Google Ad Grants: More Updates Nonprofits Need to Know

One perk of working with an agency if you’re a Nonprofit, is we make it our MISSION to stay on top of Google’s updates, policy changes and whatever else they throw at you. Their Google Ad Grant Accounts are no different…

Since announcing the new Google Ad Grants restrictions at the end of 2017, Google has slowly released more and more information about compliance policies and criteria each account must meet to stay in the program. From Account management to website compliance listed below are some of the recent developments that Nonprofits should be aware of.

We’ve been staying on top of the updates as they roll out so when you’re done here make sure you check out our first post that includes the initial information Google provided. You can check that out here.

Update Your Website

New website policies affect your website as a whole, not only the pages linked to your ads. New policies include:

• Your site must include a description of both your organization and mission.
• Each page you link to within an ad must have sufficient information for visitors to understand your organization’s purpose.
• Your website CAN NOT have any broken links.
• Your ads, keywords, and website shouldn’t promise results after a consultation, service, or purchase, and any claims on your website need to cite verifiable references to provide transparency to users.
• Limit the number of ads on your actual website. Those included should be unobtrusive and relevant to your mission.
• If your Nonprofit charges for their services, your website must describe how your organization uses funds, for example, by disclosing an annual report.

Make Sure Your Website is Compliant

In order to stay compliant, be sure to check the following:

• If you ask for Donations: add your annual report and financial documents
• Ensure your nonprofit status (“We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization”) appears on your website, but most importantly on your Donate page
• Add or Update your About Us and Mission and Vision pages to ensure they’re up-to-date
• Track down and fix any broken links on your website – this is a big one. Don’t allow broken links to linger.
• Review your content. All your content should be relevant to your ads and contain at least one of the keywords you’re targeting.

Remove Generic Campaigns

The new policies prohibit Nonprofits from including keywords that are unrelated to their mission. Each ad and keyword in your account must reflect your organization’s primary mission, be relevant to your nonprofit’s programs and services, and be specific enough to provide a good experience for the user seeing your ads. For example, if you’re an education-based nonprofit, you won’t find success bidding on keywords like “Education” “College” “School” or overly generic keywords, names of places and names of historical events or people.

Prepare For Worst Case Scenario

If your account does get disabled don’t worry too much. If you can prove that you have made changes to your account, website, and ads, Google will review the changes and possibly re-enable your account. However, it’s imperative that all your efforts are documented. If you’re working with an agency that shouldn’t be a problem because they will have been in the account regularly.They can easily download the “edit history”.  Also, chances are they will likely have been in contact with Google prior to the account being disabled and already started the process to reinstate the account.

If you’re still concerned, or not working with an agency give Google a call. If they give you a run-around, ask to speak to their policy department. They are the most likely to have the most up to date information and once again, document everything.