Making sure that your ads get approved

Google reserves the right to accept or reject your Ad. Creating an AdWords account and setting a high CPC does not guarantee that your Ad will be listed. In order for your Ad to be approved by Google, it has to comply with their Editorial Guidelines. These guidelines are discussed in this section.

These guidelines not only help you to get approved but also help in improving the performance of your Ad and generate sales. The guidelines stress the importance of two principles:

• Ads should clearly and accurately describe your website
• Ads should put emphasis on highlighting the uniqueness of your product or service

If your ad gets rejected, a Search Engine specialist will mark out minor editing changes for your Ad to comply with the guidelines. Let’s take a look at these guidelines in detail.

Ad Style and Grammar

• Do not use repeated and unnecessary punctuation or symbols.
• Your title may not contain an exclamation point.
• Your ad text may only contain one exclamation point.

For instance, let us consider an Ad pertaining to an E-Learning website. This Ad would not be approved as it contains an exclamation mark in the title. Moreover, there are repeated punctuation marks (!!) in description line 2.

• Do not use excessive capitalization
• Capitalization of the first letter of each word within your displayed URL is permitted. However, capitalization of an entire word is not permitted.
• Words or phrases should not be repeated

In this Ad, description Line 1 is acceptable. Only the first letter is capital. However, description line 2 contains excessive capitalization which is not acceptable. Moreover, the Title is repeated again in description line 1, which is also not acceptable.

There are a few other guidelines pertaining to your Ad Style and Grammar. Ensure that there are no spelling mistakes in the Ad. Also there is a limit to the number of characters that can be used for each line in the Ad. Ad Titles cannot be more than 25 characters, whereas the description lines and the URL cannot be more than 35 characters.

Ad and Keyword relevance

Your Ads should use keywords that reflect your product or service and the landing page should be relevant to the Ad. It is recommended that you include the nature of your business, product or service in the Ad text. Location specific products should be clearly defined. For instance, if an Ad is only for a service available to New York residents, it should say so.

The Content of your Ad

• If you are an affiliate and the Ad is aimed at promoting an affiliate program, you must specify so in the Ad. Our testing of this shows that it does not substantially decrease the effectiveness of your ad. For example, Google will also usually let you use an abbreviation of the word "affiliate" such as "aff" if you are not able to fit the full word in the sentence.

 

• Superlative language should be avoided. This includes phrases such as "Greatest", "Best", "#1", and so on. However, if a third party rates your product as "Best" or "#1", then you may be able to use these phrases in your ad.
• Language that promotes offers should be avoided. This includes phrases such as ‘Sign up for a week and get a week’s subscription free’, or ‘Limited time offer only’. There is an exception to this rule. If you create an Ad that is specifically for promoting an offer on your landing page, your Ad may be approved. This is also true for product guarantee and warranty.

 

• If your ad text contains product endorsements or awards, support for this claim must be displayed clearly on your website.

 

• Your ad text and title cannot contain broad call-to-action phrases such as ‘click here’, ‘link here’, ‘visit this site’, or other similar phrases that could apply to any ad. Use of such language would be rejected. Call to action should be product specific. Something like ‘Save on Books’, or ‘Register now for 15% discount’ is acceptable. In fact, as discussed earlier, use of proper call-to-action can increase the effectiveness of your Ad.

 

• Your ad title must not contain ‘welcome to’, ‘online’, ‘website’, or ‘homepage’.

 

• Your ad should not contain offensive or inappropriate language.

 

• Adult Ads are generally accepted by Google AdWords. However, these ads should comply with the conditions for AdWords Adult advertising. In some cases, Adult ads may be rejected by AdWords if they are found to be extremely offensive and derogatory.

Links

The Display URL should be accurate and in working condition. It should not contain excessive capitals. The website which, the URL points to should also be working. URLs to Email Addresses and files are not allowed.

The Landing page should be working as well. If the page is under construction, the Ad should be discontinued or the landing page should be changed. Moreover, landing pages should not contain pop-ups of any kind. This is not acceptable to Search Engines. Finally, links to your website must allow users to return to the search results page or ad network by clicking once on the browser’s Back button.

What happens if my ad is rejected?

Having said all of this it is interesting that when you look at the Google AdWords ads that come up when you search for products or services, they do not all comply with the above rules. Sometimes they slip through the Search Engine editors.

Other times you will get an ad rejected for reasons not listed above. The editors are fairly consistent, but they are not 100% consistent. If you believe your ad was rejected unfairly you can either: Write to the editors and plead your case or, try submitting the ad again with some slight changes. It’s not a good idea to submit the same ad again as you will annoy the editors and your account may eventually be blacklisted.

Different options when selecting keywords for your ad

There are a number of different options you can use when placing keywords:

Broad matching or wild-card matching, (2) Phrase matching and (3) Exact Matching.

Exact Matching in square brackets [] - When you use brackets around a word or a phrase, your ad will show only when that exact word or exact phrase is typed into the Search Engine. For example, when you use the keyword [computer] your ad will only show up if a person types in the single word computer into the search engine. However if you use the keyword computer without brackets your ad will show up any time someone types in any phrase with the word computer in the phrase. For example, ‘How can I fix my computer’. You can also use square brackets for keyword phrases, for example [satellite tv] or [cable repairs].

Phrase matching in inverted commas ‘’ - When you use inverted commas, your ad will show up whenever someone types in that phrase in that exact order within the phrase that they type into the engine. This is normally used with keyword phrases that have two or more words. For example if you use the keyword phrase ‘satellite tv’ (with inverted commas around the phrase), then your ad will show up when someone types in the phrase ‘I hate satellite tv’, it will show up with the phrase ‘satellite tv’ or ‘my favourite satellite tv stations’, but it will not show up with the phrase ‘tv satellite stations’ because the order of satellite and tv is changed in the phrase.

Broad matching - This is where you just place the keyword or keyword phrase into your keyword list without anything around the keyword. This way your ad will show whenever someone types something into the search engine that has that word or words in the phrase. For example if you use the word television then your ad will show up if someone types: ‘my television is broken’ or ‘how can I get a new television’ or ‘television shows from the 1980’s’. You can see that using single words with Broad matching is usually not very targeted. It depends upon the words however, because if you use a word like: nokia3650 it is going to be a lot more targeted.

Negative keyword (a minus sign before the keyword) - When you put a minus sign before the keyword this will ensure that your ad will not show up when that keyword is contained within the keyword phrase. This is often very useful and we’ll talk about it a bit later in the membership site.