The campaign was live yesterday. This morning it's disapproved, the client is asking why their ads stopped, and every hour it sits dark is an hour of leads going to a competitor. Here is how to read what Google is actually telling you, fix the real problem, and screen the next ad before it is ever submitted.
A disapproval is attached to a specific ad, and it carries a policy label. That label is the diagnosis. In Google Ads you will find it next to the ad's status, and the Policy Manager view collects every disapproved ad in the account in one place. Read the label first, then go hunting in your copy for the sentence that matches it.
Most people skip this step. They rewrite the headline on instinct, resubmit, and burn another review cycle when the real problem was sitting in the description the whole time. A disapproval is Google telling you which rule family you broke. Your job in step one is simply to believe it and find the matching words.
One more thing worth knowing: a disapproved ad does not mean the whole account is broken. Sibling ads often keep running. Fix the flagged ad, not the campaign structure around it.
After auditing thousands of sentences against the published rules, the same handful of copy habits cause most disapprovals for local-services advertisers. They map directly onto the categories in our rule library.
Policy label: Misrepresentation — Unreliable claims. Words like best, #1, top-rated, premier, leading, world-class, and award-winning are ranking claims. Without a named source and date behind them, platforms treat them as unsubstantiated. "Denver's best plumber" is the classic. So is "#1 rated HVAC company" with no ranking named anywhere. The fix is never to delete the brag entirely; it is to swap it for a fact someone can check: the award, the body that gave it, and the year, or a review count with its platform and date.
Same label family: Unreliable claims. 100% guaranteed, guaranteed results, and iron-clad guarantee are absolute promises. A money-back promise is softer, but it still needs its terms stated where the reader can see them: the timeframe, the conditions, and how to claim. A guarantee with no visible terms reads as an exaggerated guarantee, and it gets flagged like one.
Policy label: Misrepresentation — Dishonest pricing practices. Three habits land here. Projected savings with no basis ("save up to $1,000" — calculated how, for whom?). Bait pricing, where "installs starting at $49" describes a job almost nobody actually gets at $49. And free offers with the conditions hidden. The FTC's Guides on "Free" (16 CFR Part 251) are blunt about this: the terms of a free offer should be set out clearly at the start of the offer, not behind an "ask for details."
Policy label: Editorial. The least serious family, and the fastest to fix. Google's editorial rules cover capitalization that isn't used for its intended purpose (FREE QUOTE NOW), punctuation repeated for effect (Call today!!), gimmicky symbols and emoji, repeated words, and phone numbers typed into the ad text instead of using call assets. These read as sloppy rather than dishonest, but they still stop the ad.
This one bites on Meta, where most agencies run the same copy they wrote for Google. Meta's Personal Attributes policy prohibits ads that assert or imply the viewer's personal attributes or circumstances. Are you a homeowner?, Tired of your old water heater?, and You're overpaying for pest control all point straight at the reader's situation, finances, or home. Describe the problem in general terms instead, and let the targeting do the pointing.
100% safe, completely safe, harmless to kids and pets, chemical-free, risk-free. For pest control and other treatments, EPA and FTC standards prohibit absolute safety claims outright, and both ad platforms treat them as unreliable claims. "All-natural" does not rescue the sentence either. Say what the product does and how to use it properly, and leave the absolutes out.
Once you have matched the label to the sentence, rewrite that sentence into a checkable fact. Three examples, using the same fix logic our rule library attaches to every flag:
Notice what changed. Nothing got weaker. The claims got specific, and specific claims can be proven, which is the whole point.
Both routes exist, and picking the wrong one wastes days.
Appeal when the label doesn't match the ad. Automated review misfires, especially on context. "Best practices" is not a superlative claim about your business. A certification name or a quoted review can trip a pattern the ad doesn't actually violate. If you read the ad and the offending claim genuinely isn't there, appeal and say why in one plain paragraph.
Edit when the words are actually there. An appeal will not save a real violation, and it shouldn't. If your ad says "100% guaranteed" with no terms, the fastest path back to live is fixing the sentence and resubmitting the edited ad for a fresh review. What never works: deleting the ad and resubmitting identical copy. The system has seen it before, and so has the reviewer queue.
Everything above is repair work. The cheaper habit is screening copy before submission, while fixing it still costs nothing. The workflow we recommend to agencies takes about a minute per ad:
Two honest limits. A pre-screen catches what is in the rule book; it cannot promise approval, because the platforms make the final call and their reviewers weigh context a pattern list can't see. And remember the ad is only half the surface. A clean ad pointing at a landing page full of unproven claims can still run into trouble, which is why the suite also runs a landing-page audit against the same library.
If you run ads for clients in regulated verticals, the same workflow applies with the vertical selected: dental, legal, and real estate each add their own rule categories on top of the general book.
Every disapproval carries a policy label, and the label is the diagnosis. For local services advertisers, the usual culprits are superlatives you cannot prove (best, #1, top-rated), guarantees with no terms attached, pricing that does not hold up, editorial problems like excess capitals and repeated punctuation, and absolute safety claims. Find the label in Policy Manager first, then find the sentence in your copy that matches it.
Misrepresentation is the policy family behind most copy disapprovals. It covers Unreliable claims, such as ranking claims and guarantees you cannot substantiate, and Dishonest pricing practices, such as bait pricing, projected savings with no basis, and free offers whose conditions are hidden.
Appeal when the label does not match the ad. Automated review misfires on context, and a phrase like best practices is not a superlative claim about your business. Edit and resubmit when the flagged words are actually there. Never delete the ad and resubmit identical copy; the system has seen it before.
No. A disapproval attaches to a specific ad, and sibling ads often keep running. Fix the flagged ad rather than restructuring the campaign around it. Account-level problems are a different event.
Yes. Paste the exact headline, ad text, and call to action into the free audit before submission. You get a verdict of HIGH RISK, NEEDS REVIEW, or CLEAR, the offending sentence quoted in full, the policy named, and fix guidance for each finding. A pre-screen catches what is in the rule book; it cannot promise approval, because Google makes the final call.
Two common reasons. Editorial rules disapprove ads whose claims are fine but whose formatting is not: capitals used for effect, repeated punctuation, gimmicky symbols, or a phone number typed into the ad text instead of a call asset. And the ad is only half the surface: a clean ad pointing at a landing page full of unproven claims can still run into trouble.
Each trade has its own page with the full Google Ads rule set that runs on its ads, the risky claim examples we see most in that trade, and the fixes:
Free, no account. Paste the disapproved ad and the reason Google gave; get the likely cause, the fix for each flag, and a re-check of the rebuilt ad.
Fix a disapproved ad