Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Am I on the Google adwords "no-fly" list?

Well! I can now use the word "penguin" in an ad to describe stuff that has penguins on it. But Google still won't tell me who complained.

From Google: (regarding this)

"Please know that the usage of the term 'penguin' in your ads does not violate our trademark policy. Therefore, please feel free to submit ads using this term. Also, please reply to this email after submitting the ads so that I can expedite the review process."

My (admittedly paranoid) translation: "Some bot at a 400-pound-gorilla somewhere screwed up, but we sure aren't going to tell you who. However we still don't trust you, so we're going to vet your ads closely just to be sure."

Or maybe they're just being nice and they really want to expedite my ads being approved, though they always seemed to be 'approved' instantly before. 

Any veteran adwords-ers out there know if there is a Google watch list? Actually I thought once they decided you were a bad guy, they just banned you. It's not like I'm advertising "free macbook air!" (with a few strings attached[1]) or flooding the net with autogenerated pages selling star trek ringtones. I'm advertising bumper stickers with penguins on, and the ad goes to a page of bumper stickers with penguins on.  

(You might guess - and you'd be right - that I suck at this adwords stuff and that it just barely scrapes up enough new traffic for me to be wothwhile.)

And now I'm really curious. OF COURSE I'm going to keep asking :-)

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[1] "Free" sure doesn't mean what it used to.
(edit: except for this:Get 17 Free AdWords Cheat Sheets, MP3s, and Videosfrom someone with a proven track record of AdWords success.)

Posted via web from Jen's posterous

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