Google help friends

[Flasch186]

So Google has decided to lay their thumb on me. I received this email today after having a long convo with their support wherein they acted like things would be ok, "They understood". Anyways, the best part about this is theyre asking me to get the owners of a website that I have nothing to do with, to fix it so it complies with google so that theyll then be willing to unsuspend my adwords account which has nothing to do with their website.

Hello Howard,

I have consulted our reviewers on your landing pages, and I have bad news:
none of them can be re-enabled. I also notice that your account has been
suspended.

The page you do not own is still in violation of policy, and your two
sites are violating bridge page policy, because we cannot allow you to use
multiple domains with vanity URLs to funnel into your main page. This
means that your 'satellite' pages which lead into Roundtable realty will
be disabled eventually as well.

I would recommend you take immediate action:

1. Direct all of your ads directly to the Roundtable Realty domain
2. Redirect your satellite pages to the main site or replace their content
with something innocuous like 'This page has moved'
3. Resubmit <world-golf-village-homes-for-sale.com> and
<jacksonville-waterfront-homes-for-sale.com> for review by emailing me
back or calling in
4. Find some way of contacting the owners of <worldgolfvillagehomes.com>
-- their site needs a privacy policy to be re-enabled, and you need them
to be re-enabled for your account to be unsuspended
5. Once all 3 sites are re-enabled, you can apply for your account to be
unsuspended through me or by calling in

All 3 pages must be compliant before you can be unsuspended. This is the
final word from our team. I know this is terrible news, and I understand
that you did not mean for any of this to happen. Please follow the steps
above to try and apply for your account to be unsuspended.

I will be out-of-office until Tuesday, but my colleague Brian D. will be
on the other end of this email ready to help you get your sites
re-reviewed. He is an expert with these kind of situations, so you will be
in good hands. Please feel free to call in again or respond to this email
with any questions.

Sincerely,

Adam A.
The Google AdWords Team

WTF am I supposed to do now :( ? (help)

[cody8200]

Just a bit more info - Bridge pages are pages that have no reason to excuse other than to funnel traffic to another page. Google doesn't like them so if you are using Google Adwords and trying to have people click on a page like this, they will not like it. A landing page is ok if it has the same url as the website you want them to go to but an entirely different url may be considered a bridge page. They are typically used by affiliate sites which Google also doesn't like.

That all being said, I still don't have any idea why they are telling you to have another site fixed. How is this other site related to your organization? Are you linking to it in some way on your home page? Are you linking to it through your Adwords?

[MacroGuru]

What happened? (Sorry if I missed it)

I might be able to get some feedback to you some of my contacts on what you can do...

[Flasch186]

Just a bit more info - Bridge pages are pages that have no reason to excuse other than to funnel traffic to another page. Google doesn't like them so if you are using Google Adwords and trying to have people click on a page like this, they will not like it. A landing page is ok if it has the same url as the website you want them to go to but an entirely different url may be considered a bridge page. They are typically used by affiliate sites which Google also doesn't like.

That all being said, I still don't have any idea why they are telling you to have another site fixed. How is this other site related to your organization? Are you linking to it in some way on your home page? Are you linking to it through your Adwords?

Right, I think the problem (one of them) is that we bought up URL's (like our competition has) and we house landing pages there that then move the customer to the correct page (waterfront ---> waterfront) on our site. Those aren't subdomains of our main site but separate sites. Thats apparently a problem eventhough most of our competition is doing it AND there are companies who sell that service exactly to Realtors, just exactly the same as we did for ourselves (cut out the middle man)...

Now the other people's site? No frickin' clue. Dont know em, never met em, have no idea what to do in regards to it but Goog is making it seem like if I dont force them to change their shit up our accounts toast....

Can I open a new account? Will they catch me somehow?

[Flasch186]

What happened? (Sorry if I missed it)

I might be able to get some feedback to you some of my contacts on what you can do...


Mac, Google is raping me....right now.... putting it in.

[cody8200]

Google sucks because its so important to so many businesses and can really hurt you when they decide they want to hold you to the letter of the law, especially when they don't do the same thing to your competitors. That being said, they won't - at least in my experience, make an exception now that they found this "issue". I would try changing the first few things, making the waterfront stuff a subdomain on your normal url and see if that appeases them. You can't do crap about some people you have never met before's website and they can absolutely not expect you to. Maybe they think you really own the page and are lying to them or something? At least you are able to speak to one of their people and aren't just getting auto-reply form letters. I would make the most simple changes I can, call them back and see if that fixes things.

From there, I would certainly start a new account with Google and I would also try out Bing/Yahoo's market. They only get 20% of the hits but they also cost about 50% less in many ad markets. The bad thing about starting anew with Google is you lose your historical information on Adwords (although you can export it out of your account if you can still access it while suspended.

I hate to hear stories like this though. Google always to be picking on the "little guy" and never screws with big companies. Good luck.

[Flasch186]

Additional question, theyre pounding on these 2 ads (plus the ridiculous other people's site) however we have 10 other sites just like it that they havnt hammered yet. That first sentence he recommends:

1. Direct all of your ads directly to the Roundtable Realty domain

Is he talking the 2 criminal sites or ALL of the ads everywhere?

[cody8200]

It looks like your entire account has been suspended (based on the one email from the initial post). If that's the case, he is likely speaking about every domain you have. However, usually Adword account suspension only occurs in "severe cases" so based on the few issues it seems pretty heavy handed (typical Google). So is Adwords suspended entirely for you or are just specific domains within the account disabled? Are the other ads in the domains he hasn't mentioned still running?

[JonInMiddleGA]

I'm lost.

The site mentioned in point 4) has nothing to do with Roundtable at all? Is it routing traffic to one of your sites (main, satellite, or otherwise)? Where did it come into the discussion at all?

Trying to make that part make sense but not having much luck beyond thinking "hmm... if it's routing traffic to a RT related site & you're somehow benefiting from something blackhat then there could be a presumption of involvement on your part; i.e. you're paying for that service & could therefore influence the site to stop doing so"

If that's not it then I'm back to being really really confused about that part.

Truth is, you're experiencing a good example to reinforce why I tell all of our clients straight up that this is an area that needs to be handled by professionals AND that they need to expend the energy to insure that they're working with straight up whitehats, or else they risk headaches.

[Flasch186]

It doesnt look like anything is running at all. Im such a novice. I went and forwarded the offending domains through Godaddy to pages on my site. I know he said main page thats just stupid. If someone clicks on an ad for waterfront property they expect to go to that page...

It takes an hour (to 48) for the change to take place but I dont know if that'll work since theyre hosted on 1and1....

Ive opened a different account and am running 3 test campaigns to see if they shut that down (different email different CC info).

Hey John,

That site literally has nothing to do with us. Isnt linked in anyways, no forwards, no nothing. Its just caught in this huge net they tossed on us. Its literally another Real Estate company's site. Theyre going to tell me to go pound sand when I inform them of Google's request they put up a privacy policy for our benefit.

Also, Im doing this myself BUT that's because we have no monies to pay the pros....I know i know, yes you do. No, we dont, The co. only keeps 15% of commissions and we have to make monies for our family's so we're still bootstrapping. Doing better then anticipated (much to do because of the adword lead gen) but were still strapped.

Do you know if another adwords account can be opened?

This sucks.

[JonInMiddleGA]

If someone clicks on an ad for waterfront property they expect to go to that page...

So wth is "waterfront" exactly? Another company/identity you acquired? A name/URL that's similar to a competitor but eventually reroutes them to RT?
I'm lost there too I'm afraid.

Hey John, That site literally has nothing to do with us. Isnt linked in anyways, no forwards, no nothing. Its just caught in this huge net they tossed on us.

Okay, that's pretty weird then. edit to add: I'd fix all of the other points that you can, then ask for reinstatement with a request for clarification on how that site is somehow related to you status (i.e. when they decline your request, maybe you can get clarification on wth that site has to do with you)

Do you know if another adwords account can be opened?

I've never tried it but offhand I'd imagine it's doable, AdWords is pretty loosey goosey best I can tell. I've seen cases where three different people/companies were managing ads for the same base client (they had their own account & had two different advertising/SEO companies running separate programs for them as well) ... and I could easily have launched a 4th campaign for them. I'm registered with them under both personal & company identities (never run a campaign under those however) and didn't see anything that would make me expect a problem.

YMMV of course, since you're already on their radar, but my gut says it could work, especially with ads routing to something other than the URL's already in question.

[Flasch186]

So wth is "waterfront" exactly? Another company/identity you acquired? A name/URL that's similar to a competitor but eventually reroutes them to RT?
I'm lost there too I'm afraid.


Well not misdirecting per se, like you describe (IMO), but we own, Jacksonville-waterfront-homes.com or something and that site has a place for people to put in what theyre looking for in a home....then the next page asks for names and email before dropping them off on the waterfront search of our RTR site. My point being if you go through Jacksonville-waterfront... you'd expect to land on a search for waterfront not the front page/welcome of the site.

[PilotMan]

I'm totally lost, but I thought that we had someone who actually worked for Google around here?

[Flasch186]

Where's Flere? Oh and mind you that Shruti, the first guy from Google offered help via email that told me to put a link to the privacy policy on the page....ok, so I did. Apparently that was a problem for the new guy who via phone today told me that that mustve triggered the 'bridge' stuff. So he said to print the privacy policy out and actually have it printed on the footer of the page itself, so I did that....welp, no good still.

I keep doing what Im told to do but then they hit me in the face again.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Okay, this all just sounds downright weird to me.

What you describe doing seems more grey than black (IMO) and does seem pretty common as you suggested earlier.

The bit about putting your privacy policy in full on the page itself is something I don't think I've ever seen done or even heard mentioned, much less as an actual instruction direct from the Google overlords. Granted, I haven't had to spend much time with this kind of stuff, but I agree that this seems to be getting into the territory of "damn".

[Flasch186]

Well I forwarded the two offending sites to the pages that correspond on our main site. I then sent an email to the guys I talked with at google, regarding the other company's site and my inability to wrap my head around what to do since I have nothing to do with that site. I did make it clear I wasnt asking for reinstatement yet since it seemed that asking for it too early would lead for further problems if the current ones werent fixed to their liking. So I guess Ill see what their response is tomorrow....now to bed. finally. bad day.

[Flasch186]

More response to back up the idiocy:

Hello Howard,

Thank your for the work you have done so far to become compliant.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to process an un-suspension request
until the issue on all three sites has been resolved. Therefore, you will
need to work with your colleague to have a privacy policy added to
{Your Competitor's Websiite}

Please see pertinent information about what needs to be included in the
privacy policy below:

- If collecting personal information from users, make sure you have a
privacy policy that covers the following topics:
* What personal information is collected from the user
* How this information will be used by the company
* How the company transfers data to third-party companies
* How to modify or delete this personal information or opt-out

To learn about the type of information covered by this policy, please see:

What kind of personal and financial information is covered by AdWords policy? - AdWords Help (http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1283115)

To review our Information Harvesting policy, please see:
Information harvesting - Advertising Policies Help (http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=1310866&guide=1308231&page=guide.cs&answer=190438)

Once you have gotten the privacy policy added, please reply to this email
and will be happy to send a request for your sites to be re-reviewed.

Please don't hesitate to reply to this email or call in to 866-2-Google
with any additional questions or concerns regarding this.

Thank you,



How stupid is this. This Colleague of mine is a frickin' competitor.... one of thousands of Realtors. Why the F is he going to mess with his site, when its never been F'd with, so I can have my google adwords account back!?

2 of 3 sites fixed meaning ALL of my sites fixed.... yet this 3rd one, NOT mine, is stopping them from allowing me to pay Google (like they give a shit).

[DaddyTorgo]

Maybe you need to explain it in moron-speak to the Google people, that this third site is a direct competitor and not a colleague? I dunno.

WTF Google.

[cody8200]

Seriously, this is getting beyond weird. They must somehow think he is in cahoots with you or something. You have to tell them, look this is a direct competitor like Yahoo is to Google. Would you be able to make Yahoo put something up on their site because Bing asked you to?

[DaddyTorgo]

Seriously, this is getting beyond weird. They must somehow think he is in cahoots with you or something. You have to tell them, look this is a direct competitor like Yahoo is to Google. Would you be able to make Yahoo put something up on their site because Bing asked you to?

Yeah - I would try using a stupid example like that. I almost put that in my post, but then was like "lol no that's too silly."

But maybe it takes making that distinction to them.

Also - are you talking to someone in the US with a brain, or are you talking to some outsourced idiots in India following a script?

[Flasch186]

American. Im of the opinion that they simply dont give a shit and if some guy in Jacksonville gets screwed, so what.

FWIW this is the competitors site: MAXX REALTY Northeast Florida's Residential Real Estate Experts (http://www.maxxrealty.net/home.asp)

Mine's in my sig. WTH am I supposed to do! Its actually illegal for us to be one in the same with two separate broker licenses.

EDIT: BTW we're in need of domain links to our site so if anyone wants to put one on their site somewhere to ours, Ill blow ya. Thats not true. I wont blow ya, but Ill be grateful.

[DaddyTorgo]

American. Im of the opinion that they simply dont give a shit and if some guy in Jacksonville gets screwed, so what.

FWIW this is the competitors site: MAXX REALTY Northeast Florida's Residential Real Estate Experts (http://www.maxxrealty.net/home.asp)

Mine's in my sig. WTH am I supposed to do! Its actually illegal for us to be one in the same with two separate broker licenses.

Did you point that out to them?

[Flasch186]

Of course. I actually had the guy talking to me on the phone with his, "hmmmmm, inetresting.....mmmhmmmm, yes, Ill bring this to the {overlords} review team's attention" And then I got the "bad news" email at the top.

[MacroGuru]

Ok, this is above and beyond normal for Google, but I think you might have to point it out in plain Idiot exactly like Cody said...

[wade moore]

I would ask, in e-mail, why something needs to be done with MAXX realty's website when you do not own it and are not affiliated it. State clearly that you are not colleagues, but are competitors and that you want an exact explanation as to why they believe you need to have a privacy policy put on their website.

[Flasch186]

morning response:

Hello Howard,

I can understand how the circumstances would be frustrating. Please be
aware that you need to be responsible for the policy compliance of any
site that you advertise for in your AdWords account, regardless of your
affiliation with them.

Due to the unique circumstances of this case, however, I am appealing to
the policy team to see if they can review
and
and then possibly address the
account suspension with the disabling of worldgolfvillagehomes.com (maxxrealty.com)
remaining.

I will be in contact with you as soon as I hear back from the site review
team, at which point we will determine next steps.

Thank you,

[cody8200]

morning response:

Your competitor is going to be pissed. He is going to come into work and realize the eye of the Google God is on his site. Haha.

[wade moore]

So Flasch...

Do you advertise for Maxx Realty? You're telling me there's NO reason that you would be tied together?

[DaddyTorgo]

Yeah - seems like somehow they're tied into your Adwords account. So somehow they think you're advertising for them. Just fix that, or show that you're not, and you're set.

[Draft Dodger]

Ok, this is above and beyond normal for Google, but I think you might have to point it out in plain Idiot exactly like Cody said...

I had a very similar experience with Google AdWords a few years back, except there was no ability for me to appeal or anything. Just cut me off and that was that.

[Flasch186]

We don't advertise for them, link to them, nothing. It'd actually be illegal to have 2 brokerages and only one broker for both. It's madness.

[wade moore]

We don't advertise for them, link to them, nothing. It'd actually be illegal to have 2 brokerages and only one broker for both. It's madness.

Have you told them that? Use their words against them.

They say...

"...any
site that you advertise for in your AdWords account..."

Tell them that you do not advertise for them in your AdWords account and you want them to tell you exactly why they think you are. Exactly why.

[DaddyTorgo]

Have you told them that? Use their words against them.

They say...

"...any
site that you advertise for in your AdWords account..."

Tell them that you do not advertise for them in your AdWords account and you want them to tell you exactly why they think you are. Exactly why.

And point out what you said about how it would be illegal based on federal regulations to drive the point home.

[JediKooter]

I have no idea what an adwords account is, but, is it possible that you have typo in that account that somehow is making a link to your competitors site?

EDIT: I mean, there's got to be a reason why Google is seeing that your site and your competitors site are in some way linked.

[MacroGuru]

Flasch, have you bid on adwords that are related to their domain names to pick off their customers?

[Flasch186]

nope...

We have our own URLS and I read the long tail book so thats it, although, I gotta tell ya. There are hundreds of Realtors all bidding on the same areas period. The cities only so big. We own: world-golf-village-homes-for-sale.com they own worldgolfvillagehomes.com..... Its like this all around the city. We own homesforsaleinpontevedra.com while another competitor owns pontevedra-homesforsale.com...

So its like this across the board, all over. Everyone staking their place.

Basically, I think that they typed it on or at some point I typed it in or someone typed it in leading to their site. But it doesnt and hasnt forever. I obviously check my ads after Im completed them to make sure they go to the right place and are working properly.

Im guessing like someone said above, they think Im lying and I do own that site BUT then Id want the ads to go there.... instead of my site which is RoundTableRealty.com. I dont want ANY going to that guy's site, whoever he is (might be a nice guy for all I know).

Im hopeful that this guy at Google can talk some sense into the overlords but I suspect they dont give a shit.

Whats more frustrating as when I initially got flagged, theyd tell me to fix X and Id be fine, so I would. then they'd hit me on Y and I'd fix that to be 'good' and finally on Z they were like, "Fix Z and that other guys site." Each step along they way got me in more trouble because after they re-review your site, if its wrong for something else, you become a "repeat offender".

Dont listen to Shruti if you hear from him. He'll get you suspended.

[JonInMiddleGA]

The typo thing would make this make more sense.

And I can see how a subsequent correction of the typo could look like someone trying to cover their trail instead of a simple correction.

At some point I was going to suggest that you check other obscure possible connections - the same anonymous blind addy/contact info for your domain registration, the same web host, etc. a typo'ed phone number in your real contact info, etc, etc.

There has to be something somewhere that's connected these dots, however inaccurate it may be.

[Flasch186]

Spoke to Adam via phone today to check on status and he said he could see what Brian wrote to the review team in regards to removing the suspension and he said that he made a strong case. He expected to hear something tomorrow or the next day. Our 2 campaigns have been approved while the other people's site is still 'bad' BUT overall, those changes were done under the suspended umbrella.

[Flasch186]

Unsuspended but theyre going to keep the 'scarlet letter' of that other guy's site on me while we work towards making them happy (not sure what they need):

Hi Howard,

It is Adam from Google AdWords again, taking back over from Brian. Your
account is unsuspended!

As things stand, you still have the violation on your account from
worldgolfvillagehomes.com, which cannot be removed until that site is
changed and re-reviewed. However, our team can see where you are coming
from, and they have unsuspended your account despite the violation on that
site.

Going forward, I would not advertise for satellite sites and make sure to
have your privacy policy clearly linked on any pages you direct traffic
to. That way you will not see further violations, and your account will
stay active.

Thank you for your hard work, and all the best to you with your future
ads!

Sincerely,


The Google AdWords Team

[JonInMiddleGA]

In other words, you still have the site THAT YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH flagged on your account (but not the actual owners account apparently).

Also "Going forward, I would not advertise for satellite sites " ... which would seem to render them pointless to have (since they aren't coming up organically).

Glad you're at least able to move forward, but if I didn't know better I'd swear that Facebook had taken over management at AdWords.

[Flasch186]

yup... The satellite sites become moot BUT we are trying another way, landing people on inside pages BUT the conversion of having them fill out their info seems to be less effective. That being said we do seem to get less junk registrations. The Satellite sites also seemed to get quite a boost from having the URL so we have to see what having "...realty/Julington-creek.php" does to the cost equation as opposed to the "juling...." at the beginning.