Common Text Ad Mistakes

Learn how to avoid 7 common reasons text ads get disapproved.

First, make sure not to use excessive or gimmicky capitalization.

For example, don’t use all caps in your text ad or capitalized letters within a word. We want your ads to stand out for the right reasons, like your great products or deals — not because your ad looks unprofessional or gimmicky. You’ll also want to look out for excessive punctuation and symbols.

AdWords can disapprove ads with:
multiple exclamation points an exclamation point in your ad’s headline repeated punctuation or symbols non-standard symbols like bullet points and vertical lines symbols or characters that don’t match their true meaning — like using the ‘at’ symbol next to the word ‘home’” to mean “at home.”

Another thing to check for is spacing. Make sure there aren’t any extra spaces between letters or words in your ad’s text.

Next, make sure you don’t include any phone numbers in your ad headline or description. Instead, use call extensions or call-only ads to include a prominent phone number in your ad.

Finally, make sure your ad text is clear and accurately describes what you’re selling. For example, your ad can be disapproved if it uses gibberish or random letters, or if your ad’s text and URL don’t match—like an ad for a shoe store that uses www.google.com as the URL.

Make sure that the display URL (the URL that people see in your ad) isn’t mistyped, doesn’t include “http” or “https”, and doesn’t use non-standard characters like exclamation points.

Another common disapproval reason has to do with your URL’s domain. Every website has a domain, for example, the “google.com” in google.com -slash- adwords.”

In AdWords, all ads within the same ad group need to have the same domain.

Also, the domains for your ad’s display URL, final URL, and landing page URL need to have the same domain. Basically, the website listed in your ad needs to accurately show which website people will be taken to when they click your ad.