If your AdWords ad wasn’t liked by Google last year and subsequently pulled by the search giant, you’re not alone – in 2012 around 224 million ads were disabled by Google AdWords.

These ads were considered bad by Google because they violated Google’s ad policy. There are many types of bad ads, including those ads that market counterfeit products, contain harmful malware or spyware, or advertise dangerous services.

The goal of the removal of these advertisements is to keep users safe. Google uses a combination of automated systems and human experts to track down advertisements that are considered bad. Google also receives help from users, authorities, and advertises to find these bad ads.

Once Google finds a bad advertisement being displayed on their search engine or other partner websites, they will ban the ad and in many cases, the advertiser as well. In 2012, there were:

• 889,000 bad advertises banned and saw a 50 percent decrease in bad ads compared to the year 2011.
• 123,000 websites that were hiding malware, 12,900 websites that promoted get rich quick schemes, 82,000 user accounts that were attempting to sell counterfeit items, and 8,600 accounts that made phishing attempts.
• 223 countries and territories where bad advertisers originated from – the US, China, Japan and Indian were the biggest offenders
• 78 different languages were used in bad ad attempts including Scots Gaelic, Kyrgyz ,Tatar and Esperanto.

Google has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to bad advertisements and they are determined to do whatever it takes to keep users and legitimate searchers safe from these ads.

However, not all ads that are disapproved are from bad accounts. Certain Syntax mistakes can cause an ad to not be approved. These instances are not often the case though.

Overall, it appears that Google is on the right track to rid the internet of bad ads, so look out!