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Comment by scottrogowski | Hacker News Reader

A few months ago, I tried experimenting with Google ads to drive some traffic to a side project of mine which was basically a chess-over-videochat website. A little more than 40 impressions later, it was taken down for being "in violation of our Google ad policies". There was never any indication what the violation actually was. I replied and asked several times hoping to get a human to tell me what I had actually done wrong. Instead, they kept sending me an automated email that said, "After reviewing your case and taking your feedback into consideration, we've confirmed that your account was and still is in violation of our Google Ads policies."

They also made it seem like I was some cyber criminal by suggesting that if I tried to create another account, they would automatically take that down too.

This is what a monopoly looks like.

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>> videochat

Big red flag. If you are connecting random people via video chat you open yourself to all sorts of abuse. I'm not saying that it is happening on your service, just that advertizers (and therefore google) are wary of videochat.

I am not connecting random people via video chat (the site generates a unique url that is meant to be shared among friends). However, even if I was connecting random people, I think it would have been appropriate for them to specify why they suspended my account.

I doubt it had anything to do with the video chat aspect though.

This is the link they pointed me to in their suspension email https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/2375414 Given that I received no warning, they must have suspended me for an "egregious violation" of which they define five:

- Circumventing systems

- Counterfeit

- Promotion of unauthorized pharmacies

- Unacceptable business practices

- Trade Sanctions violation

I am really curious what their algorithm saw in my little chess website that suggests that I'm peddling pharmaceuticals, counterfeiting money, or selling banned technology to unsavory regimes. Heck, I don't even accept payments!

My best guess is that their algorithm panicked because I have that automatic redirect to a new unique URL when you click to start a new game. Apart from that, I have no idea what it could possibly be.

Do you used the current date/time and/or Math.random() to generate your random URLs client-side?

I left Google's indexing system 10 years ago, but back then, I made some inelegant workarounds to prevent these features from breaking duplicate page detection. I'm nearly certain the code I wrote has all been replaced with something Chrome-based, but I'm just trying to think of things that could trip up page analysis.

I could see how very rare patterns that are typically used to intentionally trip up page analysis might put your pages on some bad actor list. I really have very little idea how these auto-detection systems are implemented, and these are wild guesses, but they're hopefully better than nothing.

I forget now whether I did it server-side or client-side but I do generate a random hex string, yes.

It's reassuring to hear that a former Google engineer shares my same suspicions as to why this happened. Thank you.

"Counterfeit" might be the issue. Do you have any method of reporting copyright violations? If you are offering a streaming video service they might think that it could be used to stream copyrighted material. Maybe the problem is as simple as having an appropriate DMCA contact info displayed on the homepage.

You do realize this person's entire point is you shouldn't have to play these guessing games right?

Nobody should, but the reality is that we must. At least until we are rich enough to purchase a controlling share in google.

If people keep accepting it we must. If enough people complain loud enough they will change. Posts like this help move the needle.

> Google Ads prohibits the sale or promotion for sale of counterfeit goods. Counterfeit goods contain a trademark or logo that is identical to or substantially indistinguishable from the trademark of another. They mimic the brand features of the product in an attempt to pass themselves off as a genuine product of the brand owner. This policy applies to the content of your ad and your website or app.

> Google Ads counterfeit vs. DMCA/Copyright/Pirated products

> Counterfeiters mimic the trademark brand features, rather than copying the product itself (software, books, artwork, movies, etc.).

Couldn't have been.

If that's the reason, it would be nice for Google to come out and say so.

Blame chatroulette. When people like google hear "videochat" they immediately think of that ridiculous image-recognition software that chatroulette rolled out in a feeble attempt to reduce abuse.

How does one ever start a business after such a ban? Does this require a co-founder who runs the marketing?

You hire a digital marketing agency or a marketing manager that has contacts inside Google Ads to get you unflagged. I work at a national nonprofit and while we could handle the marketing in house, we simply get too much in donations from Google Ads to risk being randomly flagged with no recourse.

$3k/month to an agency to handle all the Google/Bing/FB ad campaigns and A/B testing and to deal with Google's automated BS gives us close to 10x the ROI.

This is also how racketeering works in some places. "Your club needs to hire our guy and we'll leave you alone."

Except I don't think racketeering is even what google aimed for. Just too much lazy automation.

> You hire a digital marketing agency or a marketing manager that has contacts inside Google Ads to get you unflagged.

Google might prefer to get broken up for monopoly before the racketeering cases get started.

Just don't use AdSense. Starting a business depending on AdSense money is a bad idea to begin with, even if you have a good account. It can just randomly be banned and you will never know why.

And the other way round? How do you make your business known if you cannot buy the top search result position?

Be the best, get some seed customers and get them to do your grass roots advertising?

The problem is that real world doesn't work like that, you might as well start playing lottery instead.

This is something I've been acutely concerned about. I'm working on several side projects right now and I think I will want to try running ads for another one soon. Given that I don't have any power to my name and my emails to their support team seem to go nowhere, I wonder whether I'm completely shut out of their ads ecosystem now.

this is exactly my experience, after making 1$, Google blocked my AdMob account, I tried to communicate issue and sent multiple emails, tried to convince them I am not doing anything harmful, without any luck.

after one year I wanted to integrate Google ads into another my side project and my account was still blocked (I took down my first application and re-applied again without any success)

I don't know much about adding ads to a website like this. Is there really no alternative to Google?

I've been reviewing self-service ad sales & serving plugins for Wordpress sites and my conclusion would be: no, there isn't.

We use advanced ads pro for Wordpress and it seems to work well enough for serving self-hosted ads.

What are you looking for that it or others don’t offer?

There are a handful of decent "adsense/manage your own ads" and "add adsense to your site" plugins, but the self-service model wasn't rich with options. The few I did start testing had bumpy roads for implementing and managing the integration into the template.

I didn't test this one.

Appreciate the recommendation... will look into it further.

Monopoly it is, then.

Bing?

For a small site, Amazon Associates is probably the most reliable and non-shady opportunity besides Google. If the site get's a few million pageviews a month, options improve.

If you're in a niche area you could try selling ads directly to relevant companies, preferably with a geographical connection

This is what my company does and it works well enough, though your site would need a reasonable amount of traffic or industry clout before an ad-buyer would take your email/call seriously.

>...though your site would need a reasonable amount of traffic

Any insight on what a reasonable amount of traffic amounts to based on your experience?

My knowledge is primarily for professional industries as opposed to consumer, but it would likely depend greatly on your target audience.

I don’t remember specifically but I feel like we probably moved off Adsense when we were around 50k uniques/mo, but for a fairly specific niche.

One idea is to investigate who advertises on similar sites and examine their traffic/rates to see where you match up.

You can move to a cost per acquisition model, where you get paid when your traffic converts. There are tons of those around (including the Amazon program below)

Have you tried reading the ToS? Might help...

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