My account has recently been suspended because I did not meet some criteria of the AdWords policy. It took me a week to get it unsuspended. The loss in income for this period placed my campaigns on hold as I had to first get some funds together to start advertising again.
Soon after getting up and running again my account got permanently suspended because I am a repeat offender of the policy. This time for something different. I was not the only one as a good friend and fellow online marketer got his account suspended as well.
Many disgruntled website publishers eventually give up the fight with the mighty Google and go the “Linux way”(people working together) or find another ad company. It is fine to lose a client here and there, but biting the hands that feed you is a different story.
When I worked for a large corporate bank we once had a motivational speaker and he told us that we don’t have to worry about the client that makes a big fuss as we could make changes and solve his problem. We should worry about the client that keeps quiet and just leaves. You will have to spend thousands if not millions in advertising to get him back and there is no guarantee. Once he has moved on chances are that no matter what you do you’ve lost him forever.
When I first read John Chow dot com’s blog on why he does not have any Google AdSense on his site, it started me thinking but I was not convinced, but when Google suspended my account for a second time and this time permanently it made me think again. So many people that I know has had their AdSense accounts suspended and you don’t get specific reasons. Just that your site does not comply with the policies.
You spend days and even weeks to just get unsuspended while you could have been working on your traffic or something else.
Just so you know when you use AdWords, your landing page are not allowed to have the recommended ads according to Google AdSense policy. You should also not place them where Google recommends above the fold.
If one of your campaigns get suspended you still OK, but if you make another mistake you will get suspended, permanently.
What bothered me most is that Google send ads to my site that does exactly what Google says I’m not allowed to do. Is there a different set of rules for small advertisers? If your budget is big enough does Google look the other way?
It seems like Google got too big to be bothered about the smaller people, but like they say the bigger you are the harder you fall.