Being unfairly penalized by Google's "Data Collection site" policy shit..

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ImagesAndWords

ImagesAndWords

StayblCam.com
Nov 7, 2006
2,326
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Scottsdale, Arizona
www.stayblcam.com
To make a long story short, I have had it up to here lately with how Adwords have penalized my latest campaign for bullshit reasons.

Basically - they're now laiming my landing pages violate this:
"Data collection sites that offer free items, etc., in order to collect private information"

When in fact - my site doesn't collect any information whatsoever. The merchant's site does. I pointed out the fact to them that their search network is flooded with sites JUST like mine, to which the Google rep responded:

"Yes - sometimes it's hard for us to catch everything, so we appreciate advertisers' help on this."

...to catch everything?? Why don't you guys do some simple searches in your own search engine?

and then:

"Not every business model is right for AdWords. You may find success using other online advertising platforms, but perhaps AdWords isn't the best one to use."

...ok, so you're admitting that you suck at things that the other networks are able to govern much better than you are.


I know there are plenty of people here doing trial offers through landing pages. How do you guys get around the "Data collection" rule without being raped by Q.S. ?
 


Did you read the rules before registering at AW? :) There was a clear message "don't use adwords to CPA like mail/zip submits etc". btw - and keep in mind: too frequently campain penalizing (i.e. tos violation) can result in account's ban.
 
lol, I got this similar shit with adwords. It's when I'm promoting adult site in a very specific niche. I ask them why for this "X" adgroup, my ads got rejected. They say because the nature of keywords for this adgroup is "family friendly" and my LP is categorized as "not family friendly".

You know what is BS bout this? It's because all of the site advertising on that adgroup (and keywords) have explicit mature content and more vulgar than my LP (btw my QS is great... until rejected). So does for at least the first 20 organic result (I didn't bother to dig deeper). The only solution is to change my LP to family friendly. Okie tough guy, wtf? Nice job, Mr. Adwords rep :eek:

/rant
 
That's fucked up.
It seems just more and more people are being fed up with Google these days. They have pushed it too far with many advertisers and more will just give up Google completely. In a way I hope there will be a MSN & YSM merger and that together they will eat Google for breakfast. :)
 
And finally - Google admits that my landing page is NOT the problem

I'm amazed...

GoogleRep: I understand you have a question regarding poor quality score. Thank you. Give me just a moment to bring that campaign up.

Me: I'm wondering about the poor quality score my landing pages have received under the adgroup XXXXXXXX

GoogleRep: Thank you for that information. I will be just a few minutes while I look into this for you.

Me: Ok, no problem

GoogleRep: Thank you for holding Sir. I have looked into your ad group and can confirm that the system has deemed your landing page, http://eatmyassandballs.com , to be of poor quality. I apologize for this convenience, but while this is the case, your quality score will continue to be low.

Me: I want to know what it is about that page that has caused the low QS. I am not violating any of your guidelines.

GoogleRep: AdWords may not be the online advertising program for this particular website.

Me: What do you mean?

GoogleRep: Poor landing page quality is assigned to sites that don't include unique and useful content, products, and/or services.

Me: Right. I am aware of this. But how exactly does my website fall under that description?

Me: And by the way - I have been speaking with your customer representatives about this page before. They have just sent me generic info and links to your general guidelines.

GoogleRep: I don't have specifics for you, and I apologize for your frustration. The web page has been assigned poor landing page quality and is not a good fit for the AdWords program. There is nothing that can be done at this time.

Me: But then how come these other advertisers (who do the same thing I am, with the same product) don't get penalized?

Me: Check out these sites: ------, --------, ---------, -----

Me: Some of these sites are violating your guidelines with forced popups upon backbutton click, as well as something free in return for blatant data collection.

GoogleRep: We try to apply the same polices and procedures to all of our advertisers. If those sites are deemed to be of low quality, they will also have poor landing page quality.

GoogleRep: Are there any other AdWords questions I can answer for you?

Me: They obviously have a good quality score, because I'm being hit with $12 bids and they should be too then. :)

Me: My site DOES include unique content, a useful product, a useful service, AND it promotes a product that MANY other Adwords advertisers also are promoting. So how come my account has been penalized and not all the others?

GoogleRep: I cannot comment on others' accounts and do not know what their quality scores are. However, in regards to unique content, you just pointed me to another site (---------) that leads to the exact same product.

Me: Exactly..

Me: And the customer rep I spoke with yesterday told me that my site was classified as a "Data Collection" site (which it clearly isn't).

Me: ...and we know that ---------- is not paying $12 a click here. There is no way they could be profitable with such an extremely high bid price.

GoogleRep: There is nothing I can do for you regarding landing page quality. Do you have any other AdWords questions I can help you with?

Me: I realize there is nothing you personally can do to improve my landing page quality. But you are here to give advertiser's advice on what is wrong with their pages so that they themselves can perform those changes.

Me: This benefits us as advertisers as well as Google as a search engine. I am not trying to be stubborn, but this issue is really serious and I have spent a lot of time and resources into building this campaign.

Me: I hope you can understand that vague and generic answers are no help to me at this point. I need to know what I am doing wrong....

GoogleRep: My best suggestion is to advertise for another product. We have deemed that this page is not providing a unique, useful product for our customers. As such it has been assigned poor landing page quality and this will not change. My best suggestion is to try advertising for a new page.

Me: Ok. So the core of the problem is really just the product itself and not my landing page?

GoogleRep: Yes, it could be the product being offered. It is not necessarily the actual page.

GoogleRep: I don't have insight into why your particular page was assigned poor quality however. It would be my guess that it is more related to the product.


Sure wish they could have told me this from day one!

So what lesson did we learn from this kids?
You can follow every guideline, suggestion, and recommendation in the book when setting up your landing page. Your site can be so whitehat that your hat will glow in the dark. You can have the most amazing and unique sales copy. Ultra-targeted content matching each keyword and ad text. Clean and user-friendly design with a great call-to-action.

And yet....

Google can and will penalize your landing pages, because your landing page is recommending a website for a product or service that Google doesn't like. So if your merchant's landing page doesn't meet Google's guidelines - then guess what? You will pay for it. Unless - you're lucky enough not to get caught. :error:

MSN and Yahoo here I come.
 
gopher said:
So what exactly where you promoting. Otherwise this thread is pretty pointless.
Click to expand...

Well I'm still gonna try to promote it through the content network, as well as on MSN and Yahoo. ;)

I didn't paste in the entire transcripts from my chats with Google here, but basically what they told me is that the types of offers/products/merchants that they do not want affiliates to promote are:

- "Free Trial" products that require collection of user information such as name, adress, phone #, email and creditcard info.

- Offers that claim to give out something for free, but where the user has to pay a shipping and handling fee and must commit to X number of days of membership.

- Merchant landing pages that have vague return policies, do not make it clear enough how they store customer data, and how this data is being used/stored/shared.

My offer in particular is through XY7, but the same offer can also be found in other networks. However, this product is VERY similar to many of the lead offers you see on networks like AzoogleAds and Copeac as well. Many of them range in the $12 to $30 payout range and they're usually free trial offers where the user only pays a small s&h fee.
 
You know what.

I think that's a bot.

Sounds like a bot at least.

and uh.. have you tried switching to another domain?
 
and make sure your cloaking your links so the bot finds it harder to go thru to the merchant page.......dunno bout u but its workin for me so far.....fingers crossed...lol
 
Bot or not, still a probelm. Try beefing up your page by putting another privacy policy or non disclaimer somewhere? Is there a way to collect the information yourself and then pass it on to your merchant?
 
zul200289 said:
You know what.
I think that's a bot.
Sounds like a bot at least.
and uh.. have you tried switching to another domain?
Click to expand...

Yes, I did a test on this and it was obvious pretty quick that their bot gets me VERY soon every time I upload a new campaign (with that same domain). It's like their bot found me the first time, found something it didn't approve of on the merchant side, and flagged my domain with shitty QS.

When I re-upload a new campaign with a new landing page (different filename and different content,etc). I get flagged within seconds as having "poor landing page quality score".

And something else I found which was very interesting: I tried replacing my affiliate redirect link with download link to a small .pdf file I put up on the server. Guess what? Shortly after - the bot flagged me again for the same reasons as before! :D So it appears it still "thought" I was redirecting to that merchant - and penalized me. :error:

So it's appearant that their bot caches too much information at the initial site review. Information that it doesn't forget when it is supposed to completely re-evaluate the site again an hour or a day later. That right there says something about their Adwords bot...

Sticks79 said:
and make sure your cloaking your links so the bot finds it harder to go thru to the merchant page.......dunno bout u but its workin for me so far.....fingers crossed...lol
Click to expand...
Yes I thought to try this as well as a new domain like zul200289 suggested. Not that I wanna spend any $$ on (b)Adwords right now and waste more time with them on this offer - but I would love to do this as a test. ;)

Pr0xyhub said:
.. Wow.. G needs to get their shitty shit together.
Click to expand...
Amen. :)
 
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