A few days ago something pretty terrible happened: Google ‘terminated’ my Adwords account.

I had been using Adwords to promote a couple products. These are awesome products that I loved and used myself, so I thought it would be good to advertise them. After being accepted as an affiliate, I build some pages on my website LadyBonesOnline.com and wrote some ads. In June of last year, when I started advertising, I made a mere $200 – barely enough to cover the advertising costs. By December 2009 I had grown to $8,500 in revenue and my costs were about $1,00 – $2000 per month. After December, sales fell a bit, but I was still pulling in five to seven thousand a month. Then, a few days ago I noticed I hadn’t made any sales yet and it was almost noon. I immediately checked my ads only to find that I hadn’t racked up a single impression! This was completely unheard of, so I emailed Google. After waiting a little while for a response, I called them. Yes – they do have a phone number, although it’s only for setting up new accounts, if you are really nice, they may try to help you out, as it was in my case. After a few calls back and forth, with no one being able to find out what was wrong, I was informed by email that my account had been terminated for being ‘associated with another account that repeatedly violated the terms of service’. Funny things is, I HAVE no other account, nor does anyone in my house. I’m a one man show (my husband has a ‘real’ job). Every email I sent requesting a review of my account and a real explanation were met with short, cold replies:

Hello Tanya,

Thank you for your email. No one will be able to reverse your account
suspension. We ask that you please do not contact support again about
this matter.

As noted in our Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right to
terminate advertisements for any reason. To view our Terms and Conditions,
please visit https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder. 

We appreciate your cooperation.

Sincerely, 

Liz R.
The Google AdWords Team

Apparently, this is happening to alot of other people. I found this out by Googling “banned from adwords” – I’ve since stopped using Google search of course. My guess is that account is not ‘associated’ with any other account at all, and this is just some vague generic excuse they give, as it seems that many others are being given this same excuse. I am just going to assume that they have a problem with affiliates, as it seems they’ve suspended or terminated all the other accounts that were advertising the same products as me because when I Google my old keywords, all my competitors are gone too.

Google has a pretty big stick up it’s ass and thinks pretty poorly of affiliates.

I definitely understand that they can be spammy and deceptive but not in all cases. In my case, I genuinely supported the companies I was advertising and had personal positive experience with them and wanted to support them and make some money doing it. My biggest success, was a piece of software that the company making it wasn’t advertising, so when I went to look for it, typing in the keywords that I thought would bring it up, I couldn’t find it. After tracking the product down and purchasing it myself, I became an affiliate, targeting the keywords that I had tried using before. To me, I was providing a valuable service, helping customers find a product they were looking for, and not targeting any misleading keywords. I have to think that if a real live person would review my account and listen to me (and the company that I advertise for, because based on my sales, I’ve made one of them a couple hundred thousand dollars in the past year) they would see that I’m not doing anything shady. Unfortunately Google doesn’t work that way, and they refuse to commit any man hours to their advertisers, who pay them thousands of dollars every month. Suffice it to say, I hate Google now and I’m slowly transitioning away from everything Google related. I do still have some Adsense ads running, but those will be gone soon. I prefer getting paid per sale than per click anyways, but that’s for another post.

Imagine if another company treated it’s customers like this… One day you go to use your debit card and it just doesn’t work. You call the bank to inquire and they inform you that “your account has been terminated for life. Please do not open another account with us – ever. Please don’t contact us again, especially not to ask ‘why’ because we don’t have to tell you, as per our terms of service.” NO ONE WOULD STAND FOR THIS. Why is it okay for Google do this to so many people?

Don’t worry about me though. In the hours after my termination, I quickly mobilized and set up accounts with other search engines and I’m having some small success. I actually feel pretty stupid for not having diversified sooner. I will share my Google-less advertising tips in another post. I am also continuing to write support daily until they treat me like a human being. I will not stand for this.

The moral of the story is: even if you are having plenty of success with Google right now, you need to prepare for the unexpected and DIVERSIFY to mitigate your loses, should you lose your Adwords account.

UPDATE: If this all sounds ridiculous to you, please consider signing my Petition for Google to Treat it’s Adwords Customers Better on this page.