This policy was developed by Google to help protect users from ads, websites, and businesses that appear to be generally deceptive or misleading, and/or violate its terms and conditions. Under this initiative, Google has the following policy:
- Does not allow illegal products – e.g. counterfeit goods
- Does not allow harmful products – e.g. cigarettes, guns
- Does not allow misleading claims – lose weight guaranteed
- Does not allow work from home scams
Google AdWords requires that advertisers provide transparency into the business/product that’s being promoted. Google also requires that advertisers set realistic expectations about what their products and services can do for their users. Therefore, Google requires that all its advertisers adhere to the following:
- They should use it to promote products together with credible, realistic, and reasonable claims
- Make sure that disclaimers and announcements as required by local legislation are included as a part of the landing page content – In several cases, certain service providers are mandated by government regulations to include specific texts in their ads. For example, advertising related to alcohol
- To provide accurate information to the users regarding the risks associated with their offering – for example, if large financial gains are claimed by a website, it should be clear to the user what kind of money and time needs to be invested to get these results
- Third party verification content should be linked to the website. It is also advised to include relevant and easy to find disclaimers when testimonials and endorsements imply that results are typical
- Include links to third-party accreditation/endorsement where affiliation is implied – for example, if a website claims to be affiliated with a governmental agency, a link to verification of this affiliation should be included. Use of “gov” or “government” in display URLs and/or use of government emblems may imply affiliation with a government agency and should be verified.
- Google AdWords doesn’t allow the sale of items that are otherwise available for free. It also doesn’t allow the sale of government forms or services that are free or available for a lower price on the government site.
- It also doesn’t allow the promotion of websites that are suspected to use phishing techniques. “Phishing” is an attempt to obtain users’ personal information by disguising their website to look like another website.
If a website collects sensitive personal information, it must be hosted on a secure server that uses SSL (https). The following information is considered to be sensitive personal information:
- Credit and debit card numbers
- Bank and investment account numbers
- Checking account numbers
- Wire transfer numbers
- National identity, pension, social security, or health care numbers