Google Ads "Circumventing Systems" Ban: Causes & Appeal

Google Ads is essential for many businesses, which makes it very, very important to stay compliant with their rules and policies. 

Unfortunately, with dozens if not hundreds of pages, sub-pages, and rules scattered throughout their policies hub, it's very easy to run into a rule you didn't even know was a rule.

Add to that the automated reviews, the AI-powered analysis, and all the other tools Google uses to check ads (since there's no possible way to have the manpower to manually check everything), and the possibility for those to get things wrong or glitch out, and you have a recipe for disaster.

One rule people may run into is the Circumventing Systems rule. This can result in disallowed ads, suspended ads, or even banned accounts. But what is it, what does it mean, and what can you do to appeal it? There's a lot to go over, so buckle up and read on.

What is the Circumventing Systems Ban?

First, what is this rule and what does it mean if you violated it?

Well, that's the hard part, unfortunately. Circumventing Systems is one of the most generic suspension reasons, and it encompasses literally dozens of different rules you might have broken, or that Google thinks you might have broken.

It's one of the most common Google Ads ban reasons, with nearly 40% of Google Ads bans coming from this complex rule.

At the high level, the Circumventing Systems ban is supposed to be a ban triggered by intentional, usually egregious actions you've taken that deliberately bypass, circumvent, or otherwise try to game the system to skirt the rules. 

It can encompass actions that abuse loopholes, try to "rules lawyer" legitimacy, or just use Google Ads when you aren't supposed to and not get caught right away.

In practice, there are a lot of edge cases, accidental triggers, and even odd rules you might not understand that can trigger the ban.

Key Details of the Circumventing Systems Ban

Ads can be declined for other reasons that can add up to a Circumventing Systems ban.

Google issues this ban for egregious or repeated behavior. Most people focus on the word egregious, but "repeated" is also important.

There's no warning. Or, rather, previous ad denials and minor suspensions are the warning. A Circumventing Systems ban itself comes down with no notice.

The ban is an umbrella category encompassing several broad subcategories of behavior, meaning there can be dozens of possible causes. Tracking down the root issue is the hardest part.

This ban can spread between related advertiser accounts.

False positives are relatively uncommon but do happen; real violations you didn't know are violations can also be a culprit.

Appeals are possible, but not guaranteed, and can take months to process.

About the Word Egregious

Many people, when discussing this ban, focus on the word egregious. Why?

Google does too, on their policy page for this ban. 

"Violations of this policy are taken very seriously and are considered egregious. An egregious violation of the Google Ads policies is a violation so serious that it is unlawful or poses significant harm to our users."

These are rules violations that could put other Google Ads advertisers at risk, or they could hurt the usability, reliability, or reputation of Google Ads altogether. Someone abusing a rules violation and hurting the user experience for ads would make people in general trust Google Ads less, which hurts the entire platform. You can see why they take it seriously.

I draw extra attention not just to "egregious" but to Google's language around repetitive behavior. You can get ads denied or even get warnings about rules suspensions fairly often when you're running large ad campaigns, just because of the matter of volume and the sheer number of rules involved. 

But, if you've exhibited a clear pattern of abusive behavior over the years, even if no one event is bad enough to trigger a full suspension, your overall pattern in aggregate is enough to warrant the ban.

Just because you've gotten away with it for months or years doesn't mean it was a safe behavior, either. Google can't possibly review every Google Ads user all the time, so they spot-check accounts. You may have been violating rules for a long time and just flew under the radar, and now that's caught up to you.

What Does a Circumventing Systems Ban Look Like?

An email and an account that can no longer access Google Ads.

Google will send you an email saying something like this:

"Your Google Ads account was suspended for violating the Circumventing Systems policy. Suspended accounts cannot run ads in any location. Automated and human reviews are used to ensure Google Ads policies are followed. Content that violates policies is blocked and advertisers can be suspended for repeated or egregious violations."

There are four main categories for this, which I'll get to in the details in a bit.

Can You Appeal a Circumventing Systems Ban?

Yes, but I'll warn you now: there's no guarantee that you'll be unbanned. If you appeal the wrong way, if you don't have good evidence, or if you're caught in a lie, your ban will be upheld, and that's all she wrote. 

Worse, if your appeal is accepted, you'll be on thin ice. Any violation, no matter how small, can be immediately escalated into a more severe penalty because you had this violation in your history.

So, be prepared to change advertising tactics just in case.

Now, let's get more into the details.

What Causes a Circumventing Systems Ban?

What, exactly, can trigger this ban?

As I've mentioned above, there are four broad categories of behaviors that can cause this suspension, and each one contains an array of different behaviors. It's worth going through each of them for an analysis, so let's do that.

Bucket 1: Cloaking

According to Google, Cloaking refers to showing one set of content on your website to Google, and another to users. It also refers to showing different content to different people.

"Hey, that sounds like A/B testing!" Yes, yes it does. Google is aware of split testing, and they have a carve-out for that kind of variance. Specifically, they say that "it's okay to show slightly different content to different people, like showing a landing page in different languages, having different special offers, or adjusting for geographical location." But the product or service you're promoting must be the same for everyone.

Issues that can cause policy violations can include, but are not limited to:

• Showing Google a compliant page, but showing users something in violation. For example, if Google sees a clothing store page, but your page actually sells a prohibited substance.
• Putting up an intrusive pop-up that blocks Google from seeing your landing page to check if it's prohibited or not.
• A significant disconnect between ad creative and the landing page, such as creating an ad that draws interest but leading to a landing page with unrelated content. Hiding this from Google makes it worse, as well.
• Redirecting or referring users from a compliant ad or page to a page, on your domain or on another domain, that is not compliant.

All of this is fairly intentional behavior, but this violation can also catch a lot of unintentional behavior.

One I've seen fairly often is pop-up offers. If a user lands on your page and is greeted with a pop-up that gives them a special deal if they spin a wheel or sign up for your newsletter, that can be a good lead generator. But if that pop-up blocks Google's bots from seeing the rest of the page, you're in violation of the cloaking rule.

Cloaking can also happen if your site is hacked and whoever hacked it set some cloaked abusive content. This can be very insidious, so be sure to check your site regularly for signs of intrusion.

Bucket 2: Multiple Account Abuse

Multiple account abuse sounds like it's pretty obvious. If you're making a bunch of Google Ads accounts to advertise the same site, or to spread abuses out across different accounts, or even to have one "clean" account and another abusive account, they're going to see through it. 

This also encompasses ban evasion. If you were banned and you created another account under a friend or partner's name to advertise the same site, they'll catch it and hit that one too.

Multiple account abuse can happen accidentally, especially if you're working with third-party ads management companies, or if you're very siloed in your business operations, or if you have a very old business and not a lot of good record-keeping. For example:

• You have a Google Ads account, but you hire an ad management firm that makes another one using your information; you now have two accounts, both legitimate, but that trips the flag.
• You have a digital advertising team, a sales team, and a marketing team, and all three of them decide they need to run Google Ads; they make their own accounts, and Google suspends all three of them.
• You had a Google Ads account five years ago, but you forgot about it because it never really got used when your business was running on thin margins. You decide you want to advertise now, you forgot you had the old one, and the new one trips the flag.
• You hire a new person to manage your ads, but rather than creating a personal account and adding it as an authorized user to your business account, you create another business account to have them do their work.

Most of the time, multiple account abuse is intentional, since it's natural for a business to want to keep advertising while they sort out what they think is a false-positive suspension or other account issue. But, policy is policy, and you can easily go from a simple appeal for a previous violation to an "egregious" violation and a permanent suspension.

Bucket 3: Advertiser Verification Info Issues 

To advertise on Google Ads, you need to be verified. Some businesses need to be verified in multiple ways, as well.

This is the most "you did this intentionally" of the buckets of behavior, though rarely it can be a legitimate mistake.

Basically, this violation occurs if you submitted documents for business verification, but those documents are fake, fraudulent, or incorrect. For example, you submit documentation of a business license that isn't real, or documentation for an LLC that doesn't exist.

Sometimes it can be accidental, such as if you're operating in a jurisdiction where the documentation is non-standard, and Google doesn't know what it is. Or, more likely, you have a disconnect in naming. I've heard of this happening when a subsidiary submits verification documentation for their holding company instead, for example.

Bucket 4: General Evasion Behavior

A lot of the people who ended up suspended because of Circumventing Systems fall into this last bucket. This is the "catch-all" bucket of random violations that don't fall under other rules, are severe enough to deserve suspension, or have been happening frequently enough that it becomes a pattern of behavior.

Examples include:

• Being hacked and not solving the issue in a timely manner.
• Advertising a business that skirts the legality or acceptability in Google's policies.
• Advertising a domain that was previously advertised and was suspended.
• Using other black-hat techniques that don't have their own policy violations.
• Faking clicks or traffic with bots.
• Buying or selling Google Ads accounts.
• Using a VPN to manage Google Ads.
• Using Google Ads for affiliate marketing in certain ways.

Part of the reason why this is such a common ban reason is because of this bucket. It's unfortunately pretty unhelpful, since Google might not explain exactly what issues have caused your suspension, so you might think you've been fully compliant until the suspension comes in.

How to Appeal a Circumventing Systems Ban

First, the good news: you can appeal this ban. Instructions on how to do so can be found on this page.

The bad news is, for Circumventing Systems, the chances of a successful appeal aren't the greatest, and the review process can take a long time. I've seen it take as much as 3-6 months! 

If your appeal is rejected, you can often re-appeal, using the information you learned to fix any further issues, but you don't get infinite re-tries, so be thorough and careful when you go through this process.

Appeal Step 1: Identify the Problem

The first thing you need to do when you receive this suspension is figure out why it happened.

Sometimes, this is easy. Google does give you some information in the suspension email, at least telling you the category or a key behavior that triggered it. You can use that as a starting point.

If you were intentionally doing something wrong, of course, that's that. Fix your behavior or accept the ban and move on.

If it's an unintentionally abusive behavior, like cloaking you didn't realize was cloaking or multiple accounts you didn't know existed, you can fix the problem and then submit your appeal.

Appeal Step 2: Fix, Document, or Validate a Mistake

The action you take in step two depends on what you found in step one.

If the problem was intentional, stop doing it, fix it, and submit your appeal with proof. Promise never to do it again and accept the fact that if you do do it again, you won't get off lightly.

If it was an unintentional rules-violating behavior, track it down and fix it. There are a ton of resources online for various unintentional issues you can diagnose and fix, like accidental cloaking. Be sure to document the fixes, so you have evidence to submit.

Google's page on the Circumventing Systems policy outlines the first three buckets above and gives some tips on how to diagnose and fix the issues. For example:

• For cloaking, make sure there's no disconnect between what Google sees and what users see, make sure any click trackers you use are Google-certified, and do a thorough security check to look for malicious code.
• For multiple accounts, track down any accounts that might be associated, provide details of why they exist, and if possible, close unnecessary accounts.
• For account verification issues, triple-check all of your paperwork, and find more appropriate documentation where relevant.

The key here, no matter what the cause is or what solution you've found, is documentation. Get screenshots, get documents, get proof, get statements; anything you can submit that builds a strong case for why your behavior was not intentional and why you deserve to be reinstated.

Appeal Step 3: Submit Your Appeal

Google isn't going to give your account a second look once it's suspended until you submit an appeal. There's no automated review process. They do, however, add your information to a list and check it against future accounts, as a way to detect and stop multiple account abuse and ban evasion.

Make this appeal as compelling and well-documented as possible. While you get more than one appeal if your first is declined, Google limits how much more you can send them. You get little more than a button asking for another look.

The actual process of appealing is pretty easy, since Google has a big "fix it" button on your Google Ads dashboard when you're suspended. It's practically the only thing you can access. Fill out the appeal, submit your documentation, present a compelling argument, and submit it all.

Depending on who you ask, this appeal has around a 15-45% chance of success, depending on how compelling a case you've made. 

Tips for Writing Your Appeal

• Keep it relatively short. This isn't a blog post or a storytelling expo. Acknowledge what happened, naming exactly what the issue was. Be specific. "We had a second account from an old ads manager we were unaware of" is good. "We're not sure but maybe our pop-up?" is bad. If you don't know the cause, you aren't ready to submit an appeal.
• List everything you changed to fix the problem, with specifics. List URLs, list dates, list changes. Treat this like an app changelog, not a narrative.
• Discuss prevention for future issues. What have you done to prevent this from happening again the first time someone makes a change to your site? 

If you're thorough, honest, and proactive, you can get your ban lifted. If not, well, it might be time to look for other ad networks.