Strange Adwords Ban. Any experience?

Hello,

I was banned from adwords I think 2-3 months ago, and it just popped up in my mind again. It's not too big of a deal since you can get new accounts and such, but it was for a strange reason, and I wanted to see if anyone else experienced this problem.

I only do 100% whitewhat advertising on adwords.

adwords -> landing page -> Clickbank sales page

Here's the reason of the first email :

*************************************************
In response to multiple complaints received from users and publishers about this category of ads, our policies no longer allow sites that promote low-quality affiliate advertisements, the sale of free items and other business models about which we have received multiple complaints. At this time, it is Google?s policy to not accept ads that make unverifiable, misleading claims about income opportunities for low risk and minimal effort.

You can select any of the three options below:

1) Modify your site so that it more realistically and accurately conveys the benefits of your product. Be transparent to users about any risks involved in using your product. Creating a successful website is hard work. Successful sites earn their money by writing compelling content, developing useful applications, and maintaining vibrant user communities. Claims that you can make just as much money from posting links, using a ?secret? system, or running a kit to generate websites should be treated with skepticism.

2) Promote a different business model on the site.

Once these site violations are addressed, you may submit your site for re-review by replying to this email with your reasons for reconsideration. If approved, we will notify you of this change. Once your site is no longer in violation of our Landing Page and Site Policies, we also suggest that you resubmit your ads for review.

********************************************************

In short and after few email exchanges with the support site to get their reasoning, I was banned because of the Clickbank vendor's salespage, which is weird since I was promoting a fairly high gravity product.

I don't understand how they determine "misleading" and there are ridiculously high number of income products on Clickbank, so wouldn't that mean everyone of them should be banned?

Also, I tried to explain to them it was not my website so I have no power over changing it, and I told them that Clickbank offered a 60 day money back guarantee, so they had no risk when purchasing.


I was wondering if anyone experienced the same or similar problem that I did. Also, what do you think I could do to prevent this problem in the future? I was debating whether to start using adwords again or not, so any input would be helpful whether you are :

A. still promoting clickbank products on adwords or
B. got a similar ban as me

Any feedback is helpful and appreciated!

I faced this problem too. I promoted a CB product and received the same email. Now I don't know what to do to reactivate my Adwords account since I cannot modify a website that I do not own. I just took the refund and wait to see what to do.

Guys, if you are promoting any affiliate products, let alone just CB products then you are very likely to face a ban. And more so when these products are from certain category (ex. make money) with typical hyped sales pages.

The email you received is what Google adword sends as a warning prior to the final account ban. In the past few months quite a few affiliates promoting CB products via adword have been banned. The one that comes to my mind is "Burn the Fat" product. It has a high gravity and is a damn good product too but the product owner was pissed off to see his affiliates' adword account getting banned frequently. He even sent out an email suggesting them to use alternate mode of promotion instead.

If all of the terms & conditions of Adword regarding affiliate marketing seems confusing to you, then follow just this rule - If the main goal of your website is Affiliate Marketing then you are in trouble.

97% of Google' revenue comes from Adwords. If they allow affiliates ads then they would be reducing the quality of Ads for the end users (or at least this is what they believe). So, they would rather ban a few hundred or even thousand affiliate advertisers accounts than risk losing their credibility in the eyes of the end users, or even other non-affiliate advertisers.

Although there is no denying the fact that they have been very unfair to the affiliates in the manner in which they have gone about this job.

beazt said:

Guys, if you are promoting any affiliate products, let alone just CB products then you are very likely to face a ban. And more so when these products are from certain category (ex. make money) with typical hyped sales pages.

The email you received is what Google adword sends as a warning prior to the final account ban. In the past few months quite a few affiliates promoting CB products via adword have been banned. The one that comes to my mind is "Burn the Fat" product. It has a high gravity and is a damn good product too but the product owner was pissed off to see his affiliates' adword account getting banned frequently. He even sent out an email suggesting them to use alternate mode of promotion instead.

If all of the terms & conditions of Adword regarding affiliate marketing seems confusing to you, then follow just this rule - If the main goal of your website is Affiliate Marketing then you are in trouble.

97% of Google' revenue comes from Adwords. If they allow affiliates ads then they would be reducing the quality of Ads for the end users (or at least this is what they believe). So, they would rather ban a few hundred or even thousand affiliate advertisers accounts than risk losing their credibility in the eyes of the end users, or even other non-affiliate advertisers.

Although there is no denying the fact that they have been very unfair to the affiliates in the manner in which they have gone about this job.

Click to expand...

Any chance to get my account back? Since I cannot modify the CB product site.

If I open a new account will they identify me? I don't have another credit card to use.

kcman said:

Any chance to get my account back? Since I cannot modify the CB product site.

If I open a new account will they identify me? I don't have another credit card to use.

Click to expand...

To get a new AdWords account you need to get a new computer (or a new IP address), open up a new AdWords account under a new name and credit card, both of which should have different addresses than your original credit card used for your banned AdWords account.

Promoting IM products from clickbank on adwords is the shortcut to get all your accounts banned and your credit card marked.
Everyone knows what these products are... and so does google.

By saying you don't understand what misleading is, do you mean you don't know that these products are basically easy cash scams?
Would you buy into what you're promoting?

Google's reputation is based on its search results and MM products are nothing I would want to do with if I were them.

Bross said:

Promoting IM products from clickbank on adwords is the shortcut to get all your accounts banned and your credit card marked.
Everyone knows what these products are... and so does google.

By saying you don't understand what misleading is, do you mean you don't know that these products are basically easy cash scams?
Would you buy into what you're promoting?

Google's reputation is based on its search results and MM products are nothing I would want to do with if I were them.

Click to expand...

so what do you suggest to promote now? Diet affiliates are also hitting brick wall. Basically affiliate days in adwords are numbered.

Ah Thanks for the information guys. I wasn't very up to date on this kind of information.

I'm not going to promote any more CB products on Adwords. I'm guessing it's similar for CPA offers as well. I just remember them converting well, and I was making a good amount of money selling weight loss products and such using adwords and CB years ago, but I guess it does not work anymore! Good thing I worked on other methods! It's sad cause I had a ridiculously low refund rate too, and the product was actually pretty decent.

I'll probably not use adwords for a bit as I haven't found a use for them yet then!

My only question is :

How are there still people promoting junk products on adwords? A lot of these still look worse than the Clickbank stuff. Adwords is still plagued with shitty landing pages and ads.

A lot of that stuff will either be grandfathered in or it will be people doing the bait and switch.

you either need to cloak or do the bait and switch.

dennisyu said:

you either need to cloak or do the bait and switch.

Click to expand...

Can you explain the bait and switch ?

beazt said:

Can you explain the bait and switch ?

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch

Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud, most commonly used in retail sales but also applicable to other contexts. First, customers are "baited" by advertising for a product or service at a low price; second, the customers discover that the advertised good is not available and are "switched" to a costlier product.

Click to expand...

Basically, you say you have product "X" for sale at only 4.99! But when a user gets to your store, or site, you say, "Sorry X is not for sale and we ran out, but we've got Y for sale for only 19.99!"

beazt said:

Can you explain the bait and switch ?

Click to expand...

The dude above just explained it. What i meant was, don't make your landing pages look like a bridge page.

Get the ad approved and then go back and add links and such.

I too was banned and thank goodness ... I can stop wasting money testing CB products, etc. Was never able to turn a profit except for a short time selling a speed writing course.

Anyway, if I had to do it again (PPC that is), I would use a lead capture system to fill my Aweber account with leads in a market that has dozens of offers I could promote.

So, if diet is your game, make a site that offers a free low-calorie recipe (example). Give that away on the landing page. Drive paid traffic to it. Offer 100 more free recipes to people who signup for your 'guide to weight loss newsletter'. Give out the freebie and then start marketing to people this way. You can promote a) a page with adsense on it targeting high CPC keywords, b) clickbank, c) CPA, d) hard goods, e) your own product, and more without dealing with Google doodoo.

Just my 2 cents.

JC.

ps. About 6 months after I was banned I got a free Adwords voucher in the mail. Go figure.

pps. If you were banned, don't forget Facebook and Yahoo/Bing. You can generate traffic, and a lot of it, in the right markets using those 2 options. And there is also media buys if you have money to test.

I had my adwords account banned about 2 years ago. (Didn't even get the email) I have my own Clickbank product that I'm selling and it was no biggie. I get most of my sales through organic traffic. My product is not a piece of shit, in fact, I might only have a dozen returns after hundreds of sales. It's how to start a specific business.

Just recently I noticed that my Clickbank sales page is de-indexed. It's gone. It WAS the #1 SERP for my keyword for years. I'm hoping it's just a Google dance. I sure hope Google hasn't gone mental over Clickbank products.

biks said:

I had my adwords account banned about 2 years ago. (Didn't even get the email) I have my own Clickbank product that I'm selling and it was no biggie. I get most of my sales through organic traffic. My product is not a piece of shit, in fact, I might only have a dozen returns after hundreds of sales. It's how to start a specific business.

Click to expand...

Yeah Clickbank isn't a place with bunch of crappy eBooks. There are actually a good amount of quality products.

As for facebook, Facebook advertising is pretty nice. You can target your niche extremely well, and I've had good success with it. I played around with bing, but It just isn't as good. I will have to go back to it and test again later though.

Yes my adwords account just got banned for 2 cb direct link campaigns i ran 1 year ago, have not run a campaign on adwords for over 1 year. Appears some cb products are on googles hit list no matter how long ago you ran the ad.