Google Adwords shut off

Frank Hunter

Frank Hunter

Well-Known Member
I received an email from Google this morning stating my Adwords ads are not running due to violating policy. Evidently your ads cannot link to a site where weapons are available, as my ad text consists of -

USA craftsmanship, custom hunting
knives made in Lewistown, Montana
www.blackwolfarmory.com

The weapon in violation is evidently is one of two knives I have described using the word "Combat". Kitchen knives are explicitly allowed, so I am assuming either someone reported my ad and then the site itself was reviewed, or I came up for an automated check. These regulations were apparently rolled out on the 21st of this last month with no notice to end users. Google is giving me no information as to the exact nature of the violation so I am having to make assumptions, but am considering just ceasing my relationship with them as it has been running for 18 months and I refuse to have my art censored to fit within Google's increasingly nanny-state-inspired view. I may just turn the campaign off and turn my 5 dollars a day of ad budget elsewhere.

Any thoughts on this? Last year Google also stopped any firearm or weapon related searches from showing up in their popular "Shopping" tab. I am going to not touch on any of my political or government/business views here as I'd like to get some constructive advice regarding advertising in this increasingly hostile-to-scary-stuff country we live in. Thank you.
 
Yeah,my thoughts are,tell them to take a hike and spend your money elsewhere.
How has your return on investment been with these google ads,sell enough knives to make it worthwhile?
 
I got the boot from Kijiji. I argued my knives are not weapons they are tools. I also pointed out that more people are killed in Canada with cars then custom knives or knives in general but to no avail. Knife related crime is most often committed with the kitchen knives they love. Outfits like this are a pain at best frustrating at worst. I would spend my money else where and let them know why. I'm sure they will not refund any of your money
 
I stopped using Adwords months ago. They sent me some crap stating that there were violations on my site but since it was of no consequence to me, I just cancelled and kept my money in my bill fold.
 
For the love of....geesh, not really surprised. This aint the country your daddy grew up in.
 
I was denied use of a picture of one of my culinary knives on my Credit Card by Capital one a while back "because knives are weapons and can led to deaths" is what the dope on the phone told me!

No one has any personal responsibility anymore! The gun,Knife, Video Game, Movie, etc made me do it!

Laurence

www.rhinoknives.com
 
Calvin - The return has been excellent. I was in fact going to push for a large quantity of knives available on the website and double my ads this spring to see just how big I could grow this. I try to do an "exit survey" on people that confirm weather it was a google sidebar ad (my Adwords package) that led them to my site. The revenue I can directly attribute to Adwords was around 12k, so with my varying ad budgets that I tried the total outlay came out to 12.5% spend in that area on advertising- Not too bad. I regret their decision and the rest of you have nailed my sentiment right on the head, it's political correctness and removal from any possible liability that's driving their restrictions. So, here it is, and I'll put up a thread later on it, I'm looking for a vendor to host my ads for $150 a month and I'd like to get about 50 hits a day out of that. Thank you all for contributing.
 
I'm still doing some research on where to put my money, overall I was quite pleased with Adwords over the last two years and it was zero maintenance. I'd like to target things a little better instead of just hoping for a click on something related to my keywords, maybe some banner space at pertinent sites. Thanks for the advice, everyone.
 
rhinoknives said:
I was denied use of a picture of one of my culinary knives on my Credit Card by Capital one a while back "because knives are weapons and can led to deaths" is what the dope on the phone told me!

No one has any personal responsibility anymore! The gun,Knife, Video Game, Movie, etc made me do it!

Laurence

www.rhinoknives.com
Click to expand...

Now that's funny,those fools at Capital One make commercials with Vikings destroying things with all kinds of weapons!
 
As a further update, I'm doing some selections of websites to host a banner or sidebar ad and putting a list of publications together. Tracking sales will be easier this way because I can just ask "Hey, where did you see the ad?" instead of a lengthy interrogation as to the specific keyword out of several hundred they might have used to get one of the adwords ads to show up.
 
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