Jan 13, 2023
Adwords for Nonprofits - account setup issue
I'm struggling to successfully set up conversion tracking for my Non-profit Adwords campaign. I've read and watched the official activation guides/videos, read the Conversion Tracking guide and Troubleshooting Conversion Tag guide, and watched/read a whole host of other articles and videos. From everything I can tell, I've correctly set up conversion tracking using Google Tag Manager on my site.
However, the Google team has suspended my account; their explanation email states that "we noticed that there is no conversion code on the website and is still not compliant with the policies."
For more background on what I've done so far — I've set up several conversion actions in Google Ads, then linked those actions to the appropriate tags in GTM. I've ensured that the GTM tags are firing correctly by testing with Google Tag Assistant, and tested the conversions in the Google Ads dashboard.
For the life of me I can't figure out where I'm going wrong. I'm grateful for any and all help, especially if someone would be willing to get on a short call to troubleshoot (I feel like if I watch another video or read another article I'm going to tear my hair out). Thanks!
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It's been a long time since I heard of anyone getting suspended due to conversion tracking issues.
You could have set up conversion tracking without using GTM or putting any tags on the website, so Google's email doesn't make sense to me.
In Google Ads, can you see how many conversions your campaigns are getting? That's what actually matters and what Google should be judging you on.
What has the account's overall conversion rate been over the last month or two? If it's zero or over 15% then that indicates a problem.
How long have you had the Ad Grant?
And what bidding strategy are you using?
Jan 16, 2023
The original email I got notifying me of the suspension stated "Your account is deactivated for not complying with Google Ad Grants’ Website policy" but it didn't state which specific policy.
My guess is the suspension was because I had originally, mistakenly, thought that I could direct ads to my nonprofit's Youtube channel, because I had linked it in the Google Ads settings. But since I now know you're only allowed to direct ads in a nonprofit Adwords account to a single, approved domain, directing ads to the Youtube channel was obviously wrong. I've since updated those ads so they go to my approved domain.
The email did helpfully list out the other policies I could of been running afoul of, even though it didn't state any specifically applied to me. Nevertheless I tried to address each area, just to be safe (my actions are noted in italics after each)
- Do any of your enabled keywords have a low quality score of 1 or 2?
- I set an automated rule to pause any keywords with a qual score lower than 3.
- Are any of your enabled keywords non-approved single-word keywords?
- I manually removed all non-approved single-word keywords that had slipped in.
- Are your campaigns geo-targeted to your organization’s scope of service?
- Yes.
- Did your account fall below a 5% click-through rate (CTR) in both of the last two calendar months?
- I hadn't even gotten to that length of active campaign time yet, but I did set an auto-rule to pause any campaign that falls below a 5% CTR.
- Do you have at least 2 text ads per enabled ad group, at least 2 ad groups per enabled campaign, and active sitelinks?
- I updated my three campaigns to have at least two ad groups apiece, and at least two ads per ad group. I also updated my ads to use appropriate sitelinks.
- Did you fill out the annual survey sent to registered emails on your account? Please complete the survey once per year with a valid Ad Grants customer ID.
- Not applicable quite yet, as I just got started.
I made all of the above changes, filled out the reinstatement form, and received the email back re: conversion tracking.
Does this additional information help the troubleshooting at all? Thanks!
Low keyword quality score and single-word keywords are no longer a compliance issue. These days those keywords get automatically paused. You no longer need an automated rule to do that.
You no longer need two ads per ad group. It would be pointless these days, given that a single Responsive Search Ad (RSA) does the job of multiple old-format ads. After you get un-suspended, make sure you only have one RSA per ad group.
" I did set an auto-rule to pause any campaign that falls below a 5% CTR."
Do not do that, delete that rule. That's clumsy and unnecessary. Very few accounts fall that low, most are 10% and above. If account-wide CTR does slip below 5% for more than a month, you could probably just pause one or two high-impression + low CTR keywords to get back in compliance.
The email about conversion tracking sounds like nonsense to me, those aren't the rules. Suggest you query it on that basis. Tell them you are not required to have conversion tracking in place until 90 days.
Jan 20, 2023
Thanks for the detailed feedback and suggestions. This whole process is a bit frustrating as it seems like there's no one clear set of directions to follow with things like the low-quality keywords or pausing campaigns that are below 5% CTR. Frustrating to get direction from the Google support team about those kinds of things when apparently they're unnecessary.
I'll try to email the team again with the point you made about conversion tracking not being necessary until 90 days elapsed and see what they say.
Thanks again! I'll keep you updated with their response.
They never announced that they'd started automatically pausing non-compliant keywords instead of requiring you to set up an automated rule to do it.
Communication's been poor for years.
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