A policy appeal is a request asking Google to look again at a decision it made under its advertising policies. You can appeal a disapproved ad, an asset or keyword marked as limited, a rejected product in Merchant Center or a suspended account.
How a policy appeal works
In Google Ads, a disapproved item shows its status and the policy involved. Hovering over the status or opening the policy manager gives you the option to appeal, and you then choose one of two routes:
- Dispute the decision When you believe the review was wrong and the ad already complies.
- Confirm you have made changes When you have fixed the problem, usually on the landing page, and want the item reviewed again without editing the ad itself.
You can appeal one item or every item affected by the same policy in one go. The status changes to show the appeal is under review, and the result appears in the policy manager. Editing an ad also sends it for review, but an edit creates a new ad and its performance history starts again, so an appeal is often the better route when the text was fine.
Account suspensions follow a separate process from the suspension notice, and usually need more evidence: proof of identity, business registration, or a clear explanation of what changed. Merchant Center has its own review request for products and accounts.
Why it matters
A disapproval stops an ad from showing at all, and a suspension stops the whole account. For a business that relies on paid search for enquiries, a week of downtime can mean a week with no new work. Automated reviews get things wrong, especially for ordinary words that happen to resemble restricted topics, so a well-written appeal can restore ads quickly.
UK advertisers in regulated sectors need the paperwork ready before they appeal. Financial services advertisers targeting the UK must be verified as authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, and gambling advertisers need a licence from the Gambling Commission plus Google’s own approval. No appeal succeeds without those in place. See financial promotion for the wider rules.
Common mistakes
- Disputing a decision when the landing page really does break the policy. Many misrepresentation disapprovals come from missing business details, unclear pricing or unsupported claims on the site, not from the ad.
- Appealing the same item repeatedly without changing anything, which wastes time and does not help your account’s standing.
- Rewriting a sound ad to get round a review error and losing its history in the process.
- Opening a new account to get round a suspension. Google treats this as circumventing its systems, which can lead to every linked account being suspended.
- Writing a vague appeal. State what the business does, what changed and where the reviewer can see it.
How to act on it
First read the exact policy named in the disapproval and compare it with the ad, the keywords and the landing page. If something genuinely breaks the rule, fix it, then use the “made changes” route. If nothing does, dispute it and explain briefly why the content complies, quoting the relevant part of the policy where you can.
For a suspension, read the notice carefully, gather the documents it asks for, and fix every issue before you submit, because a rushed appeal that misses one problem can take longer to resolve than a careful one. Keep a log of each disapproval, appeal and outcome; patterns in that log show which pages or claims keep causing trouble. Working through disapprovals and account warnings is part of my PPC management, and I can also review an account that has already been suspended.