"F" GOOGLE!
Well it finally happened. I don't know when or how,but it happened.
I got that nice little e-mail from Google Adwords saying that my account has been locked. Piss on 'em I say!
I have no idea why. All I did was point to what I felt was a nice little landing page on BOWLING!!!! It wasn't drugs, sex, money. It was BOWLING for crying out loud!
Google has to be one of the most sensitive groups out there! You're going to lock someone out for "EGREGIOUSLY" violating their TOC with a BOWLING LANDING PAGE!!! Holy crap!
The good news (well sort of) is that I would spend maybe $20 a month with Google. If I felt like it, I would just throw some money in there and see what happens. I never intended to use Adwords as my money maker. Now with this, it takes that distraction away from me. May not be all bad.
I guess when I start up with Adwords again, I'll need to get my wife an account! Oh, and I will only be promoting BIBLES or something. Although I'm pretty sure they will try and lock me out for that too!
Really....BOWLING???
Here's the e-mail for those who have never seen it -
"Dear advertiser,
We are writing to let you know that your Google AdWords account has been disabled due to one or more serious violations of our advertising policies related to Landing Page
and Site Quality. As a result, your ads will no longer run through the
Google AdWords system and we are unable to accept advertising from you
in the future. Please note that future accounts you open will also be
disabled.
As part of our commitment to making the AdWords
experience safe and effective for our users and our advertisers, we
routinely review the landing pages that our advertisers promote through
our search and content networks. If we find that an advertiser has
submitted a landing page that egregiously violates our policies, we
reserve the right to take immediate account-level action.
Landing
pages advertised via AdWords must have relevant, original content, and
must be transparent about the nature of the business being promoted.
Further, advertising certain types of sites will lead to immediate
account disabling. These types of sites include, but are not limited
to:
* Sites that charge users or collect personal information in exchange for a product that is never delivered
* Sites that charge for "free" software
* Sites that trick users into paying for fake or poor-quality content
* Sites that charge users for information that makes unrealistic promises of financial or personal gain
* Sites that install malware software on a visitor's computer
Please
note that this action is related to sites that have recently been
advertised through your account. In a review of your account history,
we found that your account had submitted a least one site that
egregiously violated our advertising policies. Although you may have
removed these sites since our latest review, advertisers that have a
history of promoting these types of sites are still subject to
account-level disabling.
You can review our Advertising Policies, including our Landing Page and Site Quality guidelines, by visiting: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guidelines.cs
You may also review the complete AdWords Terms & Conditions here: https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder
In addition, our FAQ about Account Disablings can be found here: https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164786
If you have additional questions or concerns not addressed
by our policies or help center, you can contact support by replying to
this email.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords team"
So this is it? They weren't specific about the reasons they locked you out forever? I'm pissed and it's not even my account, heh.