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Comment by konschubert | Hacker News Reader

I've started to sell a physical product that I make and have had my google merchant account suspended twice.

The algorithms claim that my ads are misleading. I don't think they are, I hope they aren't.

The first time, I appealed and it got un-suspended. No reason given. I thought: Cool, must have been a mistake but it's been sorted out.

Then, after a couple days, another suspension.

Now I don't know what to do.

Google ads and google merchant center seems to be a science in itself, but I don't have the time to learn it all, nor the budget to pay a consultant.

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I'm in the same situation.

I bought a laser cutter and some other production equipment, and started making home decor. I sell pretty simple stuff, like door signs and coasters.

Google Merchant Center also suspended my account for being "misleading". I have no ads, just a product feed for Google Shopping. They won't tell me what's "misleading" about my products.

Man, we should start a support group.

PS: Now I know how I know your name :) Thanks for making that great HN responses email tool!

By the way, I made one for Telegram, if you use that:

https://gitlab.com/stavros/hn-reply-bot

I posted it but not many people seem to use Telegram, or find it useful?

I guess not so many people use telegram.

And email somehow fits better the calm pace of discussion here on HN.

I agree, it was just too many clicks to reach my inbox for me, so I made that instead.

Hmmm....did you mention lasers? That might have triggered their "sketchy" Algo. How do they know you are misleading anyone? People clicking "misleading" because they saw your ad in the wrong context?

There's no ad involved. It's just a product feed for Google Shopping that's auto-generated by Shopify, so the product details match the website always. Here's the store: https://ligninandlight.com/

Google's customer support just provides form responses linking to this policy my store violates: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6150127?hl=en

But they won't provide any concrete information specific to my store, and I can't figure out what they're hung up on. I talked to a Shopify expert and they told me to make sure I have a contact page, refund policy and accept credit cards -- all of which I do.

So, I looked at this and the only thing I can see is that the price doesn't update as you add options (larger size, engraving) etc., until you add to cart and then view the cart. So G may think that's misleading: It's not going to cost me $23 but $35.

Your shop looks very nice, actually. Cool and thoughtful stuff.

Sounds like Google is now the defacto business regulator...but only for small businesses.

Sorry to bother, but just in case you have the time, since I’m having the same issue as GP, could you also have a look at https://shop.invisible-computers.com ?

As I mentioned above, my google merchant center account also got suspended twice.

Same here. I have Shopify connected to google merchant center.

When I made an account to buy Google ads (and almost immediately gave up), I was always getting contacted by people at Google sales trying to make me actually buy the ads. They offered all kinds of help on creating and focusing the content.

Was that experience unusual? And couldn't those people help you making your ad adherent to whatever rule Google uses?

Yes I get calls all the time. They’re actually pretty helpful with their suggestions and aren’t pushing you to buy more, but they never stop calling.

Were you able to make your Google ads profitable?

Yes, but only if I manually counted conversions that google didn't see due to ad blockers.

But yes. It was great. I felt like I had a dial that I could turn up and down to make my business go.

Then, bam, second suspension.

"Misleading ads".

I have no intention to mislead anyone.

Makes me feel very helpless.

Sorry to hear that. Did you try other platforms on which you didn't get suspended?

Did you have to tune your Google ads campaign before it worked or did it work for you from the first try?

The thing with google ads is that I can target very high-intent queries. if somebody enters "e-paper wall calendar", I can show them my ad and have very good conversion rates.

This isn't really possible on any other platforms, since nobody goes to twitter with the "I want to buy an e-paper calendar" intent.

And yes, I tuned my ads heavily to these search queries, but in the end the automated google shopping campaign worked better.

> conversions that google didn't see due to ad blockers.

This is funny. It seems that having an ad blocker is a strong indicator for people that are very interested in technical stuff (and are at least technically literate enough to install it). This sounds like a prime spot for placing certain ads. Since ad-blocking is detectable, we coders are actually opting-in to this kind of labeling. I don't know what to make of that.

I wonder if unscrupulous competitors reported you en mass.

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