I got an email from Google today that certainly raised my eyebrows.

On the face of it, it may seem innocent enough however the more I thought about it the more it worried me.

Since it’s concerned me enough to go and review my Adwords accounts then I decided I should share my concerns.

I’ll let you decide for yourself if you are going to take any action to protect your accounts.

It’s probably better safe than sorry!

Here’s the text of the email:

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Dear AdWords Advertiser,

We're writing to let you know about some upcoming changes to the types of ads we review. 

What's happening?

Starting on 6 September, we'll begin reviewing paused ads the same way we review active ads.

This means that your new and existing paused ads will be sent through the standard ad approval

process. As a result, if your paused ads violate one or more of our AdWords advertising policies,

they are likely to get disapproved. 

Why?

We're proactively reviewing paused ads to eliminate unnecessary delays in getting your ads approved

and to ultimately enhance your experience with Google AdWords.

When?

Starting on 6 September, we'll begin reviewing new paused ads, followed in the coming weeks by the

review of existing paused ads.

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So why has this got me so worried?

Clearly they say they are doing this purely to help speed up the approval process and I believe that this is a genuine move on their part to fix what they believe is a problem.

However my concern is that many of us will have ads in our accounts that we paused a long time ago. Especially those of us who split test our ads. It was (and probably still is) common practice to just pause an ad that had been beaten by a split test and create a new one. You would never intend to turn that paused ad back on but by pausing it you could at least still see it and that would avoid you creating another similar ad in the future.

So there are people out there with very old ads that are dormant and paused.

Those ads were written to comply with the guidelines of the time. It is very possible that those ads would not pass today’s guidelines.

So you could find yourself with a whole bunch of ads that you’ve no intention of using again suddenly getting a disapproval mark from Google.

My concern is what if one of those ads was bad enough to get you banned!

You could find yourself banned for something you did that was “legal” at the time but isn’t now.

So, take my advice, go through your account TODAY and delete all your paused ads that you have no intention of using again.

Alternatively just check they all comply with the guidelines. Here’s where you can find out more about their approval process and guidelines