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Google Terminates AdWords Account for "Cookie Spidering"?

A WebmasterWorld member reports that his AdWords account has been terminated after being in good standing for four years due to "cookie spidering." He said he spends about $100,000 per year for the past four years, and all of a sudden as his account terminated. Here is a quote:

So, for some reason my Google AdWords account was cancelled. We spend almost $100,000/year and received no notice or no reason for the cancellation. After some digging through higher ups at Google, it was determined that my account had a notice "cancelled due to cookie spidering." Does anyone know what this even is? My site is still in the Google index and I'm not aware of violating any terms of service.

It appears that they recently hired an outside PPC company to help with the campaign. But what they did is unclear.

I am not sure what "cookie spidering" is exactly. If I had to guess, maybe they built a spider that logins to the AdWords console and then scrapes data to automate the process of keyword bidding and reporting. Of course, this is not recommended, Google has an API for this.

I asked around and no one has heard of this term before, "cookie spidering."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.



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posted rustybrick in Google AdWords at November 29, 2006 7:30 AM Comments (2)

Comments

Is there a chance they broke google privacy rules by using cookies to track a user through a the specific keyword they clicked? I believe you are not allowed to do that.

 

Goes to show the risks of outsourcing your campaigns without checking beforehand exactly what the company will be doing!

 

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