Google Ads 3 Strike Policy

Key Takeaways

back in july of 2021 google ads introduced a strike system for accounts that repeatedly violated specific ad policies now i'm recording this in may of 2022 and google just sent out another email just a week or so ago saying that they were going to add nine additional policies to the strike system so in this video we will cover the nine policies that were added to this system we'll go over what happens if you get a warning or a strike in each of the steps and then last we'll go over the acknowledgement and appeal form so the acknowledgement form will cover if you know that you made a mistake but you say you will correct it so you can get your account back online and the appeal form which is the same thing will cover what you may want to tell google to say that hey you gave us a strike it's a mistake we didn't violate any policies so we're going to cover all that in today's video so let's get started so this video is going to be a little bit different since we're not really showing you something like a campaign setup or anything within the channel this is really all policy changes so i apologize for mostly powerpoint and looking at specific web pages but that is the best way to explain what is going to be changing and to get more familiar with the three strike policy so while there are updates coming the strike based system is not really new it's already implemented in a few different policies some of these include guns weapons explosives other weapons additional policies include tobacco and certain unapproved substances and anything regarding dishonest behavior but most likely you received an email that the strike based system will be going through some updates starting on june 21st and that is going to be the addition of nine more policies now the update on june 21st won't all happen to all of the nine policies at once google did say it'll be a gradual rollout over a period of three months starting on june 21st so as it states on the slide right here it's going to affect nine additional policies so i'm gonna go through the nine additional policies show you links of where you can find each of them some of them may be a little bit uncomfortable which i apologize for but these are already established policies within google ads i'm not gonna stick on this first one really long because it is kind of awkward but the first new policy added to the strike based system is compensated sexual acts policy the link is on the screen right now very adult theme related again i'm not sticking on this one long so for whatever reason if you have an account that falls within anything regarding sexual acts be very aware of it next is going to be mail order bride still falls within adult content but it does have its own page there's the link on the screen this one's pretty straightforward if you are a mail order bride company you are not allowed to advertise on google ads the next policy added to this update is click bait ads and there's a few different components here if you're using very vague text like click here or as what google has in their example you won't believe what happened most likely those are eventually going to get flagged and you're going to get a warning or a strike besides just the text portion of the ad if you look at the second red x anything that includes negative life events any imagery or wording regarding death injury any potential crime those sort of things those will also get you flagged now the fourth policy violation added is just gonna have me scrolling down to misleading ad design most likely this is gonna be for your image ads any ads that are designed to make it look like it has a certain function that doesn't actually exist and it just sends you to a website that's going to fall under this category another example you may have seen them out and about is if those ones that potentially flash like computer error fix it now those sort of things that are pretty misleading hence the title other examples are if you include a mouse arrow within your ad and you're having it moving around that sort of manipulative type design also going to get violated so use your best judgment here there's definitely more examples than what i just gave the next added industry is going to be related to bail bonds or bounty hunters so sorry to all you both at wannabes anything regarding that specific industry is not allowed however general legal services and representation are not affected next will be call directories call forwarding and recording services most of the information is in the purple highlighted section but notice the unhighlighted portion this policy does not restrict ads for online directory services or call recording software next looking more towards the top will be credit repair services we have had some experience working with clients in this area and it was difficult and they eventually did get flagged even though it was a legit company that was trying to do something good it's just still one of the industries or policies not allowed on google the main issue is that there's just too many bad apples out there that ruin it for the good guys so all credit repair services are not allowed and it will fall under ad violations and you will get a warning scrolling up a little bit binary options has now been added to the list this includes actual trading as well as products related to binary it could be about education software the actual act of trading itself all of those are lumped into binary options and the last policy added to the strike based system is related to personal loans as you can see in the not included section this does not include mortgages car loans student loans certain things like credit cards and a lot of the policy information really has to do with the lack of providing additional information so you see with the four red x icons what actually is not allowed i'm not gonna read all four to you i do have the link on the screen so you can check those out for yourself so now we know what nine policies were added to the strike based system so let's walk through what happens if you violate any of these policies when you hear about strikes you think of baseball you think you get three of them and that's kind of the case but with this strike based policy with google ads it's almost like you get four strikes because the first instance of a policy violation will get you a warning and google will send you this through an email notification so it's going to be important of if you're the person who needs to receive these notifications make sure you're getting those notifications within the settings of your google ads so if you get a warning you have a little bit of time to fix the policies to make sure that you don't go to the next step which will be getting a strike there is no downtime to any of your campaigns if you only get a warning like i said you want to fix those quick so you don't get to a first strike your first strike will occur if google finds out that you're continuing to violate the specific policies after receiving your emailed warning once you get to the first strike this will be the first instance where your account will be put on hold and the hold for a first strike is three days if you don't make any attempt to correct the policy violations within those three days your account will continue to be on hold until you fix the policy violations anytime your account is on hold it cannot run any ads however you can still go in the account and view historical metrics those sort of things hopefully you have everything figured out here but if you don't you'll most likely get to a second strike a second strike is going to occur if you continue to violate the same policy within 90 days of the first strike think of this as your final warning to get everything in line with the google ads policies for a second strike your account will once again be put on hold but this time it's going to be for seven days instead of three days just like the first strike if you don't fix your policy violations within the seven days your account will continue to be on hold and just like the first strike again you'll be able to access the account to view any historical information but you cannot run any ads and if you continue to violate some of these policies you're going to be hit with a third strike the third strike will occur if you continue to violate the policies within 90 days of the second strike since you had one warning and two previous strikes a third strike will lead to an account suspension if your account is suspended any other accounts related to the suspended account will also be suspended you can appeal a suspended account but from what i've heard it's pretty hard to get a suspended account back to be enabled unless any sort of mistakes were reported and just like the previous strikes you can still access historical information from a suspended account but you will no longer be able to create anything new so let's say you received a warning or a first or second strike what do you do to make sure that you avoid getting an additional strike you would want to make sure you go into your account correct any policy violations and submit the acknowledgement form we're going to show you where it lives soon if you feel that you have not violated any policies you can appeal any of the warnings or strikes it's going to live on the same form as the acknowledgement form so i'm going to hop into the google ads help section and show you where this form lives so on the screen right now i'm in the advertising policies help section we see this page includes both the appeal and acknowledgement form i have the url of where you can find this form on the screen right now and it's also in the video description so let's say you acknowledge the strike or the warning you know you made a mistake if you choose that option you can scroll down i skipped the part where you'd have to enter in your google id as well as your email contact information so then you would have to acknowledge a few things that you represent the customer id that you had above that you acknowledge which policies that you violated you acknowledge that you fixed all the elements that caused the violation and that you agree that you will not try to do any double serving that's creating additional accounts to try to get around this violation while your account is potentially on hold and then you would submit so let me go back up and click on the appeal option if you did get a strike that means your account is going to be put on a temporary hold for either three or seven days depending on which strike it is you can appeal that decision but it says in the section right here where my mouse is moving a response can be within five business days so if it's your first strike you may not even hear back from them until after your strike could be lifted and remember if you don't make those changes within the three days your account will remain on hold so for your first strike it could be more than three days i jump down again a little bit more to avoid the same contact information here you would have to give your website some additional information but most importantly you would have to choose which policies that you're violating and i'm recording this in may of 2022 so those nine additional policies are not included in this drop down yet but they will be give you a reason explaining why you think you didn't violate the policy and then you would submit and that is all the information i have regarding the updates to google's strike base enforcement system if your business falls within any practices or industries that could be affected by the specific policies that we mentioned in this video you need to be very careful as i mentioned earlier we have worked with a couple accounts that were teetering on the edge of it if not definitely fell into these and disapprovals and violations were very frequent this is not something i would want to play around with and try to go around google's rules you will get caught eventually if you have any questions on why disapprovals may be happening why you're getting warnings or strikes or how to go forward with any of the appeal processes please let us know in the comments below thanks for watching our video if you found it useful give us a thumbs up below we release a new video at least once a week so if you want to see more from the paid media pros channel be sure to subscribe you