How to Circumvent Google’s Terms of Service?

Common questions that I get from the Google Ads Strategy Show:

I have products that are against Google’s terms of service, how can I market these products through Google Ads without violation?

Any tips on Gambling Ads and cloaking?

Google Ad account suspension and ad disapproval are becoming prolific. As I’ve seen on a lot of online forums, there’s never an exact reason why. Most of the time when there is an ad disapproval due to malware, all it takes is to contact Google Support to remove the disapproval. What is going on here?

Yes, ad disapprovals do happen, but usually it’s something that can be fixed.

If you aren’t completely compliant with Google’s terms of service, or perhaps someone hacked into your website and it got some malware, Google is going to disapprove ads for that reason. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, or you intentionally violated their terms of service. But Google can’t be sending traffic to infected websites. All it takes is to contact Google Support to remove the disapproval. 

I’ve dealt with malware issues before. Google will point it out. If your developer can’t figure it out, Google will tell you where the Malware is. They will point out the code, and your developer should be able to remove it. Then re-submit the ad so Google can approve it.

That happens, no big deal because Google is pretty easy to work with. If you’re not intentionally violating the rules, if you fix what they want you to fix, things should be just fine. 

I don’t agree that account suspensions are prolific. I’ve never seen an account suspension. That might be because I don’t work with accounts that are likely to be suspended. 

How about cloaking?

Cloaking is a way to run ads even if you violate Google’s terms of service.

Cloaking means masking the actual content of your site so that a web crawler would see something different, in hopes that it would not get disapproved or suspended.  

For example, you have a website that people can see. If you’re advertising gambling, when people go to your website, people should see a website about gambling. But when Google’s crawlers visit your website,  they would actually see something else. That’s cloaking.

However, cloaking is a really quick and easy way to have Google shut down your ad account and ban you from Google Ads.

I’m not going to tell you how to circumvent Google’s terms of service.

It’s not something that I recommend.  Especially if you are managing an account for other businesses, you need to steer clear of this type of thing. You’re putting all of your clients at risk if you are trying to run campaigns that are against Google’s terms of service.

DON’T DO IT.

Unfortunately, you just can’t advertise some products. Personally, I don’t think it’s a big deal if someone is Googling for “Vape”, but Google has decided that they don’t want to run ads for that and they are not going to allow it.

As a business owner, you have to deal with that. You can’t benefit from a Google Ad traffic if you’re running a business that is selling certain things or if you’re running a certain type of business.

What’s the bottom line?

I am not going to advise anyone to violate Google’s terms of service. I think you need to keep everything above board. You need to comply with what Google wants to you comply with. If you’re managing campaigns for other businesses, stick to the things on the allowed list. Never practice cloaking because that will put your clients’ business at risk.