Is It Time Google Changed Their Editorial Team?
While working as a PPC Campaign Manager it really baffles me sometimes that Google don’t always enforce the policies they are so fond of informing us about.
The recent change in their gambling policy has seen advertisers now being allowed to bid on gambling related terms. At a former employer of mine we often flaunted the gambling policy anyway be running gambling related campaigns out of Google office hours. For some reason these campaigns always ran unhindered. It seemed that if there were no Google staff in the office to check, then the gambling related campaigns were fine!
Another cause for concern has been the introduction of the policy specifying that the destination and display URL’s used in the Ad Text have to point to the same domain. Now why I am a supporter of this (it really makes sense for branding purposes to have the URL displayed that will be clicked through to) I have lost count of the number of occasions I have seen this policy ignored by advertisers. It often takes a call into Google requesting that the issue is dealt with by a rival competitor to get the issue addressed. What are the editorial team doing to enforce their own policy?
The latest incident that has really caused me annoyance has been the introduction of the new Google policy forbidding the use of the term ‘Escorts’ in Ad Text. I have a client who offers a service as an ‘alternative to escorts’ and had this in their Ad Text. In line with policy we removed all references to Escort from my clients Ad Text. I have lost count of the number of times over the past two weeks that I have sent Google examples of others still using Escort in their Ad Text.
Google still get paid every time people are clicking on these Escort related Ad’s so it makes me question how much do they really want to have them removed or are they just advertising this change in policy in an effort to make themselves seem more or a family friendly company?
For more information on PPC Policies, see here.
