If you’re watching this video, I’m so sorry, because it means your Google Ad Grant is probably suspended, which I really apologize for. It’s a painful process to go through, but do not give up hope. There is a way and soon this will all be behind you. Let’s dive into common reasons the Google Ad Grant can be suspended and then the resolution path that you can pursue to get out of that suspension.
The first thing to understand is that Google Ad Grant accounts get suspended because there are issues with following the compliance policies. Google has a number of rules that you have to follow to maintain eligibility for the Google Ad Grant program. We actually have a whole separate video on that and how all of those different policies work, which you’re welcome to look at. Essentially what happens is that if you don’t follow these rules, after a certain period of time and can actually be unpredictable at times, you’re account can get suspended.
The first thing to do is to look at the different policies and understand which ones caused the issue. Often, there will be some indicator of that in the email you get saying that your account has been suspended. But sometimes it won’t be exactly clear which policy, so you want to look through all the policies really clearly and understand which ones you might have violated.
Common policies that can sometimes lead to issues are the low quality score keywords policy, the single-word keywords policy, the click-through-rate minimum – having to keep it at least above 5%, or potentially the conversion tracking policy. Those are some of the really common ones. I’d say mission-based keywords is another one – are you advertising on keywords that really relate to your organization’s mission. All of those issues can cause suspension.
Once you identify the area that caused the problem, the first thing you want to do is fix the issue. So go into your account and go through it with a fine-tooth comb and make sure that all potential compliance issues are fixed. And then, there should be a link in your email to contact Google support or to submit your account for reactivation, which will let you send your account to Google for them to look over and hopefully find that your account is exactly as it needs to be and that they can reactivate it.
This can sometimes take some time. The Google Ad Grant support team prioritizes reactivations over other requests because they know it’s urgent that you used to have the Google Ad Grant and now you don’t, but it still can take some time. A lot of times, the compliance sweeps will happen all at the same time in a month, which can lead to a big rush and people requesting the reactivation, so it can be really important to get your request in as quickly as possible so you can jump toward the head of that line if that’s feasible in terms of your time commitments. Hopefully, you’ll then have a really productive conversation with a Google representative, either by email or phone . If there are additional issues, they’ll be able to tell you these are the additional problems that we’re seeing.
One of the areas that we’ve found that can sometimes trip people up in a way that it shouldn’t necessarily is additional domains. If you have a main website domain when applied for the Google Ad Grant, that domain is automatically approved. But there also is a form you can fill add out to add an additional domain. Sometimes, we’ve seen issues where people will have two domains, both of which are approved, and they’ll get suspended for advertising the second domain, or at least sometimes we’ve heard Google support individuals saying that is the reason they were suspended.
A really good practice that we follow for all of our clients is that any time you apply for an additional domain and you’re approved, we actually take a screenshot of that approval and we stick it in a folder with all of the documents for that client so that if we need to, we can show that approval email to a Google support representative and they can see that this domain was, indeed, approved. That’s a common trick that makes it a little bit easier to keep all your ducks in a row.
Another common thing that can lead to suspension is failing to fill out the annual Google program’s survey. If this was sent to you while you were on vacation, you might have missed it. It might be worth searching through your inbox if you haven’t done it in the past year to just find that survey and fill it out and make sure that the customer ID for your account is exactly what you put into the survey so they can match you to that survey response. If you type even one of the numbers wrong, it won’t match and therefore won’t have a record that you did, in fact, fill out the survey.
If you’re running into issues with this, let us know. We have a team of people – we have one and a half full-time people who just work on helping organizations apply for the Google Ad Grant and then helping them get unsuspended if they are suspended. We’d be happy to maybe help you out and maybe after that maybe even help you manage it so you don’t get suspended again in the future. Just let us know. Our website URL is nonprofitmegaphone.com.
If you do have other questions, feel free to share them in the comments below. We’ll look forward to seeing some of those. Again, so sorry that you’re suspended, but we’re looking forward to maybe helping you get out of that and hopefully never be suspended in the future. Thanks again.
