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A warning to fellow Google ads users
Hi everyone. I manage Google ads accounts and I’ve had a handful of situations where I needed to open support tickets for resolution, and I wanted to give everyone a warning about what I’ve seen to keep an eye out in your own accounts.
1. Auto apply assets applying without any automation being enabled anywhere in the account. The account was built for career recruitment, and Google auto applied 164 sitelinks to normal business pages, nothing aligned with the recruitment keywords/copy. The support team just told me that they’re “ever evolving” and keeping automation off should prevent the issue from happening in the future. Automation was never on in this case, so it could be beneficial to do a content audit of accounts to ensure content is as intended.
2. Ads being held on the back end after being flagged for policy violation and then approved. After days of Google trying to tell me it was a keyword quality issue that the account had ceased to see even impressions after the ads were disapproved and subsequently approved, they told me to remove all of my bid caps then we’d start serving again in a few weeks. After they made this point, I requested to escalate to management, and the support person told me that they wouldn’t do that because their manager would just tell me the same thing that they did. I insisted that I’d like to hear it again in that case, they put me on hold, and then came back 10 minutes later telling me that they found that the ads were never pushed through on their end, even though in the platform they were all marked as eligible (limited). The account started serving again the next day.
3. Google reps making changes with the client on the phone without informing me. I know this one has been said before on this thread so I won’t go into depth here, but if you notice unauthorized changes that can’t be explained (changes were not recorded in change history), be aware that Google will go behind your back to push automation and budget increases directly with the client.Is it just me or has Google been REALLY horrible lately? I know it’s never been perfect, the issues aligned above are all from the last month.
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1 Reply
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They’ve been making things worse for years. It really stresses me out how they’re just squeezing out any control we have.
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Lol, one of my clients is a trade show exhibit builder. Auto apply RSA added descriptions about “our top rated WordPress theme.” Not only totally irrelevant, but disapproved for a trademarked term as well. Sent screenshots to my Google rep like “no need for a response, but here’s why.”
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On the ad review issue, the best solution I’ve found is to simply upload new ads if they get stuck in review. To date, they always go right through review on the second try. Not sure what happens in the back end to cause this occasionally.
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I’m in the middle of a complete business restructuring because I know I can’t rely on google anymore
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Google just wants you to set it and forget it with your credit card. That seems to be the goal that they are trying to get to
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Google was always horrible . All ppc account managers should make sure to disable all “auto apply recommendations” as soon as they get access to the account.
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