Google Ads Policy: Restricted Businesses - Government Documents and Services

Over the past few years, businesses have readily noticed advertising platforms gradually tightening their policies to protect users' interests. Rejected ads and suspended accounts have become all too familiar.

Today, Optimus summarizes one of Google's most recent policies. It has a significant impact on businesses running ads related to Government documents and services.

Policy overview

Google requires businesses wanting to advertise government documents and services to have government authorization or certification.

If this requirement is not met, ad delivery will be limited, or ads will be disapproved and stopped altogether.

Documents covered by the policy:

• Personal or organizational identification documents. For example: identity cards

• Birth or death certificates

• Corporate identification documents: understood as documents related to business licenses and changes to company names or addresses

• Judicial background checks and criminal record checks

• Health and welfare support programs: health insurance, unemployment benefits

• Tax refund requests

• Other licenses and documents, such as passports and driver's licenses.

Apply for certification

Google provides 4 ways to obtain authorization to run ads. Note that this authorization is granted by Google.

The advertiser qualifies as a government provider

Google verifies this based on official government domain endings such as gov. For example, in Vietnam, the ending is gov.vn, as in https://moit.gov.vn/ for the Ministry of Industry and Trade

The advertiser qualifies as an authorized non-government provider

The advertiser works with the government to have the business's domain linked from a government domain. The government website must also explicitly state that the business is authorized by that government to provide a specific government-related document or service.

The advertiser qualifies for a regional or business exclusion

The business runs ads in excluded regions that are not affected by this policy

The advertiser believes its ads fall outside the scope of this policy and do not promote government documents and services

Describe the business's activities to explain why it is not affected by this policy

These are the four methods Google lists to help businesses obtain authorization and run ads. However, some requirements are still unclear. For example, in option 2, linking domains and having government authorization stated on a website may not be feasible in every case. This creates considerable difficulty for businesses that want authorization but do not know how to proceed.

Conclusion

New policies often have gaps or incomplete information, unintentionally affecting businesses' normal operations.

We hope Google will quickly refine its policies or offer support and more specific solutions for each region or type of document and service, so businesses can run ads as usual.

Businesses can also follow the posts or explore online marketing services from a digital marketing agency with years of advertising experience, for support and the latest Google news.