Kyle Sulerud - October 24, 2019This is something that trips people up especially when they’re just getting started. I’m hoping that I can speed up the learning process for you. I will talk about some things that you can’t say in your ad, things that will pretty much guarantee that your ad is going to be disapproved.
First, let’s start with things that you can’t advertise at all.
There’s actually a lot of common sense that comes into play here. If you’re trying to advertise something that’s dangerous or illegal, dishonest (e.g. counterfeit products or similar), those types of things are not allowed.
There is also some grey areas such as inappropriate and offensive type of things (e.g. a t-shirt that is meant to offend a certain group).
In short, keep things civil and don’t try to push the boundaries too hard when it comes to your ads.
There are some regulated things like alcohol or adult websites. Those things are allowed but regulated.
If you are trying to sell something and you’re not sure whether it’s allowed or not, just go look at Google Ads Policy. You could also do a search, see if other people are advertising the thing that you are wanting to advertise.
If you are advertising something that you know is ALLOWED, what is it that you can’t say in the ad?
1) You can’t intentionally misspell things, or use bad grammar, or any kind of gibberish.
You can’t use symbols incorrectly. For example, you couldn’t spell a word using symbols. You can replace the “a” with the “@” symbol. Simply put, nothing too cutesy, things should be spelled correctly with good grammar.
2) You can’t use emojis, or other non-standard symbols.
There was a time when emojis were getting approved. I even got some approved myself. But at this time, I haven’t seen an ad with emoji for a while. I think Google pretty much figured out how to prevent those.
3) You can’t put exclamation points and asterisks where they don’t belong.
As far a non-standard symbols go, really you can’t use punctuation in a way that’s not intended.
4) You can’t write anything in ALL CAPS, unless it’s supposed to be an abbreviation.
Sometimes even those valid abbreviations get disapproved. When that happens, you can re-submit those for re-approval, and usually they can get approval. Use ALL CAPS appropriately.
5) You can’t use non-standard capitalization.
For example, you couldn’t just capitalize eVeRy oThEr LeTteR of the wOrD. That is obviously not how it is supposed to look, and that will surely be disapproved. You can capitalize the first word of a sentence. You can capitalize the first letter of some or all the words in a sentence.
6) You can’t repeat words.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t use the same word twice in an ad. What it basically means is that you can’t repeat the same word multiple times just for some type of effect. So you couldn’t say “Amazing Amazing Amazing!”. You can repeat “Amazing” multiple times throughout your ad, as long as it fits within normal sentence structure.
7) You can’t put in weird spacing or extra spaces.
Again, this just goes back to good grammar. You need to have well-constructed sentences. Even if you will use a list, you still need to have proper spacing.
8) You can’t say “Click here”
9) You can’t include a phone number in the text of your ad.
Phone numbers can only be used in ad extensions, or if you happen to be using call-only ads.
10) You can’t say anything dishonest.
If it’s not the actual price of your product or service, you can’t put a price in your ad. You also can’t put a feature in your ad if it’s not actually included in your product.
11) You can’t have an ad for one thing that leads to a landing page for something completely different.
Really, a lot of these things are common sense. But some of it, people are trying to get away with. Hopefully this article cleared up things for you.
Bottom Line:
If you write with good sentence structure, good spelling, correct punctuation, you’re honest, and you say what you mean in your ad in an ethical manner, you shouldn’t have any problems.