Hi all!
First of all I'd like to thank everyone on this forum. I've learned a lot from simply being a lurker for quite some time. For example, last year I set up my financial structure and companies based on a lot of the little gems of knowledge I found buried in threads here.
Now, however, I need some more specific help, which is the reason for me finally posting.
Some background:
For about 2 years now, I have been operating one of the most successful online sneaker replica stores serving the a specific country. We've reached the point of crossing 1,000,000 USD in revenue for this year already and we haven't even reached the busiest months of the year. We're also looking to expand to Australia before the Christmas period.
It's been a process getting here. Long story short, I started on instagram on my own, selling through conversations in DMs and PayPal invoices, gradually built a site, started advertising through Google, got fucked by PayPal for 70k, incorporated some companies, found a trusted payment terminal provider, hired some friends, built a custom order system with a great team, and have been continuing to scale relentlessly.
The current situation:
I operate two sites (basically duplicates of each other and both serving the same main country, with one also serving a small neighbouring country) and last weekend my longest running site had it's Google Merchant Center account suspended for selling counterfeit goods (along with the connected Ads account). Fair enough. Thankfully both sites were running on separate GMCs and Ads accounts. Super thankfully, the second site's GMC and Ads are still running as usual *knocks on wood*.
One area of questions I have is:
How did Google suddenly realise that these products are counterfeit, given I did not use any trademarked terms?
Furthermore, why didn't a duplicate site selling the exact same products get the same treatment? Is it possible that it has something to do with the text in the descriptions being the same on both sites and Google interpreting one as being a copy of the other? Or could somebody have reported the site? Was it a periodic in-depth review that somehow involved more than an algorithm? Does Google's crawler have the ability to detect brand names and logos in product images? Should I start removing reviews with any mention of "you wouldn't guess they're fake", "amazing replicas", or "unauthorised"?
My course of action so far has been: I relatively quickly shut the site for business and notified all of our email subscribers that it would be closed for maintenance. I completely removed all replica products, added a couple of new non-replica (generic) shoes and submitted an appeal. At this point, my Merchant Center suspension has changed from "counterfeit products" to "misrepresentation", which I'm currently working on.
If I get my account unsuspended, how should I go about re-adding my replica products?
Do I need to give it a re-warm with ad spend on the generic (non-replica) shoes I've added? Do I need to start changing product URLs so that Google won't interpret them as the same policy-violating products being re-added? What about the product image URLs? Should I try to generate new ones from Shopify somehow? There's quite a lot of parameters they could connect. If I need to change the product images themselves, I'd be kind of screwed there as I have over 400 products.
The strange thing is that submitting replica products to Google was super easy a couple of years ago when I started this GMC account. I initially submitted them directly through the Shopify integration, and then later on discovered the Simprosys Product Feed app, which helped me immensely. Since trying to open a new store for Australia this year, I discovered how hard it has actually become with suspension after suspension for new GMCs (connected to a new URL), where I tried to add these same products but for a different market.
When it comes to new GMCs and Ads accounts, does anybody have any experience with how to "warm-up" new accounts and gradually get them to accept replica products?
With the new Australian store, I had started a fresh domain, with a fresh GMC, and a brand new Ads account. I added some legit products, ran a performance max campaign, and a week later, started adding a few replica products into the mix, First 3-4 products, a couple of days later, another 3-4. Everything seemed to be running smoothly, everything was being accepted until I suddenly got a misrepresentation suspension (not on a day where I had added new products). I would love to know more about the process here...
Finally, does anybody have specific details about how a cloaking service could potentially help me?
Over the two years of running this store, I have never used a cloaking service. I am somewhat skeptical given that some of Google's algorithms apparently directly look for the presence of cloaking software, which usually results in a ban. I would be very interested in finding out more about how specifically I could apply this to my business to avoid future suspensions.
Disclaimer: I do understand that there are other ways to advertise besides Google but Google Ads were very much a golden bullet for me when I first discovered them. I'm currently trying to learn more about how to leverage TikTok, given that my products do also appeal to a younger audience. Due to the awesome ROAS, however, I would ideally like to find a stable way to continue advertising with Google
Thank you in advance. I always operate under the mindset that out there, there are many people who know far more than I do. I would be grateful for any piece of knowledge.
First of all I'd like to thank everyone on this forum. I've learned a lot from simply being a lurker for quite some time. For example, last year I set up my financial structure and companies based on a lot of the little gems of knowledge I found buried in threads here.
Now, however, I need some more specific help, which is the reason for me finally posting.
Some background:
For about 2 years now, I have been operating one of the most successful online sneaker replica stores serving the a specific country. We've reached the point of crossing 1,000,000 USD in revenue for this year already and we haven't even reached the busiest months of the year. We're also looking to expand to Australia before the Christmas period.
It's been a process getting here. Long story short, I started on instagram on my own, selling through conversations in DMs and PayPal invoices, gradually built a site, started advertising through Google, got fucked by PayPal for 70k, incorporated some companies, found a trusted payment terminal provider, hired some friends, built a custom order system with a great team, and have been continuing to scale relentlessly.
The current situation:
I operate two sites (basically duplicates of each other and both serving the same main country, with one also serving a small neighbouring country) and last weekend my longest running site had it's Google Merchant Center account suspended for selling counterfeit goods (along with the connected Ads account). Fair enough. Thankfully both sites were running on separate GMCs and Ads accounts. Super thankfully, the second site's GMC and Ads are still running as usual *knocks on wood*.
One area of questions I have is:
How did Google suddenly realise that these products are counterfeit, given I did not use any trademarked terms?
Furthermore, why didn't a duplicate site selling the exact same products get the same treatment? Is it possible that it has something to do with the text in the descriptions being the same on both sites and Google interpreting one as being a copy of the other? Or could somebody have reported the site? Was it a periodic in-depth review that somehow involved more than an algorithm? Does Google's crawler have the ability to detect brand names and logos in product images? Should I start removing reviews with any mention of "you wouldn't guess they're fake", "amazing replicas", or "unauthorised"?
My course of action so far has been: I relatively quickly shut the site for business and notified all of our email subscribers that it would be closed for maintenance. I completely removed all replica products, added a couple of new non-replica (generic) shoes and submitted an appeal. At this point, my Merchant Center suspension has changed from "counterfeit products" to "misrepresentation", which I'm currently working on.
If I get my account unsuspended, how should I go about re-adding my replica products?
Do I need to give it a re-warm with ad spend on the generic (non-replica) shoes I've added? Do I need to start changing product URLs so that Google won't interpret them as the same policy-violating products being re-added? What about the product image URLs? Should I try to generate new ones from Shopify somehow? There's quite a lot of parameters they could connect. If I need to change the product images themselves, I'd be kind of screwed there as I have over 400 products.
The strange thing is that submitting replica products to Google was super easy a couple of years ago when I started this GMC account. I initially submitted them directly through the Shopify integration, and then later on discovered the Simprosys Product Feed app, which helped me immensely. Since trying to open a new store for Australia this year, I discovered how hard it has actually become with suspension after suspension for new GMCs (connected to a new URL), where I tried to add these same products but for a different market.
When it comes to new GMCs and Ads accounts, does anybody have any experience with how to "warm-up" new accounts and gradually get them to accept replica products?
With the new Australian store, I had started a fresh domain, with a fresh GMC, and a brand new Ads account. I added some legit products, ran a performance max campaign, and a week later, started adding a few replica products into the mix, First 3-4 products, a couple of days later, another 3-4. Everything seemed to be running smoothly, everything was being accepted until I suddenly got a misrepresentation suspension (not on a day where I had added new products). I would love to know more about the process here...
Finally, does anybody have specific details about how a cloaking service could potentially help me?
Over the two years of running this store, I have never used a cloaking service. I am somewhat skeptical given that some of Google's algorithms apparently directly look for the presence of cloaking software, which usually results in a ban. I would be very interested in finding out more about how specifically I could apply this to my business to avoid future suspensions.
Disclaimer: I do understand that there are other ways to advertise besides Google but Google Ads were very much a golden bullet for me when I first discovered them. I'm currently trying to learn more about how to leverage TikTok, given that my products do also appeal to a younger audience. Due to the awesome ROAS, however, I would ideally like to find a stable way to continue advertising with Google
Thank you in advance. I always operate under the mindset that out there, there are many people who know far more than I do. I would be grateful for any piece of knowledge.
