Update: See AdWords Customer Service Improvements
Google is abusing the voluntary user-to-user AdWords help forum as a cheap way to deliver poor customer service. I’m calling for AdWords Top Contributors to boycott answering specific classes of user question, or to abandon answering altogether. I’m asking for non-AdWords Top Contributors to apply pressure, or withdraw their voluntary services in protest. When Google delivers a minimally acceptable level of customer service and allows the forums to return to a user-to-user dialogue, I’ll return to attempting to answer user questions.
Details, Details
For several years, Google has run an undocumented process called “editorial review” that prevents “Active” advertisements from running for a period between minutes and never. The only way to diagnose why adverts don’t run for this cause, is to observe that each keyword is tagged with “this keyword does not trigger any adverts”, or even more mystifyingly, that one active advert may gain impressions while another active advert that still needs review is getting no impressions at all. If all active adverts are in editorial review, the diagnostic error message for each keyword is technically true, but is an unhelpful diagnostic, because the advert itself is marked as “Active” instead of “Held Pending Review”. Users are very confused by “Active” adverts failing to run, and a misleading diagnostic error message being delivered for each keyword sheds no illumination.
The AdWords Top Contributors are used to answering questions from new advertisers about their adverts failing to run because of editorial review. It is wildly unhelpful for Google to mark *keywords* with a misleading diagnostic error message that is really about a problem relating to *adverts*. Queries about new and changed adverts failing to run are the long time top of all questions on the forum.
Account Review
More recently, Google seems to be making a pigs-ear out of signing up new advertisers, in a phase that appears to be called “account review“. The diagnostic symptom for the slow signup process is another keyword level message that the account has exceeded the budget. This message is shown even if there are funds in the account and no spend. It is wildly unhelpful for Google to mark *keywords* with a misleading diagnostic error message that is really about a problem with the *account*.
You’ll find no documentation from Google about editorial review, or account review. For years, the editorial review has existed, and has annoyed and confused advertisers, while Google relies on users to deliver the bad news to other users. The account review started rising to prominence in the forum through 2008, and in 2009 has sometimes been the key subject of up to 80% of first page questions.
Making the account review issue even more difficult, is that when an advertiser signs up, their account appears to automatically go into review. Until the account is approved, it appears that the would-be advertiser is denied access to AdWords Customer Service. So far as users in the forum can tell, would-be advertisers are sent an email, recommending that the would-be advertiser seeks help for any of their problems in the user-to-user forum. So the people who have been given no information from Google, are passed, by Google, all users with a problem that they don’t know anything about. Meanwhile Google’s Customer Service staff, who do have access to the account information, and *could* give the would-be advertiser some support, are not available – and there is no Google message, no help page at all, about the account review process.
This looks and feels like an abuse of the AdWords user-to-user help forums. Sending would-be advertisers to the AdWords user-to-user help forums for advice and guidance about an undocumented process created by Google and a consequence of Google’s failure to properly document and diagnose advertising failures, is an appallingly poor communication with customers.
Impact and Further Miscommunication
The impact of an account review is that either adverts don’t run at all, they run for a short time (a few days), or they run for a few hours per day.
The AdWords Home Page carries the message:
So, every day, the AdWords Help Forum fills up with disappointed advertisers wanting their adverts to deliver customers. The reality appears to be that the account review may take weeks. Who delivers the disappointing message? Other users, because Google do not permit access to Customer Service. Typical questions:
Account simply does not respond to keywords after running perfectly for 30 days
Who Pays For Google To Provide A Search Engine, and Other Services?
One more datum – Google’s revenue, with which it pays staff and buys all that lovely hardware – comes almost entirely from advertisers.
If this was Picasa, or Gmail or some of the other free services that Google offers, Google’d be on the associated blog immediately with a status update. There’d be a description of the problem. There’d be a commitment that it wouldn’t happen again.
Advertisers fund pretty much the whole shebang, and are treated like scum. Misleading messages about the speed of access to advertising. No useful diagnostics. No access to customer service, and ridiculous messages urging users to seek help from other users about a Google internal process.
Can you think of anything that could be worse? I can, and Google is doing that too. I don’t want to confuse the issues, so I’ll handle *that* abuse of advertisers in a different posting.
Summary
It is unreasonable customer service to offer advertising the same day, and then to use a multi-week process, and then deny applicants access to customer service, referring would-be advertisers to other users for support on an undocumented process.
It is unreasonable to fail to tell users why their adverts are not running, and then expect a user-to-user discussion forum to provide advice to other users, about an undocumented Google internal process.
The simplest code changes and translations involved should take a matter of hours to implement, and perhaps a day or two of testing. I’m not talking about rewriting the code to cope with *actually* adding a new message, just altering the existing message to countenance the possibility that the account is in account review or that the advert is in editorial review – and linking each message to a new page about the Google process.
How long have advertisers been faced with misleading diagnostic error messages? Not days. Not weeks. Not even months. The missing editorial review message has been not present for *years*.
It’s time that Google stopped abusing advertisers and the user-to-user forum.
Refusal To Co-Operate With Advertiser Abuse
I’m asking for all AdWords Top Contributors to refuse to answer any question that has to do with misleading diagnostic error messages. I’ll be asking all non-AdWords Top Contributors to help the AdWords TC’s to put pressure on Google. The user-to-user forums should not be treated as a cheap way to provide bad Customer Service. It is an abuse of the social contract that we give up our time to help other users for free. There’s providing a free user-to-user forum and there’s taking an effing liberty – and Google has crossed that line.
What is the minimum needed to help advertisers?
- There’s a Google web page describing Editorial Review Delays
- There’s a Google web page describing Account Review Delays
- There’s a message to indicate that an advert is held pending an Editorial Review
- There’s a message to indicate that an account is held pending an Account Review
- The home page message indicating that accounts will start generating advertisers in one day is amended to reflect reality
This abuse of advertisers and of volunteer user-to-user forums must stop. The forums are supposed to be there for community questions and answers about AdWords – not as a cheap substitute for customer service.
What’s My Qualification To Speak To This Issue?
I was the first user to reach 1000 responses in the old AdWords Help Forum – two years ago; the next person to hit that level of response did so in summer, last year. I’m one of the new AdWords Help forum Top Contributors. I’ve believe that I’ve read much more than 10,000 user questions over a period of about four years of intermittent activity on the forum. I have a Google AdWords Individual accreditation, which I’ve had since early 2005. I run a small agency with a number of paid search clients including some premium accounts – giving me access to premium account support teams in the UK sales office for those clients, as well as our “normal” agency support team.
I suspect that few people outside Google have read so many AdWords user questions – unless it is the other AdWords Top Contributors.
Lakatos wrote,
I agree with you, Jeremy. While we have always been ready to share our AdWords expertise with newbies and beginners as far as we could spare some free time for this purpose, I also think we should not be downgraded by Google to substitutes for error messages.
Lakatos
AdWords TC
Link | March 3rd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Kim Clink 'Mrs C' wrote,
Very well put. I can not agree more. Google is doing a grave disservice to advertisers in failing to disclose the mysterious, undocumented “account review” and confusing advertisers with inaccurate error messages about “exceeded budget”. Advertisers should not be sent on a wild goose chase to figure out why their account are not working properly. If Google want’s to create this problem they should be ready and willing to fully address the issue in their customer service department vs. sending auto reply messages directing people to the public forum.
Link | March 3rd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Richard Ball wrote,
I, too, am a little perplexed by what’s transpiring in the AdWords Help forum. It’s filling up so quickly with questions that only Google can answer. At this rate, there’s no point in having a members-helping-members forum. The members cannot help. Google has to decide what to do.
Likewise, so do the TCs. I don’t want to abandon that community, but I also don’t want to waste my time. Thinking about the best course of action…
BTW, Google ought to consider not taking on any new advertisers until they resolve this. Maybe they should slap a “beta” label on the AdWords signup process and close it. ;-)
Link | March 4th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
I monitor the affiliate and eBook communities. I like to know what techniques they are using. My impression is that the eBook and affiliate recruiters have gone into hyperdrive, in an effort to sign up laid-off staff and recession struck desperate people. I suspect that accounts for the huge mass of new, ignorant, scammed users.
I suspect that Google is stemming that tide – but ducking confronting the issue. They do so, by making sure their processes *aren’t* affected, and shovelling the shit into the user-to-user forum.
If that’s so, that’s an even more egregious failure. If AdWords is being used as a tool to scam desperate people, surely it’d be better to highlight the issue. Talk to the press. Don’t break the sign up process for normal advertisers, and dump rubbish in the user forum, That’s so pre-millennial. “Hide from the problem, and maybe it’ll go away”? Yeccch.
Link | March 4th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Barbara wrote,
Obviously I agree with what you’ve written here and appreciate what I’ve learned from the help all 4 of you have given on the help forums old & present.
What can I (or any other advertiser) do to get Google to change if you TCs can’t make them change?
I’m scared to think what the “worse” abuse of advertisers is, but I hope I don’t have to wait long to read it!
Link | March 5th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
Hi Barbara – we’re posting some detailed stuff on AdWords Help Experts. Looks like that’ll become the primary way we help AdWords Users – it avoids the noise caused by Google internal processes, and we get to use graphics, which we can’t embed in the forum. Seeing which button to click makes a big difference, especially for very new advertisers or new features.
I’m not sure that we *aren’t* having any impact. Wait and see. Looking at the forum yesterday, I noticed fewer messages about undocumented Google internal processes. That’s *probably* good news – but there’s “weather” and “climate”; it could just be better weather, while the climate is still worsening. Time will tell :)
What most bugs me about this, is the attitude to advertisers that it demonstrates. Google will bypass an agency and offer the clients “optimisations” directly. But they don’t know the clients business. The automated optimisations don’t include negative keywords; they haven’t done the landing page experiments. There may be some agencies that don’t work with the client, but the idea of just bypassing all and every agency is disrespectful to both agency and client. That kind of approach to advertisers and agencies riddles AdWords. Disrespect. The perception of making a fast buck. Forgetting to offer messages. Using the user-to-user forum as an easy option dumping ground rather than actively support users. If we can affect that, I’d be surprised, but very grateful. It’d make *selling* AdWords easier, it’d make being an agency easier, and it’d win faithful new advertisers if Google *felt* like less of a giant corporate obscuring ripoff. Standard marketing dictum
It’s all, really, about Marketing Communications, surprisingly – but MarCom to new and existing *clients*, not to prospects. Like many organisations they appear to have focused on bringing in new business and are not attending to the needs of the existing base. Boom versus recessionary models of marketing :)
Link | March 5th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
I’ve had a phone conversation with AdWordsPro.Sarah. Google has taken this issue seriously. I’m surprised and very happy. They have committed to changing the process so that advertisers are better supported and will receive less confusing messaging about the state of the account.
New advertisers waiting for account review will not be sent to the user to user forum for assistance, but this may take some time to happen. We may even see some improvements in the general level of communication with advertisers and agencies.
@Barbara – I broached my “worst example of handling AdWords Advertisers” case with AWP.Sarah. I’m pretty sure that it is receiving attention. I’ll gleefully speak out if I see nothing has happened over the next few months, though.
Link | March 6th, 2009 at 1:52 am
Kim Clink 'Mrs C' wrote,
Well done Jeremy. TCs have a voice and Google is listening. I could not be more happy – for everyone; advertisers, TC’s and Google.
Kim
AdWords TC
Link | March 6th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Barbara wrote,
Nice to see you back ; )
Link | March 7th, 2009 at 5:58 am
Steven Vella wrote,
I’m new to AdWords and one week into creating my first campaign, I’ve been hit by the “Under Review” virus.
It has taken me months to learn from successful PPC marketers what PPC and Adwords was and how to use it.
It took me a few minutes to create an Adword campaign and approx 4 days to go from a smooth running campaign to no impressions. Then 2 days to read what the cause could be through the support network. Now my end date for advertising has passed and I only got 4 days out of the 10 showing the ads.
As a result, I am now in the category you wrote about “So, every day, the AdWords Help Forum fills up with disappointed advertisers wanting their adverts to deliver customers.”
Surely, there must have been a quicker way for me to have reached this dissappointing situation than the round about way I did.
Link | March 10th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Rob wrote,
Heck, I’m still confused as what is happening in my account.
It’s over a year old, WELL past the dreaded “unannounced review” (that I did experience a year ago) and JUST A WEEK AGO my account has suddenly stopped showing campaigns.
I’m baffled and of course, any effort to contact google results in the usual rehashed crap “Here is the usual causes, now go to the forum for more help”.
Frustrating.
Link | March 16th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
Hi Rob – see the update in the later article. Google is improving the communications, but it will take time. When it is fully resolved, you’ll get a reference to the right service team, instead of a meaningless recommendation to use the forum.
I’ve had *another* long conversation with a Google staffer today, about this. I am absolutely convinced that they are taking the problems seriously – having made an initial error.
Link | March 17th, 2009 at 2:16 am
StayGold wrote,
Hi Jeremy – Just wanted to thank you for fighting everybodys case! I really hope that Google is listening and reacting to your common sense opinions. We are not asking for the world, just a decent level of Customer Service and Support.
Link | March 18th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
@StayGold – thanks. It’s very time consuming. We’re back up to 70% of the top 40 threads this morning, being confused advertisers – new and old – with pointless messages and non-messages.
I’m pushing up the pressure again. Something is still deeply broken. Even an apology in the forum header would be a start on communicating.
Link | March 18th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Malcolm wrote,
I could not get a merchant number from my bank until I clearly gave my trading address, telephone number and returns policy on my web site. I can’t find any of these on the Google web site. Surely trading standards wouldn’t allow this.
My company is new and has been trading on the web for 4 months, if I search my company with a direct name followed by co.uk Google don’t show it, Yahoo was showing me within a week, I have signed with Google adwords, I was horrified how much certain cpc cost, over £5 cpc!! on some adwords words.
I have picked the cheap one’s of 0.04p cpc its not what I wanted but I don’t have a massive budget to give away. I would pay £5 cpc if I got a guaranteed sale out of it and was charging a fortune for my product.
I understand its a competitive market out there, but my adword and my company still don’t show on the Google ratings. Google is not a quick fix answer, I guess I’ll have to wait for the word optimization to finally kick in.
Link | March 18th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
@Malcolm – you appear to have several different issues. I think you need a short conversation about internet strategy. Your current approaches look destined to make you miserable. You’re ranking on a lower volume search engine – about 12% to 30% of the UK search volume that Google delivers, depending on whose numbers you believe and which segment. You’ve picked suboptimal keywords because the AvCPC is low. That’s not *usually* a strategy for success.
I *do* have phone numbers for Google. We use Manager Defined Spend for qualified accounts – so refunds are not an issue. There’s a reason why agencies are agencies – they invest a lot of time understanding the systems so clients don’t have to.
£5 per click is peanuts – for the right business; I’ll bet that’s £5 bid, though and if your Quality Score is high the Ad Discounter will knock that down substantially. I can’t comment on your specific business, of course, but I’ve got accounts where some keywords (typically low volume) get 1:5 conversion rates, and others have closer to 1:500 – it depends on what they are selling, whether they want awareness as well as sales, all sorts of strategies.
AdWords and Google SEO are complex – partly because they are valuable. It’s basic economics! Things too good to be true, usually are. Five years ago, you could have tried what you did, and the consequences would have been either good or not too harmful. Its a lot harder now.
Speaking bluntly – if you were my customer, or the customer of one of the other AdWords Help Forum Top Contributors (I trust them as honest players), you can probably be listed in AdWords in a matter of a few hours for appropriate searches. There’s a few types of business that either can’t be listed at all, or will take extra time to review – but usually delays of no more than a couple of business days. Agencies are adept at negotiating the byways – it’s what we do. All day. Every day. :)
Take a look at some of the other articles here for businesses just getting started with internet marketing. There are inexpensive ways to make some headway – they tend to be new, so you probably don’t know of them yet. Once they get recognised, the value & complexity tends to go up. Economics. Again.
Link | March 19th, 2009 at 1:04 am
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
AdWords Help Forum Weather Report for today: 25% – the skies are clearing and the outlook is sunny. The forum is *not* dominated, this morning, by irate advertisers misdirected to the forum.
Forum health is monitored, near daily, in my Twitter Feed.
Link | March 19th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Phil B wrote,
Hi Jeremy,
I was wondering if you still had open dialogue with Google on these issues; we’ve got a trademark-related campaign (for which we have received approval from the TM holder; our ad copy is no longer being disapproved) but ads just aren’t showing. The adwords diagnostic tool is giving the dreaded message about none of my keywords triggering my Ad; and has been for days.
Adwords support are ignoring us. I’m pretty much at my wits end – I did try tweeting Sarah directly, but I figure she’s probably the sort of person who has stuck her head above the parapet and had it shot off in the resulting avalanche of people desperate for help.
Obviously, we’ve got a client who’s pondering what’s going on, and Google are making us (and our certified professional) look inept. You wouldn’t mind so much, if AdWords wasn’t a licence for them to print money, pretty much.. It amazes me that they don’t have a phone number for supporting people who’ve passed the cert.
Any ideas on who I can badger for help?
TIA
Phil
Link | March 26th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
Hi Phil –
we do have a Google Agency Team – so we have named contacts – email addresses and phone numbers that we contact for problems. Looks like that only gets given to larger agencies. Agency accreditation comes with a sustained managed spend of around $33k/month. I’m not actually sure what the threshold is – we’ve done a lot of work as an “API” agency, where we do all the work primarily via the API/AdWords Editor, and a big name agency collects the account management kudos :)
The AWPs manage multiple forums, are engaged in customer advocacy in-house – they carry messages *into* Google as well as *out* of Google. Incredibly helpful as they are – there are a handful of them and much more than 100,000 advertisers. The forum is not supposed to be Customer Service – that “Contact Us” link is *supposed* to do the job. But it gets broken. Often. But usually only affecting a small segment of users.
I’ll contact you directly. I have an idea. It might not work.
Link | March 27th, 2009 at 9:41 am
blog456 wrote,
There are so many problems with google ads its not even amusing anymore. How do the company imagine people want to pay for something that is a notorious headache? And their customer support is non-existent and simply horrible. These Member help websites are awful. A company needs a proper support system, not some lame forum where other people who have problems post questions where you have to “hope” sometime in your life you may actually find assistance…
Link | March 28th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
The user-to-user forums aren’t supposed to be a replacement for customer service; that was entirely the point of why we took action. Google has been putting customer service teams in place and reducing the number of misleading messages guiding users to the forum.
That’s exactly what my “Weather Report” measures. In the top N questions, how many are about Google Internal Process State and can not be answered by another user.
Questions like “which is the best geotargeting mechanism to use for this case” – that’s fine in user-to-user. But “When will my advert be reviewed” should be a customer service response *and never asked in public – because it is answered in the account*.
There is value in user-to-user, but not as a replacement for customer service – absolutely right.
Link | March 28th, 2009 at 8:16 am
PacificFlix wrote,
Well that sounds exactly like my problem. So I guess I’ll sit in this “under Review” phantom status until Google gets their act together :(
Link | March 30th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Holly Blue wrote,
Wow, too bad I did not know about this before I signed up for Adwords! As a new advertiser, I swallowed the bait hook line and sinker — I thought my ad would immediately start running. Imagine my surprise, now 4 days later, when it has not shown once.
As you mention, there is absolutely no info on why this is the case in the official help files — just a directive to seek answers in the forum. This is a ridiculous disgrace. As you point out, the advertisers are the ones actually forking over (in some cases very large amounts of) cash to Google. We do not deserve this misleading, shoddy treatment. I hope this issue becomes widespread public knowledge. Thank you for your excellent expose.
Link | April 9th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Angela wrote,
Great article. Everything started when they implemented the flawed quality index score. That is when my headaches began. My score was 1 out of 10 an didn’t know what else to do so I switched domains. Now I’m magically 7-8 out of 10 but my ads are still not showing. Something is seriously wrong with the adwords program and I can’t imagine how many millions of dollars they’ve lost in revenue. I just don’t get where the problem is.
Link | April 14th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Jeremy Chatfield wrote,
HI Angela, at 7-8/10 but not showing adverts? Use the AdWords 3 Beta. Select the adverts tab and look at the status. If the adverts are still marked as under review – that’ll be why they don’t run. Otherwise there could be a bunch of reasons – from having too much money to trigger the “suspension” yet too little money to allow a click, through problems with Google Checkout, or violations of the Unacceptable Content Policies. Hard to say more without taking a look.
Link | April 14th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
West Lothian Web Designer wrote,
Excellent article, and I hope they pay attention.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Jason
Link | September 16th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Raph wrote,
That’s the feeling we have with the Adwords Forum in French. We’re only two TC… and it is not the first time we think about give it up :(.
Do we follow ? I hope so !
Raph (Belgian TC)
Link | December 22nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
charles wrote,
How do you know when a company has a monopoly on a service? When they can offer little to no customer service and there is not much you can do about it. In my feild it is necessary to use Adwords, but THeir customer service is horrible, they refuse to take responsibility for anything, Disclose nothing, and if you ever need a refund forget about it. I was charged 7 dollars for ads out of my area…. Clicks out of my area. I have spent thousands with Adwords and they rufused to credit me 7 bucks.. unreal. Horrible. Cant wait for Microsoft and Yahoo to combine., maybe then we will have a choice.
Link | January 25th, 2010 at 9:13 pm