My Unresolved Fight with Google Ads
I was naïve. I thought once a person set up a little on-line store that the internet gods would want such stores to actually advertise through them. After all, because they don’t charge people to use their browsers, the revenue has to come in via other ways, mostly through ads they allow to be shown to their users. I probably had sort of a vague idea that the browser gods would want to give some “blessing” to newbie on-line stores but I never realized that the 800-pound internet muscle called Google would care so much that people might be getting ripped off in an on-line store where most products were less than $5 bucks and nothing was over $10. Ok, full disclosure, to get four+ pounds of my purple corn shipped across country, between the original price I had it listed AND shipping through the U.S. Postal Service, somebody might get ripped off for almost $25.
However, Google Ads has no problem holding over $100 of my money indefinitely and doing nothing with it but I’m getting ahead of myself. A company that still controls 90% of the U.S. internet browsing market and is a by-product child of the U.S. government’s DARPA program operates at a whole different level of power than the plebs that might use its adverting services. Anybody in Congress ever heard of “antitrust” laws; nah, they don’t really apply when it comes to Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and friends. Anyway, back to my recent story with Google Ads.
Setting up an on-line store through a company such as Shopify (a Canadian-based company) can be fairly easy to do. They have various “templates” to follow, the ones with more bells and whistles cost money but several are free of charge. I would often get stuck in what I thought was a blind corner but there were usually either videos through Shopify itself or other users on YouTube to get me going forward again. Shopify also has templates within templates such as a store’s “operating policies” where a person goes in and fills in their particular details but keeps almost all the “boiler plate” verbiage intact. Deep within such policies your personal e-mail (if operating from that) and a phone number get listed. I know these must work somehow because the number of spam calls on my smart phone (which I mostly use for texting and actual phone calls) noticeably increased after my on-line store went live and I also get occasional e-mails at home from website designers that can make my store so much better if I throw some coin their way, but I’m getting ahead of myself again here. It took me a couple of two or three weekends to complete my Shopify store, including a test run using my wife as a potential customer (you can do this in a “test mode”) where we did three orders and everything looked good, the orders showed up to me on the operating side of the store. I turned loose the on-line store to face the public in the middle of February, 2024, actually the early evening of my wife and my wedding anniversary. It was sort of exciting!!
My excitement turned into anti-climactic daily monitoring of any action. A person should probably anticipate this because Shopify gives the free template-based stores the first three months without a monthly charge. A couple of the main issues are to get your store classified as “legit” by the internet gods and to get your store and products somewhere up in the top x number of pages of browsing returns. Most people may only go in a page or two of browsing returns on Google or Bing (Microsoft’s browser) or DuckDuckGo and by after about five pages in, you’re probably not going to be seen. A person can wait until the internet gods “crawl” your URL and “approve” your products or you can speed up the process a bit by putting in some simple computer code in your store template to hurry that along. I’m no way a computer “coder” but can follow some simple directions and I did the code inserts for both Google and Bing (Microsoft has about 6% of the U.S. browsing audience, so with Google that adds up to 96% of the total). Google went through my products first and approved all 23 that I had at the time. A bit later Microsoft tried, got one product approved and then the operation appeared to have hung up, with the others not showing up as “not approved” (I can’t remember the actual term) or “pending”. At this point, it didn’t seem that Google had any problems with my products that I was trying to sell on my Shopify store using a common Shopify template.
The garden seed selling piece of the U.S. economy is a fairly niche market but still there are millions of people who potentially buy garden seeds on-line out of a country of 335+ million so the competition is substantial. There are a number of very well-known garden seed companies and dozens and dozens of lesser-known ones that a person can find on-line, especially if hunting down rather unique varieties of things or for specific theme of seeds, such as “organic”.
Entering the seed selling arena in later February is actually jumping into the middle of the main selling part of the year, people in the South start planting gardens in March, most people in the North by later April or May and places such as coastal California or the lower elevations of the desert Southwest, about any time given that their growing seasons are basically year around (if the garden plants can handle the later heat). I had spent time in January doing germination tests of the seeds I was going to offer and other things, such as setting up a way that someone couldn’t pirate my “company’s” name and the time setting up the Shopify store. At this point, I had not spent much money in the whole process but it did appear that a little advertising would probably help out so by the end of March, I decided to do a one-month ad “campaign” with Google Ads because Google had “approved” all 23 of my products and was showing my URL. I decided running ads during April (sort of the last big hurrah of garden seed selling time for the year) might have some rewards.
When a person starts a Google Ads campaign, they ask you how much you want to spend “a day” so because I really didn’t want to get in too deep, I put down $6 a day, thus the whole month of April would cost me north of $180. The “per day” price is sort of misleading because how on-line advertising works is by some sort of number of ads run versus total “clicks” by people so the overall price may be more than what a person asked to spent per day, a specific ad campaign may cost more coin than you have given them to get through the total time of the run. Anyway, I set up my Google Ads campaign through a third party that Shopify allows and everything was set to start April 1, 2024.
My Google Ads campaign ran for about 12 hours before the first hiccup was experienced and my account ‘suspended”. It appears that Google wants their money up front. It doesn’t actually say that when setting up a campaign but it is a reality. So, I loaded $185 into my Google Merchant account and petitioned my Google Ads suspension and by April 4, we were off and running. For the next eight days it was interesting watching the daily metrics; how many times ads were run, how many clicks they generated, and so on. By early on April 12, Google Ads had run somewhere towards 4,000 ads (I’m sure many of them were very brief) and my “click-ratio” was slightly above the $6 a day goal of my campaign. Things seemed to be going along nicely. At least that was my impression until the next day.
On April 13, I got a triple whammy of e-mails from Google Ads that my ad campaign had been stopped and my account suspended for “Misrepresentation” after a visual inspection of my on-line Shopify store website. Thus started the nearly seven-week running “battle” with Google Ads to find out exactly what the problem (or problems) was (were) with my Shopify store. Hopefully these screen captures of the e-mail correspondence turned into images will show up well enough to give a flavor of the story.
The April 13, 2024 triple whammy from Google Ads.
Of course, what Google Ads finds as “egregious” violations was followed by mostly fluffy and vague verbiage and my “sins” were certainly not “repeated” so what actually was going on? Google Ads on “Misrepresentation” was also basically vague and not useful so it appeared that I was on my own to figure out what was wrong that caught their attention. I initially thought that because my products didn’t have a specific “manufacturing item skew” that this was now why they were being flagged, although that didn’t seem to have been a problem when Google crawled my URL back in March and “approved” all my products then. I had seen a YouTube video of a gal who sold home-manufactured products (I think most of hers were scented candles) and how she finally had to drill down in the product hierarchy codes to find the ones that described home-made items that didn’t have manufacturing skews. In my Shopify template, my products were originally down two or three levels of hierarchy listed as “home and garden” so I drilled down a couple more levels and found “vegetable and flower seeds” (or something to that effect) and changed all 23 products to that input. Meanwhile, in some back-and-forth with Google Ads, that they had “opened” a case on the situation and “Ajay” reassured me that they will willing to help me work through the situation.
Google Ads e-mail, April 17, 2024
Google Ads e-mail April 20, 2024
I told Ajay (now taking over from Ajajul mentioned in the previous e-mail) that I thought I had found the problem (the shallowness of my product codes and them not having manufacturing skew numbers) and decided to go for another “review” by them (a new review can only be done after a 7-day wait from last “bad” one) so later on April 20, I requested a follow up review.
The following day, I received what would become the fairly uniform response to a “failed” review. Again, no specifics, just the same old “there are still problems with your store” and in their opinion, I was still “Misrepresenting” to the viewing public. My Google Ads campaign would not be re-started.
By this time, Ajay had been replaced by “Joshua”. It appears that any correspondence going on over the weekends gets picked by the Google Ads crew in South Asia and later transferred back to representatives based in the States during the week. However, the first correspondence with Joshua was pretty basic after my failed review. I replied to Joshua immediately. You might be able to read the fine print in the image but I’ll type it here as well.
Hi! You all stopped my Google Ads campaign on April 12 because of "misrepresentation" issues found in a manual review. However, you did not give me a specific issue that caused this suspension (no warning was given) so after your general discussion on "misrepresentation", I still don't know what the problem is. I just did the "I disagree" button thinking there was space to comment but there isn't so I'm sure I'll get the same canned answer that I got two weeks ago. I'm a micro start up company on a very shoestring budget. I followed a Shopify template & Google approved by products for over 5 weeks until about 10 days into my first Google ad campaign you all pulled the plug with no actual specifics, just generalities about "misrepresentation". If we don't resolve this soon, I will pursue getting a refund from Google of my unused balance in my account. Thank you for your time-
Joshua didn’t last very long and was replaced by “Kaycee” in early May. Around May 6, Kaycee replied that Google Ads was unable to actually “pinpoint” the reason for my suspension (what I was doing wrong in my Shopify store) but after a quick perusal by her, she found that I had “missing requirements” such as “Accurate contact information”, “refund policy” and “billing terms and conditions”. She also said that getting any unused funds of mine refunded was beyond what their customer service department could do.
I think I went through the areas of what she had questioned and didn’t find anything that was obvious to me as still an issue. I may have replied to her again about closing my account and refunding my unused funds but she mentioned (perhaps again) that this was above her “pay grade”. My response in the small print was I think after her May 7 reply and before my case being assigned to “Peter”.
I’ll re-type the small print of my reply here. My frustration factor was obviously staring to ramp up. I’ve corrected a couple of misspellings.
Hi! We seem to be at an impasse here. Through several back and forth you as Google can't give me specific things of "misrepresentation" that my Shopify web-site is doing for you to suspend my Google Ads account & stop my planned month long ad campaign for April on April 12. When I push for specifics, things such as users "can't contact you" are given which clearly untrue. In my last communication, I said I wanted to cancel my Google Merchant Account and get my unused balance refunded. You said that wasn't possible. So, it appears you won't go forward with running my ad campaign but also won't refund my unspent account balance. Some governmental agencies might consider that a form of fraud. Thus, you need to either 1) tell me what SPECIFIC things that I'm "misrepresenting" with my Shopify store or 2) close my GMC and refund my unused funds. If not, I'll have no choice to file a complaint with my state's Attorney General's consumer protection office in regards to this situation. I don't do this full time so often I'm busy with others things than to hound this everyday. Please end with the vague hand waving to tell me what specifically needs to be fixed OR refund my unused money and close my GMC. Thank you for your time-
I must have tried another review sometime between May 7 and May 14 after trying to tweak a few things that Kaycee had suggested or Google Ads just reminded me that there were things still “outstanding” but on the same day (May 14) Peter took over my case. I think I made the most forward progress with this representative, although it ended up being short lived.
It was Peter that informed me (on May 15) that my store policy section was not appearing to be publicly facing or at least what he said got me to look at things again. I had also found some “template” material left unfilled out or needing to be removed from the Shopify policy sub-template that I had used.
I fixed those issues and Peter said he could find no other issues (although I can’t find that particular correspondence) and told me to follow the normal steps in a review request again but said to choose the “I disagree with the issue” option and then ask for a review again. I did not see the “I disagree with the issue” option and thus went forward with the regular review request. The results came back on May 18, a Saturday, and basically it was “de ja vu all over again”.
It was the weekend so Peter was out of the picture and a new guy named “Deepanker” was now my case representative. He suggested some new problems (or at least one recurring one) that my shipping details were limited (using only one shipping service) and my customer contact ability was hard to find. I re-tested contacting me through the Shopify store via another e-mail and it worked. Imagine that.
I replied to him that morning and my frustration was clearly showing. Again, I’ll re-type the fine print in the image that contains my reply and I corrected a few typos in spelling.
Hey Deepanker! My shipping information is correct, I use USPS Ground Advantage for shipping, there isn't any more specific than that needed. It's that simple. My contact information also works under the "contact information "landing page. The former helper "Peter" said last Saturday everything was fixed and ready to go. I now believe Google is intentionally harassing me. I'm not only going to file a fraud charge against you all with my state attorney's consumer protection department but I'm also going to contact my U.S. Senators & House of Representative about this constant going around in circles bringing up new things to keep my ads from being shown. I'm sure they would find this pattern of harassment interesting. As I said, you have through Weds May 23 to clear my account to finish my ads campaign that you suspended on April 12. - , Dakota Prairie Stream Seed & Grain
On May 24, I got another standard cardboard e-mail from possibly Deepanker’s brother or cousin. I gave it a quick reply of, “Go away, you piece of shit bot!!”.
The next day was a Saturday and more than seven days had passed since my last review so I hit the button again for another. I got back the results the next day and again my review failed (surprise!). I shot back a reply to Google Ads customer service. My threats didn’t seem to be making any inroads but I issued them once again. I’ll re-type the fine print of my response.
Vagueness, vagueness, vagueness, it's almost always the same with you worthless people, if there actually people involved. My letters to the South Dakota Attorney General's Office of Consumer Protection for your FRAUD of refusing to refund my remaining unspent money in my account but never giving SPECIFICS of what needs to be fixed will go out on May 28. I will also send letters to my U.S. Senators and U.S. House of Representative member on May 29 telling them of your lovey customer service help but refusing to refund unspent ad funds. Enjoy!- , Dakota Prairie Stream Seed & Grain
I calmed down a bit and thought that June was still at the outside range of people buying garden seeds so I attempted one more review after looking through things one more time. I got the standard rejection on Monday, June 3. I lashed again and then gave up doing anything more at the time. I’ll again re-type the fine print of my reply.
You people, your bots, and your customer service totally sucks and YOU ALL ARE COMPLETE LOSERS!! Always vague, never anything specific except for a limited break through with "Peter" around May 18. I'm done with you all, as far I'm concerned, you have STOLEN $115 from me because you won't refund my unused balance AND won't give me specifics about is still "wrong" with my website. My selling season is about over, my ad campaign was supposed to run for the month of April. I will spread the word to small business owners how worthless Google Ads and it's customer service is in this regard. Good bye.- , Dakota Prairie Stream Seed & Grain
In the end, its only $109 of my money that they are still holding. Maybe they are tacking on a “customer user fee” of a couple of bucks every month since my last review attempt.
I never did carry through with any of my threats of sending letters off to my state’s Office of Consumer Protection or to my Congressional people. I figure why burn the effort during the doldrums of garden seed selling in the summer and maybe by Christmas time the Google Ads review algorithms might have forgotten about me or perhaps I’ll hire on of those website whiz people who occasionally contact me and say how they can make my situation so much better. Maybe one of those folks knows how to massage the 800-pound internet god in allowing me to spend some of my frozen ad money. I sure as hell won’t give Google Ads any more money until they actually fully execute an ads campaign. We’ll see what happens in very early 2025.
Next time: Mid-Season in 2024