Google Adword’s "Advanced Verification” is more like "Advanced Interrogation”!

Welcome to Adwords... May We Interrogate You?

Back in November as the manager of the Adwords account of a respected local garage door company, we received an email message from Google titled "Important Notification - Your ads may stop running unless you take action”.

IF you get this message, be prepared for a ridiculous waste of time.

The form message from our friends at Adwords notified us that they had identified a number of fraudulent garage door businesses that use false identities on Google. Apparently they thought my client who has been in business for 10+ years was an offender. 

One has to wonder if Google actually looked at the website that our ads point to? How could anyone look at the site full of real photos of real people doing real work spread across a hundred or so pages of content think this all was a front to spend money on Adwords! Not to mention over 40 legit Google Reviews, a full roster of Social Media Channels and a verified Google My Business location. But alas, I digress. Let’s get on with the investigation.

For Google I’m sure a review of our online presence was too time consuming, it was much easier to just require us to provide all the details they asked for including the business license number on file with our local authorities. As it turns out, that was not good enough for them - seems that our number did not “look" like a license number. Not sure how exactly they keep track of all the varied licensing boards across all jurisdictions in the US, but so be it. We then sent them a copy of said document, to which they replied with a demand for a full "Advanced Verification" interview. Now it get’s to be really fun! This should aptly be named “Advanced Interrogation” as we would soon learn.

As a garage door company that has been paying for Adwords for years running legit campaigns that we needed to put time aside to “meet” with Google for an interview via Hangouts. We needed to install Hangouts on a cellular device and provide a time when the owner of the business could be at the business. Our client was not prepared to jump through these types of online hoops, so as their Marketing Agency who manages all of their Adwords spend - we also needed to put time aside to travel to their location to be ready for the call from Google. 

The big day finally arrived yesterday at high noon and the connection was made with “Google”. The first few words from our interviewer told us that she was NOT from Mountain View, CA and was not a Google employee. Apparently this type of work is farmed out to overseas call centers to gather the evidence for the big boys at headquarters! There was the normal confusion about “exactly what did you just say” and “sorry I can’t understand you” but soon we got into the full fledged interrogation. 

Mary (that was her name on the email) asked that we use the phone’s camera to show her our surroundings and fully identify ourselves while she recorded the entire performance. The owner was able to correctly recite the address of the business and his full name. We provided a walking tour of the office area followed by a scan of the warehouse complete with garage door parts and all types of equipment that the company uses to do their work. You might think this would be enough? No way! These could actually all just be props in an elaborate scheme for us to qualify in the eyes of the Google gods to be able to continue spending exorbitant sums of money on Ads. 

Next Mary asked “if the owner had a business card”. She needed us to zoom in on the front and back of the card with the phone’s camera. My thought was “that is an ugly card, I hope they accept it”. Then on to an invoice, zoom in on that for the camera. Now that must surely be enough right? Wrong!

We were instructed to go outside the business and record the signage on the building. I hope they did not judge our ability to advertise on Google based on having a fancy sign. This business in located in an industrial park and the small sign on the door was all we had to offer Mary in her search for hard evidence that we were real. We needed to prove that we were not operating from a movie set pretending to be a garage door company. 

Just to help her along with her cross examination of the owner, I suggested that he point the camera towards the company trucks and show the signs on those too. That got Mary very interested. In fact, before you know it she wanted to see where we kept the keys to those trucks. OK this is getting really weird now. 

Back inside we go. Open the drawer where all the keys are stored and “voila" there they are Ms Mary. “Please may you use this key to start your vehicle?” was her response. OMG, now we went from “Advanced Interrogation” to “Adwords Dragnet” or “Imagine if you will"… Mary talking to you from the other side of the earth demanding that you start your vehicle to prove that you are a real garage door repair company?. Welcome to the “Garage Door Company Twilight Zone”. 

But hey, we are only business owners who love to pay Google thousands of dollars and we have plenty of time to waste to be able to please them. Back outside we go, praying the the truck will crank on this cold Florida morning. Boom, it starts! Mary is not impressed. “Please show me the tools inside the truck.” OK, open the back door and poke around if you like. Then on to the close up view of the license plate. Gosh, I hope she doesn’t find out about that parking ticket our technician got last week!

The the final straw… “show my the vehicle’s registration”. Seems like Mary was getting ready to arrest us on the spot.

By this time we were going on wasting an hour of our time and the owner was quite amazed and upset with the invasive and ridiculous line of questioning that he had been subject to. NO, he was not going to dig out the registration and photograph it on an insecure Hangout connection with somebody from India! 

So that was a wrap. The grilling was complete. Mary had her video evidence on the company and informed us that Google would deliver their verdict in 3 to 5 days. 

Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine a scenario like this coming out of a company who’s motto once was “Don't Be Evil”. But that is the price you pay, when you want to continue providing this billion dollar company with more advertising dollars from our clients accounts.

My client summed it up best when he said "Nutty! So the digital world wants the physical world to prove it’s own self existence…. How utterly ironic."

Sad.