According to Google’s Bad Ads Report, that was released this morning, the search monster (or giant whichever you prefer) disabled 524 Million bad ads and banned more than 214,000 advertisers in 2014. They also disabled 700,000 sites in 86 different languages.
Google defines a bad ad as “those touting counterfeit or harmful products,” such as firearms, cigarettes, and pitches making misleading claims. Google also itemized, “trick to click approaches” accounted for the largest percentage of problem ads with over 43 million ads being disabled or rejected for the violation.
“We have a team of analysts who work around the clock to protect users, and continue to hone our detection technology to identify bad ads and stop bad actors as it’s a vital part of keeping our ads ecosystem clean,” wrote Vikaram Gupta, director of ads engineering at Google, in a blog post.
Weight loss, travel, and of course business opportunity are specific industries that seemed to spawn a surplus of scams. Last year alone, TrustInAds.org (a group including Google, AOL, and Yahoo) collectively removed more than 2.5 million ads related to weight loss.
Over 9.6 million ads were disabled for health-care related violations — think illegal online pharmacies.
The report also points out that more than 4.3 million ads were disapproved for copyright infringement.
I was banned for something that I did 10 years ago when I was just starting out and didn’t know any better. Good luck rectifying the situation now.
Very good blog! Do you have any tips for aspiring writers? I’m hoping to start my own blog soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you suggest starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m totally confused .. Any tips? Bless you!
Cheers! My main advice to you is not overthink it. Do a little research and then jump right in. So many people get stuck in the research and discovery process that they never move forward. As for what platform to choose. My recommendation is always WordPress on your own hosting. There are many hosting companies out there that offer very inexpensive hosting plans and you can often find coupons for your first months service cost. This way you have control of everything, your domain, and anything else that “lives” on it. GoDaddy for a cheap domain (give the actual domain some thought though), and Hostgator for inexpensive shared hosting. Good luck!