Why My Google Ads Account Got Suspended and How to Fix

If your Google Ads Account got suspended, you need to resolve the issue pretty fast. Every day of ads you lose ends up ruining your sales flow and the momentum you’re building as a business.

At New Digital marketing agency, we’ve encountered all types of account suspensions. On average, up to 15% of Google Ads accounts face suspension at some point. In certain industries, the suspension rate can exceed 50%, making it less a question of if, but rather when.

The reasons behind why your Google Ads account got suspended are quite varied though. Sometimes your account gets suspended due to negligence. In other cases, you might be consciously doing something that Google doesn’t like.

Stay tuned because this article from New Digital will help you get to the bottom of why you got suspended and how to revive a suspended Google Ads account. Having managed dozens of campaigns ourselves, we’ll be sharing tips and tricks from our own experience to bring your account back to life.

Key Takeaways

• Google Ads suspensions disrupt sales momentum, so it’s crucial to address issues quickly to avoid prolonged setbacks.
• Up to 15% of accounts experience suspensions, with certain industries facing rates above 50%.
• Violations often stem from policy breaches, misleading content, or payment inconsistencies.
• Non-compliance with Google’s advertising policies, especially in regulated industries, commonly triggers suspensions.
• Payment problems, from expired cards to mismatched billing details, can also halt ads and may require immediate correction.
• Attempts to circumvent suspensions by setting up new accounts or reusing banned payment methods can worsen the situation.
• Misleading ad content or disconnected landing pages can prompt Google to take action against accounts.
• Consistently breaching guidelines builds a case against your account, increasing the chance of a permanent ban.
• Restoring a suspended account requires identifying the issue, resolving policy breaches, and submitting an appeal with documentation.

 

Here’s Why Your Google Ads Account Got Suspended

We’ve refined 7 general reasons why your activity might earn you a Google Ads suspension.

1. You’ve violated Google Ads Policies
2. You’ve encountered issues with your payment method
3. You are circumventing Google Ads’ policies (or behaving as though you are)
4. Your ad copy is misleading
5. Your landing pages are misleading/poor-quality
6. You’ve violated Google policies multiple times
7. You’re not treating your account properly

Let’s go over each in detail.

1) Violating Google’s Advertising Policies

Selling certain products will lead to an instant suspension. After all, Google needs to comply with local laws if it wants to continue doing business in a particular jurisdiction.

The operative word here is local.

Let’s suppose that you’re an honest person making an innocent mistake. This is how most of these suspensions happen anyway. The thing is, laws often change from state to state or even city to city. For instance, one state could ban a certain item while it’s completely legal in another one. If you don’t read up on local laws in your industry, then you might miss this. Worse yet, you might have hired an unscrupulous account manager who doesn’t understand the nuance.

There are a bunch of more specific violated practices though. That’s what the next sections will cover.

The Solution

Make sure you review both Google’s policies and your local laws regarding the items that you’re selling and ensure you comply with their guidelines.

2) Payment Issues

This is probably the most common issue. And it’s often through no fault of your own.

Payment Issues That Aren’t Your Fault

For instance, if your card has expired or has insufficient funds, then Google will pause your account until you have a well-funded payment method once again.

Another inadvertent mistake could be when you change your billing address, but the address associated with the credit card remains the same. Google will detect this inconsistency and shut your account down.

Payment Issues Due to Neglect or Malice

However, some more malicious payment behaviors could land you in hot water.

Cards that Google deems suspicious, often because they were flagged or linked to a previous suspension, can cause you trouble. It’s a fairly common situation where a company account gets suspended, and someone at that same company opens a new account but uses the company card from before.

Here are a few more suspicious cases:

• Promotional code abuse
• Requesting chargebacks
• Suspicious payment activity

The Solution

Confirm that you’re using a card in good standing with the bank that issues it and with Google Ads.

 

3) Circumventing Systems

Once you get banned, don’t try to circumvent their review process by setting up a new account. Google has a sophisticated AI mechanism that will allow them to detect when you’ve posted the same banned ad as you did on another account. Since this is such a serious violation, it will become tough for you to recover your account in the future.

Here are some things that Google considers circumvention:

• Creating several ad accounts
• Using the same credit card on multiple suspended accounts
• Sending Google Ads traffic to a website that was already banned on a previous account

However, there is one more scenario that looks a lot like circumvention but actually isn’t. Sometimes, you can have an old Ads account that you forgot about. It could belong to the same company with the same billing methods. This will raise alarms for Google as they would see it as a duplicate account even if it was just an honest mistake.

The Solution

Try to confirm that you don’t have any other accounts associated with your card, especially suspended Google Ads accounts. Definitely don’t try to create new accounts after your old one is under review.

 

4) Misleading Ad Copy

Do you know why I didn’t title this article:

“One secret hack to get your Google Ads Account unsuspended: Uncover What Google Doesn’t Want You to Know”?

Because it would be scummy and dishonest. Google doesn’t want you making false promises – it lowers the quality of their search results. This applies both to Google Ads copy and SEO articles.

The Solution

Write realistic ad copy and promise results that your product can actually deliver. If you’re making a big claim, back it up on the landing page with references to trustworthy data. Also, don’t make any exaggerations.

 

5) Low-Quality or Misleading Landing Pages

To keep your account healthy, you need to evaluate the promises made on your landing pages as well. The same advice applies as it does with ad copy. Don’t make misleading claims. And more importantly, make sure that the ads and the landing pages are actually related. Sometimes mix-ups happen and you could be sending your ads to the wrong page. That’s when Google steps in and suspends your account.

Aside from the copy, Google also evaluates your website to see if you’re providing a good user experience. If you use oddly contrasting colors or excessive pop-ups, landing page visitors will likely bounce. This will then trigger Google’s crawlers which will evaluate the cause and suspend your account. Once again, Google doesn’t want to send its users to websites with a bad user experience. That simply wouldn’t be good for business.

 

The Solution

For every landing page, ask the following: is this the face you want for your brand? Evaluate all your copy and visuals based on that question. Don’t forget to check that you’re sending your ads to the right pages!

One more thing, sometimes, you might have your account suspended because a hacker installed malware on your website. In that case, you’ll need to run a program like Sucuri to detect what happened.

 

6) Repeated Policy Violations

It doesn’t matter what system we’re talking about, repeated offenders are rarely looked upon fondly. If you’re constantly accruing policy violations, you could be working your way up to a ban. It doesn’t matter the size of the violations, eventually, you’ll run afoul of Google.

The Solution

When you’ve made even a minor violation, address the issue promptly to show Google that you care. Don’t let violations stack up.

7) Suspicious Account Behavior

Basically, if you’re doing things that look unnatural, Google will become suspicious. For instance, you were spending $100 per day on Google ads and then suddenly you raise the budget to $7,000. Does that look natural to you? Who just randomly gets an extra million per year to spend on ads?

The same thing applies to:

• Frequently changing the owner of your account
• Changing your IP address as you manage the account

The Solution

Don’t try to share the same manager account and keep your settings consistent.

How You Can Prevent Suspensions Proactively

Most of the time, we’ve found that advertisers are just doing the best they can with their accounts. The issue is that few people have time to read through all the guidelines. Especially if you’re running a business.

Here are some Do’s and Don’ts for fighting suspensions before they happen.

Google Ad Quality

DO:

• Cite your sources when you make a bold claim in your copy or on your landing pages.
• Confirm that your landing pages and copy are appropriate for the subject of the keyword.

DON’T

• Make false claims or exaggerations about your products.
• Use clickbait in your ad copy
• Use excessive symbols, emojis, or capitalization in your ads.

 

Restrictions on Regulated Industries (Healthcare, Gambling)

DO:

• Read Google Ads’ policies and guidelines for your industry.
• Understand local regulations for every city or region you target your ads to.
• Adhere to all regulations.

DON’T:

• Run exploitative ads.

 

Your Website

DO:

• Provide a great and functional user experience
• Regularly update your website to ensure accuracy
• Implement GDPR or other consent flows for collecting user data

DON’T:

• Use cloaking tactics to hide your real website
• Use black-hat SEO methods to optimize your website
• Include malware and harmful code on your website

Your Google Ads Account

DO:

• Log into your account regularly so it doesn’t become inactive.
• Action any violations you incur as they come up.

DON’T

• Create a second account to circumvent suspension.
• Engage in click fraud to the detriment of your competitors.
• Share the same login details between different people.
• Make sudden and major changes to your account.

Payments

DO:

• Keep your billing information up to date and make changes as they happen.

DON’T:

• Constantly request chargebacks from your bank.
• Use the same card as you used on a suspended account.
• Suddenly fund your account with exponentially more money than before.

Keywords

DO:

• Target keywords that are of interest to your potential customers

DON’T

• Use trademarks that belong to your competitors
• Use excessively broad or irrelevant keywords

 

How to Get Your Google Ads Account Reinstated

Your account has been suspended. Now what?

As long as you haven’t done something egregious, you likely have a good chance of getting the account back.

Here’s how we would approach things if we were trying to get an account back after suspension.

Start By Identifying the Issue

Google will send you a very clear and explicit email detailing the violation. It will include the specific policies that you violated so that you can look them up.

Once you’ve read the accusations, you can begin confirming whether they happened or whether they were a mistake on Google’s part. As we’ve noted earlier, many of these violations happen without you even knowing that they happened in the first place.

For instance, if they took issue with your ad copy or landing pages, have a read-through. And look at the keywords you targeted too. Even if something doesn’t seem like a problem to you, you could ask AI (or a competent Google Ads manager) to check over it and see if there’s any room for a different interpretation.

You should also review your account history to check in on things like payment issues, major changes to your campaigns or your settings, and so on.

You can also use the tips we mentioned for resolving each of the common Google Ads issues. And if you aren’t sure about something, reach out to us at New Digital.

 

Resolve It and Submit an Appeal

We’ve outlined several different methods for resolving these suspensions.

Basically, you just need to make everything right. Plus, ensure that you document the whole problem and what you’ve done to resolve it. Take screenshots, and get a copy of cybersecurity reports. Do everything to let Google know that the issue has been resolved.

Once you’ve documented your steps towards fixing the issue, you can send this, along with a courteous message, to Google Ads requesting that they review your case. This is also the best time to ask questions (politely) if you think that they made a mistake somewhere.

Use Google Ads’ appeal form and fill everything in within the boundaries that they’ve outlined. Provide as much context as possible and write clearly. You should probably ask someone more familiar with Google Ads than you to review your appeal, you don’t want to miss anything.

 

Audit Regularly for Compliance

If your appeal is accepted, then congratulations! But to make sure you’ve learned your lesson, you should only release a small campaign at first just to test the waters. It would also be wise to audit the rest of your account to see if it aligns with Google’s guidelines just so that you give yourself a truly fresh start.

Stay up to date with any changes in the future.

Need Help with a Suspended Google Ads Account?

We’ve given you a lot of tools to combat Google Ads suspensions. But there is still a lot of nuance. While we can’t cover every case in exhaustive detail here, we could discuss your particular case over a call.

Combatting a suspension is usually a major time drain, and it’s not worth the stress either. You should continue focusing on the big picture while a Google Ads expert like the ones at New Digital clears things up for you.