PPC news – 11/26/09

This post has no specific subject, but I just wanted to share some things with you.

Recent blog posts and news:

New search ads formats – Google published a post where it’s describing all the AdWords text (not just text) ads you might come a cross. If you’re into PPC, you got to know it all.

Popular PPC pitfalls – Great post by Melissa Mackey. She describes some of the common PPC pitfalls one should be aware of. This one is mostly for the beginners out there.

Products extensions for AdWords ads available to all US advertisers – Mostly for the PPC managers, affiliates will probably won’t care.

Misinformation in affiliate marketing – Affiliates, don’t listen to everything you hear on blogs and forums. You can listen to what this post is saying though.

New feature of site links in AdWords text ads – Great new feature from AdWords lets you add more links to you PPC ad. Note though, that 99% of the times, you will see these extra links only on your brand name.

There’s a new editor for Yahoo search marketing – Finally! I personally didn’t get the chance to use it. Let me know how it works out for you.

Google campaign insights – Another feature by made by Google to make you spend more more money on the content network help you understand your content network campaign better.

On another note, I get a lot of traffic from people looking for information on the change Google is making on their advertising fundamentals exam. I am still gathering information on this myself and will post my findings here soon.

Murdoch vs. Google

This is the first post that is not about PPC marketing. Don’t expect to see many of those now, but every now and then I will post something that is somehow irrelevant to PPC.

This one though is relevant to search in general.

You must have all heard that Rupert Murdoch is tired of how his newspapers are doing online and decided that Google is to blame and specifically Google news. You see, when users get the newspaper they want without actually reading the newspaper, the newspaper loses the number of visitors and thus the advertisers want to pay less.

So Murdoch wants his newspapers to be out of Google’s index. When he first said it, Google’s reply was somewhat similar to “I dare you..”, but I actually think it’s a really good idea. Let me tell you why:

Well, as you all know, search engines are making a hell of a lot of money by putting relevant ads next to relevant content based on a user search queries. It the current situation, a lot of businesses, including Murdoch newspapers are depending on Google and how Google is ranking them in order to get traffic and therefore money. Out of all the businesses involved here, Google of course is making the most money.

Now, what if Google had no content to show to the searching user? Would it still make money out of these search queries? I think that after a while, the users will just stop searching for those queries on Google, and as we established before, less users means less money.  So let’s say no one lets Google index their content, in this situation, Google depends on all other businesses to allow them to index their content and make money out of it. Seems to me that Google will need to pay some money in order to index this content. Getting the point?

So Murdoch is now in some kind of negotiation with Bing in order to allow just Bing to index the content. That gives Bing a huge advantage over Google since Murdoch newspapers have a lot of loyal readers that will just look for the content on Bing, or will get it directly through the non-existing (yet) Bing news. I think this is worth some of Microsoft’s money if they want to even things up with Google.

If such a thing will actually happen, I believe it could change our industry. Search engines will now have to give something back except for relevant ads.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that today, most businesses and websites depend on Google’s algorithm and mood (yes, mood) in order to make a living and many companies are doing everything they can in order to please Google. But as a matter of fact, Google needs their content in order to make a living. But Google is not pleasing anyone. Something is ought to change.

Google is rewinding AdWords bans

The AdWords banning saga continues.

After I was banned from AdWords and got back a few days after, I hear that I’m not the only one who got back on AdWords after being banned.

My friend, of whom I told you about in the last 2 posts, that came up with the idea that Google shut me down because they connected our accounts to each other, also got his ads running again. Since yesterday I noticed that this series of bans is in fact automated, and it got me thinking that Google must have realized that something went wrong with their machine. I wonder what caused them to notice it. I think it’s either Google decided to pay attention to all the noise the banned advertisers made, or, something that I find more likely, that Google noticed that their bank account is growing slower than they hoped. They even banned a million dollars per month affiliate. This affiliate has some really good notes and comments about this issue in general.

So are we going to see a mass of banned advertisers gaining back access to AdWords? Will Google kill this EVIL machine that they have created? God I hope so, because this entire chain of events got me to a place where I’m afraid of trying to promote new stuff on AdWords. How know? Maybe their algorithm wouldn’t like my landing page and will ban me again, killing all the other “good” campaigns I got running.

I got un-banned from AdWords!!

24 Hours After I posted that I was out of AdWords for good, and not by choice, I got an email from Google saying that a specialist team re-reviewed my account and found that I was following all the guidelines.

Here’s the exact words:

Thank you for your email. I’m happy to let you know that our specialist
team re-reviewed your account and has overturned their decision to disable
your account. I’ve confirmed that your website was not correctly evaluated
by our system, and we’ve fixed this error. Keep in mind that we’re
constantly improving the way the AdWords system evaluates landing page
quality. However, there’s no guarantee that your account won’t be affected
by a poor landing page quality in the future. To prevent this from
happening, we recommend ensuring that your site complies with our landing
page quality guidelines, found at
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46675&hl=en_US. If
you continue to have difficulty viewing your ad, please reply to this
message with the keywords you’re using to search for your ad. I’ll be
happy to research the problem further.

So basically, my account was banned my a machine!! and after I asked for and got a human review on my account I got un-banned. I wonder how many people got banned automatically but didn’t do anything about it. What I think happened is that because a good friend of mine got banned a week ago (with a good reason) and he sometimes used my PC to get into his accounts, Google connected between the accounts and automatically banned me as well. This is just a guess though.

You can’t imagine the joy I felt inside when I saw this email! I’m not even angry that I got banned at the first place cause after all I did promote some stuff that are worth been banned for when I took my first steps in affiliate marketing. And besides, I’m too happy to be angry

Anyway, I suggest everyone who got banned to ask for a human re-review. First though, delete all of the campaigns you think are worth been banned for. I think all affiliates out there that has yet to be banned, try to do the same – If you once ran campaigns that might look “fishy”, delete it before your account is reviewed.

One important thing I learned from it, is that I got to find new sources of income (Bing & Yahoo don’t count). I think I will put some efforts in learning media buying. I know many affiliates are in this position as well, so how are you going to escape from your dependency on Google?

I got banned from AdWords

I’m not sure what just happened, but today when I looked at my account I realized that I didn’t get any click for 4 days. I got nervous since I know Google is on a crusade to find affiliates and kill their accounts. So before I freaked out I checked my keywords, and all of them were with QS higher that 6 when most of them with quality score higher than 8. Then, I checked if my ads were disapproved for some reason, but all my ads were on “active”. This is when I thought to my self that my account is probably under review and my ads will run again soon. After all, I didn’t get any warnings about low quality score. Boy was I wrong!

I contacted AdWords support, asking them when will my ads be active again. I got an email saying that I got banned! :

Hello Erez,

Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about your
ads not running. Please know that your Google AdWords account has been
disabled due to multiple violations of our advertising policies, including
violations after final warning, related to Landing Page and Site Quality,
in a related account. As a result, your ads will no longer run though the
Google AdWords system and we are unable to accept advertising from you in
the future. Please note that future AdWords 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 poor quality
landing pages that do not comply with our advertising policies, including
the Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines, we reserve the right to take
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, advertisers are prohibited from promoting certain types of sites,
which include, but are not limited to:

* Data collection sites that imply delivery of free items, etc., in order
to collect private information
* Arbitrage sites without relevant and original content that are designed
for the purpose of showing ads
* Affiliate sites without relevant and original content that are designed
to drive traffic to another site with a different domain
* “Get-rich quick” sites that make unrealistic promises
* Sites that are deceptive
* Sites that distribute malware or spyware
* Extremely misleading/unverifiable or inaccurate claims

Please note that this action is related to sites that have recently been
advertised through your related account. In a review of your related
account’s history, we found that your related account had submitted
multiple sites that merited poor landing page quality evaluations.
Although these sites may have been corrected or removed since our latest
review, advertisers that have a history of promoting poor quality landing
pages are subject to account-level disabling.

Then I got really nervous! and angry! I didn’t get any warnings! Ever! . Not only that, but I really had no active campaigns that where promoting any of the site they mentioned as prohibited for promoting. I did try to promote the acai berry once but this campaign ran for about a week and that I paused it. I was promoting everything “by the book” and didn’t use any method that an SEM agency wouldn’t use.

I was really clueless, and I still am. Google won’t return my emails since then.

A friend of mine, that was banned last week, came up with a theory that Google some how noticed that his account was once used from the same PC as mine, and then they thought they are linked to each other and this is why I got banned. But I guess I can’t really know.

I guess what I need to do now is find a way to get back on AdWords. I heard some people managed to do that, but it might be just a rumor. I also heard of people that tried many times but Google always got on their tracks.

This is a real pain in the ass. I got tips from people that I need to open a new company and use its CC, change my IP and billing address, and even replace my computer. Oh, and I not can’t use any Google product so they won’t get on my track. Seems difficult, but i worth the shot. I hope it works.

Few things are on my mind right now:

• Is this the end of affiliate marketing in Google? Or just the end of the lazy, scheming, and just wrong affiliate marketing? Anyway, I’m sure things are going to change.
• I guess that more people will promote their affiliate offer in Bing and Yahoo. Maybe these engines will get more search volume because of it. After all, if many affiliates are now using Bing and not Google, other people might start using it too.
• The final and most important thing that is on my mind is – will I ever get back on AdWords or will I need to find income from other sources. I hope that the answer is yes for both parts of the question.

If anyone that is reading this post has ever got banned and managed to get back on AdWords, please contact me. I would appreciate it.