts( well maybe not 100%) I have a few different accounts with friends account info set up. I give them the money needed to pay for the accounts. I am not using any voucher codes or anything like that.

I have had all of my accounts up and running with no issues since the Google Smack Down, but I am still a little weary of my accounts being " Randomly" put under review and find myself constantly checking to see if my ads are up lately.

success ratio is low , but still vouchers accounts work for many ,, it is not finished yet

yes, just got the notification myself. sounds like it might be easier to just avoid the big G and go with other ways of marketing sites that don't fully comply with their BS 'legitimate business' protocol...

Originally Posted by QhuRam03

success ratio is low , but still vouchers accounts work for many ,, it is not finished yet

why do you say that it is not finished yet? Are you referring to the use of vouchers or the Google Hammer?

Lol, the typical BS email. So are your accounts working OK now?

Yep, you gotta keep on contacting them and if you are lucky they will tell you your account was suspended by MISTAKE. Or else accounts go down.

It seems issue is that they are continuously reviewing across your niche very vigorously. If you are using cloaking them maybe you need to update the way you do it.

Originally Posted by asiriusthoth

I am constantly having to contact Google to un-suspend LEGIT, long-standing accounts. I can't imagine having not so legit accounts setup. Google is a bitch right now... I truly hate working with them at this point. But what can you do?

I received this email 3 times in the last 30 days, and had to contact them back to get it unspended. Each time they apologized and said it was automated. It's a fully legit adwords account for one of my businesses....



Which then a few days later we would receive:




Opps... I was wrong.. 6 suspensions in 2 months. Amazing...

My Adwords account was suspended for some bs reason too. It was totally legit. I didn't really investigate since the roi wasn't there for me an I wasn't using it much anyway.

Bump.

Blackhat campaigns are not working now
But Legit campaigns still works like charm

Originally Posted by johnwoo

Blackhat campaigns are not working now
But Legit campaigns still works like charm

Respectfully - I beg to differ.

i have not been able to get any ads approved and now admob is the same, bull shit but what is the best way to run a campaign these days?

Originally Posted by ardavidr

i have not been able to get any ads approved and now admob is the same, bull shit but what is the best way to run a campaign these days?

Every niche has its own strategy. What LP have you been using?