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A major Adwords policy has been revised, and it seems to be going unnoticed. For reasons that no Googler could explain, you were unable to bid on any beer or champagne related keywords. You could, however, bid on wine keywords. This is no longer true.
According to the Google Adwords rep I spoke to on the phone yesterday, “Beer, wine and champagne may now be promoted from ad text and may be the focus of your site. We consider beer, wine and champagne to be products intended for the sale and consumption of adults. Therefore, ads promoting beer, wine and champagne will be given a ‘Non-Family Safe’ status. For information on how the family status of an ad may affect how it is served, please see Google Adwords Support.”
What about hard liquor? Nope. Still can’t bid on those terms. According to Google, “Hard alcohol and liqueurs are considered Restricted Products and therefore cannot be promoted in ad text or be the purpose of your site (occupying a significant portion of your site).”
Happy bidding!
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First of all Google Reallows gambling in Google UK, now Beer and Wine in the US..
With its share price half of what it was this time last year, how long before google starts allowing porn and warez on adwords
That’s exactly what I was thinking, Dom. This is obviously an effort to meet shareholder’s expectations.
Its about time. Finally I can spend the thousands a day promoting a product that I can’t sell outside of my home state.
If this is truly an attempt to meet shareholders expectation I feel that this will be bust. Beer isn’t going to save you. Though it will make your worries go away for a night. Then you wake up with the same problem and another problem laying in the bed next to you.
I disagee, either its been activated a while or recently but if you search for Beer in the UK its quite activte and a lot of brands want to be there as in “you think of beer, you think of bud”..
its a money earner for Google and it should bring up there share price if and when they make a show and tell about it
I’m glad about this, but do think it’s a totally bogus restriction – if the sites in question have restrictions to stop under 18s (or whatever the legal drinking age is in the country in question) why should Google act as a moral guardian? What is so different between ads for beer and whisky?
It’s a good question, Ciaran, and I don’t think there is a clear answer. My coworkers used to ask Google constantly why you were able to bid on wine related keywords, but not beer or liquor. They said that those orders came from the very top, and no one really knows why.
What about tobacco?? I was making a lot off a cigar site til google gave me the axe.
Thanks for posting, definitely going to subscribe!See you on my reader.
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