Sean Marshall, Director of SEM PPCAssociates

1. Overcoming a Quality Score Slap Sean Marshall Director SEM, PPC Associates www.PPCAssociates.com

2. Quality Score Slaps 101

3. What is a Quality Score Slap? Advertiser is banned from AdWords due to either manual review or automated analysis Includes all accounts linked to “bad account” and potentially IP addresses too

4. How Do You Know You’ve Been Slapped? Email from Google telling you QS of 1s across the board Can’t get clicks on your account Having some ad text disapproved or a few keywords with QS 1 is not a slap! A decline in traffic is not a slap, unless the decline goes to 1 or 0 clicks a day

5. Reasons for Slaps, #1: Categorization Sources: https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66238; http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=28439&topic=30210&page=guide.cs&answer=190447

6. Reasons for Slaps, #2: Multiple Violations of Ts & Cs

7. Reasons for Slaps, #3: Egregious One-Time Violation Sources: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=28449&guide=28446&page=guide.cs

8. Reasons for Slaps, #4: Error by Google Miscategorized? Site outage? Phone number?!!!

9. Overcoming a Slap

10. Step 1: Figure out the problem Talk to your Google rep – they have a tool! No rep? Call Google customer support or find someone with a rep

11. Step 2: Start Your Investigation Who is responsible? Are they still at your company? Was it a mistake or intentional? Has it been corrected? How do you know it won’t happen again?

12. Step 3: Prepare Your Case – Summary of Potential Arguments Unique Relevant Legitimate Lucrative Reformed

13. Uniqueness Arguments We were one of the first companies in this space We are the only company to offer 24/7 customer support Every product on our site is tested by experts

14. Relevancy Arguments We buy keywords like “widget” and “blue widget” because we sell these items We have more than 50 AdWords landing pages tailored to specific ad groups Ad groups have specific ad text Most keywords have a QS of >7 ImageSource: http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/6/21/thisthreadis128585095970765586.jpg

15. Legitimacy Arguments We have raised X millions of dollars We have served more than 500,000 customers. We have an A+ rating from the BBB We’ve been in business since 1995 We won six Webbys

16. Lucrative Arguments In the last year, we’ve spend $XXX,XXX on Google AdWords Our financial plan calls for an increase of X% in this budget for FY 2011 Our market is growing by X% a year ImageSource: http://blog.adhack.com/2010/01/26/suggested-2010-resolution-for-ad-agencies-understand-the-google/

17. Reformed Arguments We have put mechanisms in place to make sure this won’t happen again The guy who did this was fired We will strive to far exceed minimum AdWords compliance standards

18. Step 4: Submit Request Re-Instatement Be polite not combative Don’t talk about the competition Ask your rep to personally plead your case (office hours?) Be prepared to follow through on promises immediately Follow up until you get an answer

19. Thank You! sean@ppcassociates.com www.ppcassociates.com (PPC agency) www.blogation.net (PPC blog)