Let me relate a story of a close “Friend” of mine who was extensively using Google Adwords as the main way to generate leads and sales for various affiliate programs and for his primary business. 
This “Friend” had set-up numerous campaigns in his account, for Google Search, For Google Search Partners, and for Google Content Network. Several of each type in fact for his internet network marketing business. Now, “He” had finally broken into profit on his campaigns….making a positive return on his ad spend all through traffic generated through using Google.
Now, “He” had made a pact with himself that he had a certain amount of $$ to spend each month on each campaign, strictly based upon the profits he had generated from that individual campaign. This is a GREAT way to hold yourself accountable on your ad spend. If “He” were to ever reach that limit, he would stop running that campaign until he received various checks from affiliate merchants and re-invest those into more advertising……..”He” really had created a snowball effect, carefully testing and generating more revenue, and incrementally growing his ad spend.
On one of his campaigns, “He” had resumed, he noticed that he was not getting ANY ad impressions, wheras before pausing this campaign he was getting tens of thousands a day. Not to worry, he decided to give it a week….and still was generating ZERO impressions. Now this particular campaign was his main bread and butter, generating the most money per dollar spent. He realized he must have been a victim of the infamouns “Google Slap” So this is exactly what “He” did..
1) Panicked!
2) Yelled out “Why Me Ohhh God?????”
3) Took a deep breath…..exhaled…..
4) Decided he was going to get around this, and get back into Google’s good graces.
After all, “He” is a guy that figures out stuff, and doesn’t let a minor bump in the road dictate things to HIM. OK, so with the right mindset, he decided upon a course of action.
The first thing he did was contact a Google rep for a live chat about his campaign. Surely Google must have made a mistake right???? Or so “He” thought. After some minor chit chat, the rep informed him…in words now etched in his mind, “Upon review of your campaign, ads, and website, they have been deemed ineligible for advertising on the XYZ network”. It turns out his account had been manually reviewed!
Again, he followed the same sequence of events as before:
1) Panicked!!!
2) Yelled out “Why Me Ohhh Goddd?”
3) Took a deep breath…..exhaled…..
4) Decided he was STILL going to get around this, no matter what…and get back in Google’s good graces.
Ok, so this is exactly what “He” did, and in this order, along with the results he observed.
1)Raised my bids sky high ($20 a click) just to see if I could get impressions. No results.
2) Reloaded his keywords and ads into a brand new campaign, and re-launched it. No impressions after several days still.
3) Resumed an old campaign of his that he used to use on that paricular network. Again, zero impressions after several days.
4) Relaunched all the keywords and ads into a brand new campaign, this time with an older website he had used previously. Can you guess the results? Nada!
5) Re-wrote all of his ads on the campaign in question, but pointing to a new domain. Again, zero impressions and zero results.
6) Did tons of “secret squirrel” stuff ON the website to make it more Google friendly.
And finally, as a last resort…..last ditch effort, he re-opened up an “old” account he hadn’t used in a LONG time, and started building the campaign all over again. Would he have to build up his account spend history again, and re-establish his CTR and everything else? YES.
The results? Lots of impressions! Lots of clicks! Tons of leads and sales!
Yes! Happy dance for “My Friend”.
So what are some lessons to be learned from “His” story?
1) Never contact a rep if you feel you have been “Google Slapped” I really feel this led to a manual review of the entire campaign and account, which exacerbated the problem.
2) I recommend not pausing a campaign. I really believe (and have been told by other adwords users) that repeated pausing and resuming of campaigns can trigger a review of your campaign. Instead, just reduce your budget to $1 a day or so if you must. (You can thank the coaches at PPC Classroom for that hint)
3) Never, ever stop until you have figured out a way to get your campaigns running again. There are many many different things you can do and tweak, and re-launch in order to get things moving again. REFUSE to let it get the best of you. We are entrepreneurs after all aren’t we? Panicking and crying out did no good for “My Friend”. Only when he decided on a course of action….and did SOMETHING..did he experiment and get results.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I would think if he just would have done it ethically from the beginning, he wouldn’t have had any problems.
If it was an accident mistake, or an oversight that offended Google, then he should be able to recover …without all the hoopla, however if he is playing games, Google does a great job of catching the gamers.
I have an associate that’s been “gaming” Google for years. o much so he may have even coined the phrase. Google finally caught up with him once and for all …they canceled his Google account …all of the services …and it didn’t end there…
…they took it so far that they have blocked his computers even from the natural search results. He can’t even use the Google search engine. He’s toast.
I would suggest that it’s way easier, and a lot less painful to do things above board, unless you really like MSN or Yahoo!
James
Great post and very timely. A friend of mine (for real) just ran into this exact problem. I will forward him to this post – thanks.
Great information. Matter of fact, just learned this exact strategy from PPC Classroom. Thanks so much
Mark C
Thanks. Now I know what happened to one of my campaigns.