Policy Violation, or Just a Quality Issue? Now You Know

Did I violate some policy or does Google just think my page is irrelevant? Up until now the quick answer to that has been: If your quality score is 1/10, it's a policy violation of some kind. Anything higher than that, and you've just got relevancy issues and need to fix the copy on your landing page, tweak your ads or put your keywords into new ad groups.

And Google would just shut you down and wouldn't show you.

Now they tell you which is which. If you've violated an actual Google policy, you'll get a "site suspended" notice next to the keyword in question:

There's the standard TOS list of reasons why you might get nailed for a policy violation. Then there are the not-so-obvious behind-the-scenes things that Google slaps you for but may not spell out anyplace explicitly:

• Somewhere deep in your site you have an old link to an affiliate that Google now considers a "get rich quick site"
• You have too many affiliates buying keywords and sending traffic to your site
• Your site "looks" to a human reviewer like a scam involving getting rich, gambling, sex, health & nutrition, or anything else remotely dicey
• Your site doesn't pass the "would I send my grandma here?" human reviewer test
• Your domain is on some blacklist somewhere
• Your site is templated or pre-fab content that can be found in identical form on any of a number of other sites around the Internet

Google summarizes it here.