Things You Can’t Advertise On Google: Guns, Booze & Now Essay Writing

May 22, 2007 at 11:22am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google bans essay writing adverts from the BBC reports that next month Google will no longer accept ads for essay writing services. This ban on essay writing ads comes after many complaints over the integrity of university degrees. The BBC reports that universities “warmly welcomed” this ban.

A spokesperson from Universities UK said up to 12,000 essays have been sold to students in a year. Google said the ban would be applied across the Google network, which implies the UK and US, plus the content and search networks. Of course, this may upset many essay writing service companies. Just check out the number of ads on Google for essay writing.

Google bans more than essay writing ads. Google’s content policy lists things like alcohol ads and gun ads that are not allowed. FYI, I do not currently see any mention of this new ban yet, but it may be added next month.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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4 COMMENTS ON Things You Can’t Advertise On Google: Guns, Booze & Now Essay Writing

f-lops-y, May 22nd, 2007 at 1:38 pm ET:

maybe it will fall under ‘Fake Documents’ which already covers ‘…promotion of services that allow people to hire others to take standardised tests for them.’

It’s nice to see the morally responsible side of Google raising it’s head every now and then.

f-lops-y, May 22nd, 2007 at 2:44 pm ET:

Actually, come to think of it, they take a moral stance in instances like this, but when it comes to major revenue generators that are not exactly morally correct, they don’t always take the high road.

e.g. Anyone can bid on branded terms, like Nike - which pushes the CPC up unnecessarily, though no-one but the brand name holder can actually use the text in the visible ad copy [and that isn't always enforced either]. I think that if you can bid on a term you should be able to display it, or better yet, if the brand term is going to be protected, then do it should be fully protected.

kari, May 23rd, 2007 at 9:56 am ET:

One other thing you can’t advertise - replica or fake products. They’ve been on and off the fence until recently - now those ads are off completely.

So, what about article writing services? Who’s to say that these essay writers won’t just change their ad text and landing pages to focus on “article” or “content” writing?

kari, May 23rd, 2007 at 9:59 am ET:

Actually, they are still straddling the fence - look up “wholesale replica handbags” and there are most definitely ads that say “fake”.

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