Google just shut down our $1M business

[jasonwen]

We have just received an email from Google that we still violate their Google policies and they will not reinstate our account. This is not a post to get sympathy but rather a story why it was closed and how HN played a role in this.

I’ve been browsing HN for a decade now and somewhere I read on HN that people lose their online account and everything associated with their account. This has stuck with me and at one point I thought to create a second Google ads account to make sure our main Google ads account was able to keep running if the other account somehow received a violation. Just a pure spread-your-risks decision. After we decided to move into Germany with our eco-friendly brand, I used the second Google ads account to create German ads on a new Shopify hosted .de domain. The ads would target by geo location, consumers in Germany, so that there would be no overlap with our main market.

After a couple hours our account and our Merchant Center account, which is used for shopping ads, got suspended. I had no clue why so I wasted an appeal. After further reading on the internet, I discovered that creating more than one Google ads account is against Google policy. This is how scammers work to dominate search and shopping results. Never knew that. I was told that Google doesn’t consider intention, so you’re either good or bad. In this case I was the biggest criminal according to Google and my account was banned on a personal level for life. Not allowed to advertise ever again on Google. Lost some good nights sleep over that one.

The first ad account remained working which I find bizarre as the payment information and addresses used on these 2 accounts were exactly the same as I did not have bad intentions.

About a month ago I was invited to join the accelerated growth program of Google to help businesses expand into other countries. I was working with 2 Google account managers 4 weeks to prepare launching -again- in Germany. I used our .com domain to target Germany. All was well until I accidentally added .de for an ad instead of .com/de/, within an hour our main account was suspended. After an appeal and having it bumped to priority from my Google account manager, I received the depressing email that our account remains suspended. And that we should not create new Google ads accounts as those will be suspended too. Great.

We are all perplexed how a legit company, selling eco friendly products that we design ourselves, have it all trademarked, and have in stock in our own warehouse, are treated like criminals.

Luckily we massively increased our ad spend on social media couple weeks ago and are well positioned in Amazon, but I have really lost all faith in Google and their policy teams. We will (barely) survive as search and shopping was a big chunk of our revenue.

That you get flagged by a bot, gets suspended, I can get into that. But if you explain your story, have advertised for over 3 years with $30k monthly ad spent (I know it’s tiny for some, but for us as a small business it’s big), and all domains sell the same products, just into another country, than get your account banned for life, is just ridiculous.

Just had to get this off my shoulders and possibly warn anyone ever thinking doing the same to spread your company’s risks. A real butterfly effect, what an impact a single post or comment eventually had on my business down the line.

[nhchris]

> We will (barely) survive

That a single company, in an unrelated market (ads), merely refusing to do business with you, can almost bankrupt you, means it's time for trust-busting. No single company should have such power.

[carlosjobim]

If it wasn't for Google, millions of businesses would never have had a chance to exist, because they didn't have anywhere near the initial budget or right political connections to reach their customers through traditional media. It is a terrible power they have in their hands, but it is leagues better than what was before.

But I think it is outrageous how they mistreat important customers like OP and let some petty employee who probably has never done anything useful in their life destroy the livelihood of other people just out of spite.

[courgette]

In this particular case, it seems easier said than done?

OP did put eggs in different basquet ( social medias ) but Google will be Google right? What would be the alternative.

[logicalmonster]

OP seems like he'll hopefully be fine, but there's probably been many people like this who aren't fine.

I'm sure many people lose their jobs when an advertiser is banned for some dumb and false reason.

I'm sure some people fall into depression and commit suicide when their life's work is destroyed.

Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some solution to help people in these extreme cases? Especially when it seems like an honest mistake with no bad intention?

PS: The most aggravating part is that this doesn't even prevent bad actors from using various techniques (identity theft or mass-spawning lots of companies in some lax foreign jurisdiction) to continue operating. This just screws over normal people who fall into some kafkaesque trap based on some rule they didn't know about.

[afandian]

> Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some solution to help people in these extreme cases?

I was in a different but comparable situation with Google. I closed my paid account, they claimed I owe them money, and the only way of replying is to log in with said non-existent account.

It's a trivially foreseeable situation, and trivially detected. I bet it's quite common too. If a reasonably intelligent person sat down for five minutes to think about the cancellation process they would identify this branch.

Either those expensive product and software people are incompetent, or they genuinely, deliberately, don't care about edge cases. I can only conclude that it's the second option.

The popular hypothesis is that they couldn't operate at scale without keeping customers away from humans at all costs. But I'm not sure it's true.

[nr2x]

Yeah, with 190k headcount most of these people aren’t exactly head of the class.

[dankwizard]

So can I create a Google Ad about a competitors domain which will flag Google thinking that they have two accounts running two ad campaigns for the same website?

Interesting

[maxbond]

Moderation is the dual of denial of service. Every moderation primitive is a denial of service primitive, and every denial of service primitive is a moderation primitive - what moderation really is is the denial of service actions we believe are prosocial.

If you penalize people for engaging in link-farming SEO, the SEO people who's tricks don't work anymore will go into business doing "negative SEO" for hire or as extortion. When people use DDoS as an act of protest (I don't know if this still happens but it did circa 2010 when the Anonymous hacktivist movement was active), you can view that as similar "community moderation" to flagging posts on HN, but on the IP level. (I am not endorsing DDoS, I am just illustrating the duality. My point is technical and not political.)

Keep this in mind when you write moderation primitives. They will be abused.

[realPubkey]

Yes. This works even better if you use a coupon code.

[ipaddr]

Plus you login from same ip

[brianwawok]

You can certainly try. I wouldn’t give it much chance of success.

[klysm]

For every story like this on HN, there is some factor more in the world that don't get written about and business quietly die at the whim of google's algorithms. There is no recourse, for you are too small to matter.

[nexthash]

Not the first time, won't be the last. Google is an egocentric company with a nihilistic and destructive indifference towards its customers. Fortunately people are learning to avoid Google products, as seen with Stadia's demise. Here are some other instances of Google's negligence:

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432702

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30855065

4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23193857

5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32547912

[upseo]

So sorry it happened, But your budget could afford $5-10k per month for SEO. Which in 6-12 months could provide you with a comparable volume of organic traffic.

Also, lead generation can help with this problem. I don't know what you sell, but let's imagine it is eco phone cases. So, you register a domain name bestecophonecases.com with a new company(no law prevents you from that) and open a Google Ads account from another company, phone number and website. From accounting point of view, this company is 0 profit advertisement agency. With lead generation templates and webflow, Tilda and other cms it all can be done within a day. Saying from my personal experience, after I purchased a 20 years old domain name that was banned in Google Ads 10 years ago which they refuse to unban.

[twelve40]

the latest Google ads UI is confusing AF. I think I actually have 3 or 4 different accounts (manager and managed) just because I couldn't make heads or tails of that UI at some point. Time to clean them up! My condolences for getting bit like that.

[randombits0]

Haha, you fell victim to the algorithm and they don’t care! That’s by design!

Look, they have an app that makes money. They care only about the app.

The only proper response is to take what you’ve learned and make your own app, an app that plays within their undefined rules. Oh, and makes money.

They don’t care. You’re an error, an exception, and a money pit. Better to cut ties than to deal with you. If the product is spoiled, throw it away.

[mobilio]

Only solution is to work with some of Google Ads Partners to run Ads on their behalf.

[leros]

This is why I also fear using Google Cloud. You might do something weird to get banned from YouTube or Google Ads and then next thing you know you've lost access to your Google account including Google Cloud. Good luck if you used any proprietary GCP services.

These worries don't matter as much if you're large enough to have a human sales rep, but as a smaller company, a false positive algorithmic suspension can shut down your business.

[MrDresden]

You have my full sympathy. Growing and sustaining a company is not easy at the best of times.

I have zero sympathy for Google when it comes to their monopoly potentially (hopefully) being challenged both by competitors and lawmakers.

[KomoD]

So basically, you got banned for a valid reason, also you basically admitted to creating another account to get around violations, which is quite obviously against their policies...?

[flaviolivolsi]

What about involving lawyers? It happened once that Google banned my Adsense account and didn't pay $30k, which were the earnings of the launch month of my website. They didn't provide any reason at all. I gave the case to a lawyer and after one year they apologized, reinstated the account and paid what was due.

[s1k3s]

This happened to me as well, same exact scenario. Created a separate ads account to keep my business away from my personal stuff. On Feb 21 I got an email saying that my 2nd account is suspended. Amusingly, the personal account seems to be fine (no ads currently running), but I assume that if I start a campaign on it it's going to get banned as well?

[steponlego]

Just a lesson - relying on some big tech monopoly or another might make things a bit easier or more profitable but you can be SQUASHED LIKE A BUG and nobody there will care. They don't have to.

[hiidrew]

The all or nothing approach that Google takes on situations like this is crazy to me. Same with previous posts, they seem to love swinging the eternal ban hammer.

[readonthegoapp]

this resonates with me a bit, but i was in and out early and quickly. and, i agree with others that monopoly power is hurting us (thank you, Supremes).

i did some google advertising, and tried to do more, but got banned -- one of my sites/accounts -- for illegal category or something -- i was trying to launch a tech support business -- which i guess had been banned because of the indian tech support scams (sorry, my indian peeps).

i was thinking about doing about a grand over the first month -- then see what i had -- i thought it was weird, first of all, because... why let a tech support business sign up to advertise if... you don't allow it?

but then, you do allow it.

until you don't any longer.

and in the banning and unbanning, i would get calls from google account managers wanting to help me set up my account(s), and they didn't know which ones were suspended and why, and couldn't do anything about it/them, and couldn't tell me anything about it/them.

none of it _really_ suprised me, but also, all of it did.

i kind of thought, oh, i'm gonna just turn on some ads and see if anyone starts clicking - i'll literally know in about 5 minutes if my business is gonna fly - this is gonna be awesome.

but it was a few weeks of back and forth and emails and support centers and phone calls and frustrations and business changes and on and on and on.

and the infamous -- what do you call them -- google UIs -- the banality of evil of google's UIs -- that's how i'd characterize them. you interact with them, you do things, you submit things, and they just stare at you and occasionally blink. no change of state. nada. pretty hardcore.

the frustrating part was - i didn't know all that. if i had a friend who knew what this kafkaesque (i don't know what this means, but people say it a lot and i think it means 'bad') world could be like if you didn't know how to navigate it properly, then i would have had very different expectations, so probably a very different overall experience.

my timeline started telescoping outwards -- from an expectation of ads running within 5 minutes, to and hour, to 2 or 3 hours, to a business day, to a business week, to two weeks, to a month plus, to alternatives like fakebook and all the rest.

my realistic expectations now, were i to attempt again to advertise, or to help anyone else do some google ads (god help them), it'd be like....

  this might not work. we can try it, because all the other options are probably trash too, but if you're a professional -- i.e. you're a six figure-type person, and maybe even if not, just pay someone something to help you do it, because otherwise we might get turned into an insects and just lose the emotional energy to properly complete our task.

[revskill]

Google is useless the day ChatGPT include the links to website.

[masukomi]

it already does tell people to go to sites, but it also lies about what's there.

https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/dont-believe-chatgpt

ChatGPT is a convincing fiction generator. Any facts it produces are purely coincidental.

It's just really good at mansplaining and gaslighting people about things it knows nothing about.

[ipaddr]

Because people want to move from typing or sating two words to search vs having a 10 minute conversation where you fight with a politically bias AI

[hiidrew]

check out https://www.perplexity.ai/

[oriettaxx]

I am unable to understand what happened: can you explain it from the very beginning?

[emanuele-em]

If I understood they were banned from google ads (merchand center) because they used 2 accounts to promote the same activity, but if this is against the policy I don't understand what is the point, I don't think that the size of the market is a discriminant in the policy

[cheapliquor]

tl;dr he created 2 google adsense accounts for the same thing just in different regions and that violates google's policy so they shut'm down